Meet the Adirondack Watershed Institute’s new leader

After years working on international, federal policy, Maureen Cunningham returns to the waters she ‘dreams about’ 

By Zachary Matson

Growing up, Maureen Cunningham’s family would visit Eighth Lake Campground each year. She has continued the tradition with her family at Putnam Pond Campground.

Her family motto traces its roots to the feeling of taking that first dip of the summer in an Adirondack lake: “This is the water we dream about.”

After years of state, federal and international policy work, Cunningham will be spending a lot more time with the water of her dreams. She started in August as the new executive director of the Adirondack Watershed Institute (AWI). A program of Paul Smith’s College, AWI sits at the center of critical water quality monitoring initiatives, a parkwide boat stewardship program and water science. 

Cunningham lives in the Albany area with her husband, Paul Miller, a filmmaker who produced the documentary “Searching for Timbuctoo” on Black settlers in the North Country, and their two teenage sons. Cunningham serves on the Bethlehem Town Board and said she plans to seek another four-year term later this year. 

The Explorer sat down with Cunningham at her office on campus to discuss her background and her vision for AWI. The following interview is edited for clarity and length.

Q: What drew you to the job?

As soon as I heard about the job, I thought this is a dream job. Everybody in the water sector has some water story. Mine began in the Adirondacks. I grew up outside of Utica, and my family spent time camping in the Adirondacks. It was really part of growing up, skiing in the winter, camping in the summer, and everything in between. Being situated at Paul Smith’s College also made the job interesting, this added layer of being part of a college that’s able to leverage the good work of AWI. I liked everything about it.

Q: How did your background prepare you for this position?

I’ve worked for over 20 years in the environmental and conservation fields. The early part of my work started out internationally, but I pivoted when I had kids and came back to New York state after living internationally, in Washington D.C. and other places. I have about 20 years of management experience, too. I have spent a lot of time with nonprofit organizations, leading teams, building teams, hiring teams. I led the Hudson River Watershed Alliance for six years, where I was helping build capacity with around 30 watershed groups up and down the river. Part of my skill set is helping organizations grow, helping them be more accountable and more efficient. There’s always growing pains in nonprofits, and I love just working through that. I think AWI is definitely in a different place. We’re part of a college which gives us a little more stability and potential for leveraging capacity. I love the management side, which a lot of people that work in environmental work don’t like. I like the policy, but I also like managing teams as well.

Q: What did you learn when working at Environmental Advocates in Albany?

I learned really how to be an advocate, and the range of tools that advocates have. Not all advocates are the same. That was the beginning of understanding how science and data can help lead to policy change. Environmental Advocates doesn’t create the data, but use that data to make the argument for policy change. We did kind of crunch numbers on water infrastructure funding, and that helps make the case, putting together how instrumental the funding has been makes the case for legislative funding.

Q: You worked at the Environmental Policy Innovation Center, EPIC, based near Washington D.C., what was the organization’s approach or theory of environmental policy? 

There are very strong similarities to the work that AWI does in that both organizations are data driven. When I got to EPIC, it was really small. The executive director worked in the Obama administration. He founded the organization and wanted it to be a very agile organization that could push for change quickly, but not in the typical advocacy sense, more through data and analysis and really building relationships. We had conversations with the White House and the EPA, and we developed those close relationships. So it was a different kind of advocacy, but really using data and tracking data. A lot of the data was infrastructure funding data from the federal government to show how beneficial that is. So at EPIC, I was the second water team employee, and when I left, it was 20 or more people. I helped build the team, and really the three pillars of the team were data, policy analysis and technical assistance. Our goal was to tip the balance, to help underserved communities access funding to help eliminate the disparities across water systems. Across the U.S., there’s huge disparities in the level of water infrastructure and ability to deliver clean water. Rural communities tend to be underserved.

Q: There seems to be this idea from EPIC that the pace of the environmental laws we have doesn’t align well with the environmental challenges we face: Does that apply in the Adirondack Park? Are there policies here that aren’t meeting the needs of the challenges?

Probably, it’s everywhere, right? The example at EPIC that they like to give is permitting requirements. It takes more time to get a permit to restore a stream than it does to do development on a stream, which makes no sense. So I think that exists everywhere. I’m sure to get a permit to restore a stream in New York, it probably does take longer than to build a dock or build something else. I think that’s just how our society is. I don’t think it’s probably particular to New York. It’s federal and state. I can’t give specifics yet, but I think that does exist with environmental laws.

Q: What lessons do you bring with you from those previous jobs?

A lot of lessons. The importance of local community involvement is critical to clean water. In the Adirondacks, you have these robust lake associations, which are reminiscent of the watershed groups in the Hudson Valley. There were instances in the Hudson Valley where local watershed groups or local residents were the ones that first sounded the alarm about water contamination. So transfer that to the Adirondacks. Local lake associations, residents, community members, the users of the water are really key. That local community involvement is really important. I love that it’s so robust in the Adirondacks, and I think that’s really a strength.

Q: Say more about your Adirondack origin story?

My mom’s family started camping at Eighth Lake Campground almost as soon as it opened in the 1930s. A lot of my family traditions go back to the Adirondacks. I continued an extended family tradition of camping at Eighth Lake. My sisters and I also started a tradition of camping at Putnam Pond with our kids. My son asked me a while ago, when did I first start camping at Putnam? I said, honestly, the first time I brought you was when you were a baby. My sisters and I actually have a motto, and I talk about it a lot in the beginning of every job that I’ve worked on in water. We talk about the water we dream about, that’s like our family motto. Whenever we’re jumping in the lake for the first time that year, we say this is the water we dream about, and our kids are now using it. I never wanted to tell the Hudson River folks, but it was really the Adirondacks where I grew up.

When my mom got Alzheimer’s a long time ago, my dad started renting a house at Lower Saranac in the winter for my extended family. I’m the youngest of six kids, so our extended family is almost 30 people. Even the last two years, we brought in a hospital bed so she was there up until the end. For me, it’s really a place of deep family traditions, it’s where my love of water started.

Q: You’re seeking another term on the Bethlehem Town Board. Are you looking to eventually move to the Adirondacks?

I’m splitting time between here and Albany. For now, I’m staying here on the campus, and my husband and I are looking for a place up here. My son’s in high school, so I’m sort of splitting time. It’s probably half and half, maybe a little more up here in the beginning, I really feel like this is a home for me, I’m hoping for a long, long time.

Q: There is often this feeling among town leaders in the Adirondacks that environmental groups don’t support them and government policies prevent their communities from thriving. As someone who is an elected official, what support do local leaders need and how can AWI do more to help them?

A lot of times things happen in a community — in Bethlehem, we just had an algal bloom in our reservoir. I think sometimes as an elected official, it’s easy to sort of panic when you hear people are upset about their water. It would be easy to not know how to address it, because that’s not your field, right? Having knowledge, having the expertise is critically important, so that somebody could call and say AWI, what is an algal bloom. What does this mean? We have almost 30 years of data for more lakes than any other organization, that’s a gold mine, because when things happen, you want to know what are the trends, what has this been like over time. I think the science and education and the facts are really important for local officials, because most elected officials are not going to be experts on water, but many elected officials will at some point have some kind of water crisis.

Q: How do you incorporate the academic piece?

We have graduate assistants here. We have students. We employ seasonal workers and assistants in the lab, in the field, and I think that’s one way to create a pipeline for students to work in this field. This semester we have a couple of our staff who are teaching classes, so that’s another way we’re linking the institute back to the college. Right now is a really exciting time at the college because we’re also launching two other institutes: the Institute of Forestry and an Institute of Adventure, Hospitality and Food. I meet with the directors of those institutes to see how there can be cross collaboration between us, whether it’s through a grant, through research, sharing resources. There’s a lot of creative things that could come out of having these different institutes working together on campus.
Photo on top: Maureen Cunningham, the Adirondack Watershed Institute’s new executive director, on Cobble Lookout in Wilmington. Photo courtesy Maureen Cunningham