A fair share? Grant programs fall short for the Adirondacks, officials say

Small towns bear burden of maintaining water systems in a region that has few residents, millions of visitors

Story and graphics by Zachary Matson

When Adirondack Park leaders press their case in Albany, they meet audiences eager to reminisce on favorite vacation spots. The Adirondack officials prefer to discuss plumbing issues.

In a region visited by an estimated 10 million people a year, scant few full-time residents must maintain the expensive water infrastructure that serves as a thin layer of protection for the state’s most sensitive landscapes. How many visitors washing up from a hike consider how locals shoulder the burden of ensuring sewage flushed at a short-term rental does not sully the scenic vistas they treasure?

“We talk to lawmakers and they all have the same conversation with us: ‘We love the Adirondacks, we go up there for a week every year,’” said town of Minerva Supervisor Steve McNally, who is also president of the Adirondack Association of Towns and Villages. “But they don’t realize there are 130,000 people in the park trying to afford living here, which is very difficult.”

Seeking a ‘bigger cut’

Although state funding is essential in every corner of the Adirondacks, the quest for grants to upgrade drinking water and sewer infrastructure is a perennial challenge for Blue Line communities facing small user bases, limited staff and a byzantine application process. 

The park should be getting a bigger cut, Adirondack elected leaders and advocates have argued.

What is fair for the region rests in the eye of the beholder. Compared with its miniscule share of the state population, less than 1%, the region far exceeds its per-capita cut of the state largesse. But the Adirondacks, which make up about 20% of New York’s total land area, are unlike any region in the state. The Adirondack Park Agency imposes extra regulatory hurdles, the state is the region’s largest landowner and countless tourists enjoy the park’s amenities as a treasured corner of New Yorkers’ shared backyard.

Adirondack Park communities were awarded just over 4% of state funding allocated through five environmental and water protection programs, according to an Adirondack Explorer analysis of nearly $5 billion in publicly available grant awards.

The region fared best in the Department of Environmental Conservation’s Water Quality Improvement Grant, winning nearly 7% of the program’s dollars since 2009. The nearly $83 million has bolstered wastewater infrastructure projects, while also supporting work to restore river habitat, build needed storage for road salt piles, acquire land to protect water sources, mitigate erosion and repair aging dams.

RELATED READING: Adirondack communities receive funding for dam repairs, water quality improvements

The region also won nearly 7% of the funds allocated through Department of State community planning grants that stretch back to the 1990s. The mix of grants helps communities develop and implement waterfront revitalization plans and outline other infrastructure needs.

Inadequate indicators

The park has brought in a smaller share of water infrastructure grants from the Environmental Facilities Corp., which combines grants with low-interest financing to back costly upgrades to public drinking water and wastewater systems. Adirondack communities earned nearly $85 million in the water infrastructure grants since 2015, just under 3% of the nearly $3 billion in grants doled out through the program during the past 10 years.

Still, local leaders and Adirondack advocates have pleaded with state officials to do more to recognize the park’s unique challenges and drive money to improve the region’s infrastructure. 

When state officials announced a list of “disadvantaged communities” across the state that would be prioritized for up to 40% of the state’s $4.2 billion Environmental Bond Act, a census tract near Keeseville was the only inside the Blue Line to make the cut. No Hamilton County communities made the list. 

“The [disadvantaged community] criteria are a one-size-fits-all scenario and exclude the concerns of our Adirondack communities,” village of Speculator Mayor Jeannette Barrett wrote in public comments submitted last summer. “The current indicators are inadequate to capture the unique challenges faced by our geographically remote communities.” 

Barrett highlighted travel distances to education and healthcare, transportation difficulties, the high cost of basic goods and energy and the importance of protecting sensitive environments in the face of climate change.

Unique needs

Some Adirondack leaders have taken to suggesting policies that would explicitly guarantee Adirondack communities extra points on grant scorecards or allocate funds specific to the park’s needs. 

“There’s urban, there’s rural, and then there’s the Adirondacks,” said Beth Gilles, director of the Lake Champlain-Lake George Regional Planning Board, which helps Adirondack communities with grants. “We are a class of our own, and the state should be responding to that in their programs.”

Planners and grant writers said the state has taken steps to address concerns in recent years, noting efforts to expand technical support offered to communities and to raise the percentage of project costs eligible to be covered by water infrastructure grants. 

“There has definitely been a response,” Gilles said. “It remains to be seen whether it will help.”

Those changes have applied broadly to rural and small communities throughout the state—a region-specific approach is a tough pitch to lawmakers, especially for a region with so few voters. Some hope state policymakers will go further in acknowledging the park’s special circumstances, floating ideas such as allocating a special fund for Adirondack needs, granting extra points to communities classified as hamlets by the APA, waiving unreliable income data or broadening what qualifies as a disadvantaged community.

“To unlock the potential of these hamlets we need the infrastructure,” said Ethan Gaddy, the Warren County planner. 

Small-scale projects

The town of Minerva is funding its latest project with a market rate loan, because it did not qualify as a hardship community to EFC, another measure of financial need. McNally said the value of second homes often makes it harder for Adironadack communities to demonstrate the reality of their financial hardship—even when those second homes sit outside of water and sewer districts pursuing financing. APA regulations increase costs and tamper development opportunities, he said.

McNally also said the small scale of Adirondack towns can sometimes work against them. Many housing programs, McNally noted, want to fund larger projects than what is feasible in the Adirondacks. 

“It’s much easier to get housing money for a 40-unit building than the three-unit buildings we need here,” McNally said. “Like most Adirondack towns, you can’t put a 40-unit building in Minerva.” 

Limited municipal staff exacerbate the challenge of Adirondack towns seeking funding from ever-changing grant programs, and communities must prepare to sometimes wait years for reimbursement from the state. Towns are strategic about grants they apply for and must plan ahead to ensure they have money to carry out a grant-funded project and cover associated costs for planning, engineering and design. County planning departments and organizations like Gilles’ step in with grant-writing expertise and help shepherd projects to completion. 

Many grant programs prioritize projects that have been included in earlier planning documents, something that indicates a community has already invested time in considering the pros and cons of a particular approach.

“It’s got to be in a plan,” Gilles said. “That says to the funding agencies this community has thought about this project, they have talked about it with the community, and people want to see it happen.”

Slow progress

David Miller, who focuses on water infrastructure at the Adirondack Council, said the region has made significant progress in recent years on catching up to a backlog of work at old water treatment facilities around the Adirondacks.

Miller calculated around $195 million in state water grants flowing to the Adirodacks, resulting in more than $350 million in actual upgrades after including other funding sources. Drawing from a listing of important water infrastructure projects under development, Miller estimated about $225 million remaining in needed upgrades to Adirondack systems. If about one-half of that was funded by grants, he said, Adirondacks communities would be on track to catching up on the critical needs.

“It’s very doable under current programs over the next five years,” Miller said. “Maintenance is neverending, but the backlog will be gone.”

State dollars have helped chip away at that backlog just as they have protected more land from development, funded numerous salt storage sheds, bolstered habitat restoration and supported bridge and culvert replacements throughout the region. 

After more than a century of drawing water from wells and springs near Sumner Brook, Bloomingdale water users will soon own the 41-acre parcel that holds their long-established water supply. The property has long been owned by Paul Smith’s College, a legacy of the school’s namesake and storied Adirondack businessman who bought the parcel in 1910. College and town leaders agreed to a $300,000 sale price in March. The funding source: a $300,000 grant from DEC’s water quality improvement program. 

“It’s super simple,” said town of St. Armand Supervisor Davina Thurston. “This should have been taken care of in 1910.”

At top: Lake George Water Treatment Plant Operator Tim Shudt stands on a platform above the plant’s new water tanks, where bacteria help clean wastewater. Photo by Zachary Matson