FINGER LAKES' DILEMMA UNREGULATED BOOM MUDDIES FUTURE.(Local)

Byline: Associated Press

The 11 lakes in the Finger Lakes region that unfurl across western New York provide drinking water for about a million people and attract 7 million tourists each year to their scenic shores.

But environmentalists and local officials say the lakes are threatened by the lack of an authority that can control the region's skyrocketing development.

"The whole regional ecosystem of western New York has never had the kind of attention and protection that Long Island, the Adirondacks and the Catskills have had," Elizabeth Thorndike, director of the Rochester-based Center for Environmental Information, told the Rochester Democrat and …