4 things to know about the Adirondacks’ fight for their fair share

Explorer panelists say grant formulas often miss the mark for rural areas — but new efforts are underway to bridge the gap. 

By Brenne Sheehan

Local and state officials discussed the distribution of state funding to Adirondack communities during a panel discussion Thursday hosted by Adirondack Explorer. 

The panel, titled “Fair Share: How do the Adirondacks measure up when it comes to funding?,” was moderated by Explorer reporter Zachary Matson, who has spent time covering this issue.  

The panelists, who included local town supervisors, state agency representatives and regional planners, discussed the growing need of infrastructure in the Adirondack Park’s hamlets and state initiatives to provide better prescriptive state funding to local municipalities. 

Here are four main takeaways from the speakers: 

1. Making the case for the park’s unique needs

Beth Gilles, executive director of the Lake Champlain – Lake George Regional Planning Board, said Adirondack communities have struggled to qualify for competitive grant programs from the state, especially when it comes to water-quality programs. 

That’s because the scoring matrices used by state agencies to distribute grants and other funding—such as the NYSDEC’s Water Quality Improvement Project program, which allocates points based on multiple criteria—can misrepresent the needs of the park, which can appear more affluent due to its tourism and second-home economy, Gilles said.

According to Gilles, only five of the Adirondack Park’s 105 towns qualify for 20 points of funding priorities within the WQIP—four as 10-point earning “potential environmental justice areas” and one as a 10-point earning “disadvantaged community.” Because many water quality programs focus on restoring polluted waterways, efforts to protect the Adirondack Park’s already-pristine waters are often overlooked, she said. 

Jackie Bowen, director of conservation at the Adirondack Council, said the Adirondack Park has $200-250 million in known clean water funding needs for wastewater projects. And although the park accounts for just 1% of New York’s population and 20% of the state’s land area, its unique needs deserve to be supplemented.
“When we think about protecting the park, it’s about protecting the clean water and how that’s integral to supporting the health of our vibrant communities,” Bowen said. “[The park] covers the headwaters of numerous major rivers that flow off the dome of the Adirondacks, protecting the region’s water for the rest of New York. But that doesn’t exclude the communities that live here.” 

But Gilles said the state has done a “good job” in developing planning programs that help Adirondack communities get those points, encouraging those filling out state grants to give their input. 

“You’re looking at these grant programs and thinking to yourself, ‘what’s the point if we’re already not hitting 50 points out of these programs?,” Gilles said. “But when the state shows up and says, we’re doing this plan, we want your input. Give them your input, put your projects in those plans, because those are the plans we pull when we’re writing grant applications.” 

2. Communities need more equitable funding

St. Armand Town Supervisor Davena Thurston shared that her town, which includes the hamlet of Bloomingdale, still faces a $700,000 to $800,000 shortfall amid a new disinfection requirement from the state after developing a new $5.78 million waste water treatment plant in 2017 for the town’s 323 households. 

The cost was split between a $2 million state grant and a $2.78 million 0% interest rate loan from the state’s Environmental Facilities Corp., which has an annual debt service of $86,000 — surmounting to about $60 per household, per quarter, Thurston said. In addition, she needs money to set aside for the town’s capital reserve, which is completely residentially funded. 

“You have to be really really careful about what you take on, because you don’t want to have people move out of your area because they can’t afford to pay for water and sewer,” Thurston said. “It’s really a tough balancing act.”

It’s a similar situation for Elizabethtown Supervisor Cathy Reusser, who’s working on developing a public sewer system for her town that currently relies solely on septic. With a project cost of $38 million serving a community of less than 500 with an annual median income (AMI) of $34,500, rebuilding her town’s infrastructure is impossible without additional assistance, she said.
“Being in this forum again gives me an opportunity to put in front of all the folks that need to know how difficult it is to meet the agenda of the governor with clean water, housing and economic growth,” Reusser said. “I can’t rebuild Elizabethtown until I have wastewater.” 

Most state agencies require towns to cover 25% of project costs when applying for grants, ensuring the community has a financial stake. But Thurston said for communities like St. Armand, where an infrastructure project could cost up to $10 million for a full-time population of only a few hundred people, a match rate like this makes such projects unaffordable. 

“It’s unrealistic and for my community, it’s nearly unattainable,” Thurston said. “There has to be a better way. There has to be. I don’t know exactly what that is, but I will take another grant any day of the week.”

3. The state is taking steps

To better address the needs of Adirondack towns, state agencies like the DEC and the EFC have created alternative diagnoses of need in Adirondack communities. 

According to Bill Brizzell, Environmental Facilities Corp.’s director of engineering, rural communities have said 25% project cost grants under the Water Infrastructure Improvement Act (WIIA) aren’t enough—prompting the agency to create a special “small rural communities” enhanced WIIA covering 50% of eligible project costs up to $25 million for disadvantaged communities with populations less than 3,500, which they have offered since last year. 

The EFC conducts income surveys in towns like Elizabethtown, where the hamlet’s population — which are the residents who would use a wastewater system — is smaller and lower-income than the town overall, Brizzell said.

“We recognize that small communities have greater needs, where a $2 million grant in a small community doesn’t have a lot more than a $25 million grant for the city of Buffalo,” Brizzell said. “It moves the needle more, so we recognize that and try to help communities where we can.”

DEC Division of Water Research Scientist Lauren Townley added that the DEC and EFC both use community assistance teams for municipalities to assess how they can obtain state and federal funding to fund their projects, like obtaining funds from the WQIP.

“We can assist with maximizing the options for funding, because co-funding is really the way to get these projects done in a way that doesn’t impact your users in such a significant way,” Townley said. 

DEC Deputy Commissioner Sean Mahar praised Gov. Kathy Hochul and the Clean Water, Clean Air, and Green Jobs Environmental Bond Act of 2022, emphasizing the state’s commitment to conservation and water infrastructure in the Adirondacks. 

“We’re definitely sensitive to the unique qualities of the Adirondack communities. We’re constantly evaluating and reevaluating our programs, learning the lessons from the applications that we get, adapting our programs and looking at our scoring criteria, looking at how we’re hearing from communities and making sure that we’re supporting them in the ways that we need to,” Mahar said. “That is an iterative process, and these conversations and the engagement of communities is really critical to that.” 

4. Federal cuts leave state budget uncertain

Proposed federal funding cuts to shared programs like Medicaid — which New York spends 28% of its budget on annually — with the “One Big, Beautiful Bill” Act, state funding could be shifted around, Bowen said.
“The need to advocate collectively is going to become ever more important. And understanding slices of the pie are going to get smaller in terms of how federal or state funding is going to spread over different programs,” Bowen said. “It’s something that we’re talking about internally, wanting to prepare better for and making sure that we’re advocating for the Adirondacks as we start to see things shift down in Albany.” 

Mahar said that Trump’s FY 2026 budget aims for a  90% reduction in Clean Water and Drinking Water State Revolving Funds, which could impact local infrastructure projects if the money is not supplemented in the state budget. But he added that the DEC plays a dual role as both regulator and funder, and the agency is also committed to helping projects succeed through financing.
“It’s not just about a protected environment and clean water—it’s really about communities and economic development, because these clean water projects do underpin the health of our communities,” Mahar said. 

Photo at top: Jackie Bowen (right), Beth Gilles (center) and Bill Brizzell (left) speak at a July 31 panel hosted by Adirondack Explorer surrounding the distribution of state funding to the Adirondack Park. Photo by Brenne Sheehan.

CORRECTION: A previous version of the article misidentified the DEC’s Water Quality Improvement Project as the Water Quality Index Project and unclearly described the scoring system for the WQIP, and was updated Aug. 1 to add additional details about these programs, as well as additional details about the enhanced Water Infrastructure Improvement Act (WIIA).