Zachary Matson has been an environmental reporter for the Explorer since October 2021. He is focused on the many issues impacting water and the people, plants and wildlife that rely on it in the Adirondack Park.
Zach worked at daily newspapers in Missouri, Arizona and New York for nearly a decade, most recently working as the education reporter for six years at the Daily Gazette in Schenectady.
During a flurry of pre-election announcements last week, I took special note of a pair on clean water infrastructure.
The announcements mark what is shaping up to be a generational investment in wastewater treatment plants, sewer collection systems and public water supplies. In a magazine piece earlier this year, I outlined over $500 million of water infrastructure needs across the Adirondack Park.
The federal Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, combined with pandemic response funds, promises over $400 million for New York in the first year and over a $1 billion total in the years to come. On Thursday, the governor’s office announced the first clean water grants supported by the federal money in Newburgh and Liberty. Federal officials recently released $207 million of the New York’s clean water funds.
Covering the Adirondacks beat, you hear two words surface in a lot of conversations: climate refugees.
The idea is simple enough. As temperatures warm and the effects of climate change increase drought and water shortages, threaten deadly summer heat and render some parts of the country (let alone world) unlivable, many people may be looking at the Adirondack Park region with new interest.
Water is abundant. High temperatures will remain bearable for the foreseeable future and access to nature is plentiful. While the term typically applies to people around the world who will be forced to leave their homes, it may also apply to city-dwellers looking to escape the concrete jungle in the heat of summer.
Hydrilla, an aquatic invasive plant linked to wildlife deaths in southern states, has been inching closer and closer to the Adirondack Park in recent years.
Fifty years ago this week, federal lawmakers overrode a presidential veto to enact the Clean Water Act, a landmark law for the nation’s water quality.
The iconic image of the Cuyahoga River on fire in Ohio spurred congressional action and ushered in a half century of major river restorations across the nation. The goals outlined in the act included restoring the country’s water to a “fishable and swimmable” state.
The law imposed new permitting requirements on polluting industries and sewage treatment plants, but it failed to address diffuse pollution from storm and agricultural runoff, the largest source of pollution in many parts of the country. The standards adopted under the law in many places are now decades old or unable to address emerging problems.
This fall the Hudson River-Black River Regulating District commenced construction at the Hawkinsville Dam in Boonville a few miles outside the Blue Line. The project includes upgrades, totaling about $1.7 million, to improve the dam’s safety and stability.
I haven’t written about the project because it falls outside the Adirondack Park, but it marks the start of a series of long-needed upgrades to the regulating district’s portfolio of dams, including some of the most iconic in the Adirondacks.
Conklingville Dam, which created the Great Sacandaga impoundment in the 1930s, has received around $20 million in state funding in recent years for the largest upgrade in the dam’s history. I visited the dam at the end of September for a valve test, descending into the heart of the dam where original hand-crank valves open the gates that let water through.
When the volunteers of Trout Power get together for a fishing weekend, they are more interested in a small clip of fish fin than a trophy specimen. They aren’t looking for the biggest or most beautiful trout.
They are looking for genetic information, and they have found it. The nonprofit organization is working with genetics researchers to expand our understanding of native trout strains scattered throughout the park. The strains show minimal mixing with stocked trout and have survived centuries of threats like acid rain and game fishing. The genetic diversity the anglers and researchers are finding, more robust than previously understood, may be a key weapon against the growing threat of climate change, which could warm water temperatures to level uninhabitable for cold-water fish like brook trout.
It’s practically an aside in the paper’s concluding discussion.
“Today’s annual crossing and re-crossing of the thermal threshold between solid and liquid water has profound effects on cultures and ecosystems alike, and the eventual loss of that transition – i.e. the demise of winter – could produce the greatest climate-driven changes in the region,” they wrote.
With Lake George residents and advocates keeping a careful eye on the lake, DEC scientist Lauren Townley (pictured here) updated the Lake George Park Commission on the state’s latest HABs action plan for Lake George, which was updated in August. She shared the update in Bolton at the Lake George Park Commission’s first in-person meeting since prior to the pandemic.
The permit application comes after the state funded a series of major upgrades at the site, including a new visitors lodge, improved trails and modernized snowmaking equipment. A new 3.5 million gallon reservoir can hold the water needed to make snow at the site. The upgrades also aim to attract international competitions to the venue like the World University Games slated for this winter.
In my almost 11 months at the Explorer, I have done a lot of reporting on the Adirondack Park’s critical water infrastructure. Infrastructure that cleans water for drinking, protects lakes and streams from pollution, mitigates flooding and literally holds up much of the region’s watery landscapes.
The report, released earlier this month, attributed the chloride decline to a mild winter season, improvements to the Village of Lake Placid’s stormwater runoff system and a new program to reduce private and public road salt use around the lake.
Mirror Lake is one of the lakes most impacted by salt pollution in the Adirondack Park and has been the focus of the Ausable River Association and local officials seeking to limit salt contamination. Still, researchers measured chloride concentration of 52 mg/L, much higher than chloride levels found in lakes unimpacted by salt runoff.
Adirondack Watershed Institute boat stewards this summer continued their education-focused mission of protecting Adirondack lakes by preventing the spread of invasive plants.
As a new law requiring boaters certify they have cleaned their boat and that it does not contain any visible plant or animal material before launching in the park goes into effect, though, staffing remains a key challenge to both the stewards and the environmental conservation officers tasked with enforcing the new law.
During the first Adirondack Lakes Alliance symposium in recent years, Adirondack Watershed Institute Executive Director Dan Kelting previewed the panel’s recommendations. Here’s a look at some of what he said was included in recent drafts:
I just got back from an overnight trip to Duck Hole in the Western High Peaks so will keep this brief. Photographer Mike Lynch and I joined guide Matt Burnett and a group of local teenagers on a trip back to the former dammed pond that drained after the dam blew out during Tropical Storm Irene.
More to come on why we made the trip, but I can attest that the succession of ecosystems is well underway a decade after the water drained. Moss, grasses, shrubs and flowering plants have filled the area, attracting monarch butterflies. Fast-growing birches and the first generation of new spruce and cedar saplings have taken root. Nature is dynamic and, if allowed, fast to recover from humans’ mark.
Next, I’m headed to Paul Smith’s College for the Adirondack Lakes Alliance symposium. I’m looking forward to hearing discussion on a range of important topics, including the contested use of herbicide to combat invasive aquatic plants. I hope to meet some of you there.
A set of draft regulations to create a new septic inspection program around the lake is awaiting state approval before going up for public comments in the coming weeks. The proposed rules would establish a requirement that thousands of homes near the lake and its tributaries submit to a septic pump and inspection every few years.
Commission officials said they expected to be holding public hearings on the septic rules sometime this fall, possibly in October. The park commission will host a public information session on the program early next month.
Allison Gaddy, a senior planner with the Lake Champlain Lake George Regional Planning Board also updated the park commission on a forthcoming Lake George Watershed Plan. The plan will include an assessment of existing local ordinances, codes and planning documents, as well as an overall review of the condition of the lake, surrounding natural areas and development. It covers a range of issues, including septic issues, land acquisition and conservation, invasive species, climate resiliency, road salt impacts and more.
Focused on water quality, the plan will also outline proposed projects around the lake, providing a source of ideas for future grant applications.
Gaddy said a draft could be available to the public as soon as August or in the next couple of months. The public will have a chance to offer comments on the plan.
Also: the commission’s annual boat steward program has seen a slight uptick in boater contacts compared to the same time last year and has intercepted over 100 instances of invasive species, including two quagga mussels, which have not yet established in Lake George.
I will keep an eye out for more details on all of these topics.
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Will climate change threaten ‘forever wild’?
Covering the Adirondacks beat, you hear two words surface in a lot of conversations: climate refugees.
The idea is simple enough. As temperatures warm and the effects of climate change increase drought and water shortages, threaten deadly summer heat and render some parts of the country (let alone world) unlivable, many people may be looking at the Adirondack Park region with new interest.
Water is abundant. High temperatures will remain bearable for the foreseeable future and access to nature is plentiful. While the term typically applies to people around the world who will be forced to leave their homes, it may also apply to city-dwellers looking to escape the concrete jungle in the heat of summer.
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