New York Needs to Lead the Way
By Justin A. Levine - Senior Communications Specialist
Friday, March 7, 2025
Earlier this week, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the 1972 federal Clean Water Act doesn’t actually require water to be clean.
In the ruling, SCOTUS said that the federal Environmental Protection Agency could not hold permit holders accountable for surface water pollution. In this specific case, the city of San Francisco discharged sewage into the Pacific Ocean, creating water quality conditions that violated federal standards. SCOTUS said the EPA could not hold the city accountable for those violations.
This is just the most recent example of SCOTUS weakening environmental protections at the federal level, and goes to show just how important it is that the people of New York work to further protect the waters of the Adirondacks at a state level.
Five major river systems begin within the Blue Line, which was drawn in 1892 specifically to protect the state’s water resources. With the Hudson, Mohawk, Black, and St. Lawrence rivers and the Lake Champlain Basin all spreading out from the park, the waters here have international impacts on millions of people, as well as countless wildlife.
The Adirondack Council has been working for strong water quality protections for decades, and 2025 is no different. For this year’s state budget, the Adirondack Council is requesting hundreds of millions of state dollars be spent on protecting, cleaning and preserving the waters of not just the Adirondacks, but across New York.
The Adirondack Council never takes government funding of any kind, so when money gets allocated for programs in the state budget, it goes directly to those municipalities, agencies, and organizations. Here is a partial list of the Council’s state budget requests:
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$600 million for clean water infrastructure and septic system replacements.
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This money is used to help communities across New York update aging pipes and treatment plants. This is particularly important in the Adirondack Park, where very small communities would be forced to pony up tens of millions of dollars to upgrade facilities. Last year, the Council successfully lobbied to have the state increase its matching clean water infrastructure grants from 25% of the cost to 50% of the cost, a huge win for Adirondack communities with small populations.
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Additionally, the area around Lake George pioneered a septic tank replacement program which helps homeowners in the watershed replace aging or failing septic tanks. The Council was integral in getting a state program to apply to much of the Adirondacks on roughly 100 water bodies.
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$3 million for the Survey of Climate and Adirondack Lake Ecosystems (SCALE).
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This program was started a few years ago as an expansion and continuation of one of the longest running water sampling programs in the Adirondacks. Without knowing what is happening to Adirondack waters, we simply cannot protect them. This program is run by the Ausable Freshwater Center, Cornel CALS, and Rensellaer Polytechnic Institute.
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$1 million for the state Department of Environmental Conservation to conduct water body carry capacity studies.
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Once again, we cannot defend our waters from pollution and invasive species without having a firm grasp on the impacts of human use. State policy has long called for carrying capacity studies, but neither the DEC or Adirondack Park Agency have followed through on that work.
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$20 million for invasive species management.
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The best way to get rid of invasive species is not to have them to begin with. The state has done a good job investing in boat wash stations, stewards, and passing the Invasive Species Transport law, which makes boat inspection and decontamination mandatory in the Adirondacks. But removal of established invasives is time consuming and expensive. While there are chemical treatments, those chemicals often kill native species as well, and in many cases have not had long-term studies of their impacts conducted.
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$200,000 each for the Adirondack Watershed Institute and the ASRC Whiteface Mountain Field Station.
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AWI is housed within Paul Smith’s College, while the WMF is operated by SUNY Albany on Whiteface Mountain. Both of these organizations do critical water quality work, but as long-term monitoring programs, they have each faced funding challenges. Policy makers need the best possible science to make the best possible decisions for the park, and investing in these programs is good for all New Yorkers.
While environmental protections are frequently under assault (and will continue to be for the foreseeable future) at the federal level, New York has the opportunity with this year’s state budget to continue to be a world leader in the environmental protection realm. Better yet, the money allocated creates jobs in a wide variety of sectors, all across the Empire State.
It’s time for New York’s elected officials to show the world how successful conservation can be done, as we’ve been doing since 1892.
Justin Levine joined the Council staff in 2021 as the Communications and Outreach Assistant. He previously worked as a regional marketing manager for the Regional Office of Sustainable Tourism and was an award-winning journalist and photographer for the Adirondack Daily Enterprise and Lake Placid News. Since graduating from Paul Smith’s College in 2004, Justin has worked in the environmental field in various roles in both the Adirondacks and Florida. When not working, Justin loves spending time with his family, running, and doing all the outdoor things the Park has to offer.
