A trio of longstanding water infrastructure problems across the Adirondack Park are gradually moving toward solutions, though town leaders continue to call for more support from state officials.

Elizabethtown expects to advance engineering designs for its planned new public sewer system this year. Tupper Lake is on the verge of testing well sites and locating a new treatment plant. And a task force in Ticonderoga is exploring options it hopes will allow a wilderness pond to continue being used as a water source for a pocket of residents around Eagle Lake. 

For years, leaders of all three towns have sought to address core water issues that stymie economic growth and threaten public and environmental health. Tupper Lake and Ticonderoga are both under standing orders to move away from surface water drinking sources — or adopt costly treatment technologies — while Elizabethtown has long considered establishing a municipal sewer system, the only county seat in the state without one.

While still far from sure things, community leaders are growing more hopeful they may be closer than ever to finding long-term solutions to the persistent challenges. Adirondack projects are seeking tens of millions of dollars to rehab public drinking and wastewater systems, and some communities are banking grant wins and dollars. 

Building a $38 million project in Elizabethtown

Elizabethtown Supervisor Cathleen Reusser is taking every chance she can to explain her town’s need for public sewers to state officials.

During a recent visit to Albany, she met with Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) Commissioner Amanda Lefton and briefly pitched the project to Gov. Kathy Hochul at an event. Reusser later hosted a meeting with staff from DEC and the Environmental Facilities Corporation (EFC), resulting in suggestions for ways Elizabethtown could bolster its chances at future state dollars. 

A $500,000 grant from the Northern Border Regional Commission along with $125,000 of the town’s money will support more detailed engineering plans, which could in turn boost the town’s state grant scores. The town recently signed a contract for the engineering plans, which Reusser said would take most of the year to complete.

The plan is to establish a wastewater treatment plant on town land near a public golf course and run sewers in a new sewer district comprising much of the hamlet.   

“I’m feeling very optimistic about this,” Reusser said.

The project, which also includes decommissioning current septic systems, is estimated to cost around $38 million. Elizabethtown in recent years has unsuccessfully applied for EFC funding, conducting a door-to-door income survey and stream water sampling to improve its chances. 

Reusser said she doesn’t think residents of the sewer districts — shown through the income survey to have median household income of less than $35,000 — should have to shoulder the cost burden of building the system. She said she hoped to build a financing package through state funding and a mix of other grant programs, as well as payments from the system’s largest users. 

“It is very loudly stated that those folks can’t afford a lot,” Reusser said. “Operations and maintenance is the only thing you can realistically put on those household ratepayers.” 

Reusser said the town was gaining momentum for the sewer project but there were still a lot of details to work out.

“This is still not a for-sure project,” she said. “But I think we have done a great job of painting the picture of a disadvantaged community and the absolute necessity of this project for the health and wellness of the tributaries to the Boquet River and ultimately the health of Lake Champlain.”

Fixing brown water in Tupper Lake

Tupper Lake is also pursuing a major infrastructure project to move its drinking water supply completely to groundwater sources and resolve a persistent problem with browning and discoloration caused by high levels of iron and manganese.

Like many other communities, Tupper Lake was ordered to move from surface water to groundwater sources but has struggled to fully replace its previous sources with reliable wells.

The community, which still gets about one-third of its water supply from Simond Pond, explored both options, said village mayor Mary Fontana, but determined a new treatment plant and a third well was the best option. 

“Groundwater is the most sustainable and affordable option for the community,” Fontana said. 

Tupper Lake has also struggled to win the state funding its leaders say are needed to make the project work. State lawmakers have raised Tupper Lake’s challenges specifically with state officials during public hearings. Fontana said she continues to make the case that it should be a priority for the state.

“I think supplying clean drinking water to a rural community in the Adirondack Park should be at the top of that list,” Fontana said.

Residents have been deeply frustrated by the discoloration that has persisted since switching to groundwater wells, regularly posting pictures on social media of brownish water filling drinking glasses and bathtubs. 

Fontana called the results of a pilot test last year of the proposed water treatment technology “remarkable.” The idea is to use a special filtration system to target the iron and manganese that are causing browning of the water.

“We will be able to treat the water and deliver clean, clear water to our customers,” she said. 

Solving a decades-long problem in Ticonderoga

Jim O’Bryan took the reins as Ticonderoga town supervisor at the beginning of the year, with hopes of solving a problem that has stymied town leaders for decades. He wants to find a solution that keeps Gooseneck Pond in the Pharoah Lake Wilderness as a viable drinking water source for residents in Chilson and Eagle Lake, as well as eventually for the town.

“This has been an issue for the town for 34 years,” O’Bryan said. “One of my goals was to hopefully solve it.”

O’Bryan established a task force charged with evaluating options. He said he hopes to move toward a plan to set up a new water district for Eagle Lake residents, while finding a viable treatment option at Gooseneck that will pass muster with regulators. 

Alternatively, the town is using state funds to study potential wellfield sites that could also supply Eagle Lake residents with a drinking source. He said an engineer that specializes in ultraviolet filtration will meet with the task force in the coming weeks.

“There are very few waters you will find in the Adirondacks with as clean of water as Gooseneck,” O’Bryan said.

He said he hoped in the long term they could also find a way to send water downhill from Gooseneck to Ticonderogra to mix with the town’s existing well sources to help reduce that water’s hardness.

For other communities, success comes slowly

For seven straight years, Lake Luzerne applied for a $1.5 million grant from EFC to upgrade its aging drinking water system. Last year it asked for $1.75 million to account for rising costs. 

Every request was rejected.

“We get the same form letter,” said Jim Niles, who took over as Lake Luzerne supervisor earlier this year. “It says your application was excellent, but we didn’t have enough funding to get to you. It’s been kind of disappointing.”

Niles said after several years of sending in the same application, Lake Luzerne started to make more tweaks in recent years, hoping more details would improve its chances — still to no avail.

“If we keep striking out on some of these grants, at some point we are going to have to borrow some money,” Niles said. “We can’t keep kicking the can down the road.”

But the village recently landed a federal grant to cover similar needs, thanks to U.S. Representative Elise Stefanik. Niles said those funds will support upgrading old water storage and distribution lines. There’s still more work to do, he said.

“Our whole system is old,” Niles said. 

In Bloomingdale, the Town of St. Armand recently landed a $5 million grant and over $5 million in interest-free financing to replace its drinking water treatment plant, specifically to address the threat of PFOAs, commonly known as “forever chemicals.” 

Supervisor Davina Thurston said the community’s water is not in violation of the current regulatory standard for PFOAs, commonly known as “forever chemicals,” but could in the future as those thresholds are expected to be lowered. 

“My whole focus is to get as much grant funds as humanly possible so that our ratepayers are not given the brunt of these expenses,” she said.

Town leaders also argued that water infrastructure projects are fundamental to housing challenges — a tie Hochul is seeking to make with new water funding in her proposed budget. The final budget remained under negotiations as of Thursday, but Hochul originally proposed $50 million in new water spending earmarked for projects connected to housing preservation in small rural communities.

“There is no doubt in my mind that these projects are critical for affordable housing,” Thurston said.

The town of Jay in the eastern Adirondacks is becoming a hot spot, in more ways than one.

After years of unsuccessfully trying to convince carriers that the hamlet of Au Sable Forks and much of the Ausable River Valley is a communications dead zone, the town, in conjunction with the Essex County IT department and the Lake Champlain Regional Planning Board, has worked out a hack that basically turns the town’s three hamlets into wifi hotspots.

“I got sick of beating my head against the wall with Verizon,” said Jay Supervisor Matt Stanley.  “And it’s tough for a for-profit company, which Verizon is, to come in and make profit in a town of 2,500 people. I can’t control that. I can control our public Wi-Fi network, and if you’re driving through the area and your cell phone’s not working, you’ll be able to stop in the town of Jay and have Wi-Fi everywhere.”

“Stopping” is key. Three thousand cars pass through Au Sable Forks on any given day, a share of which are traveling from the northeast—Plattsburgh, Montreal, Vermont—to recreate in the Adirondack Park. And typically, they zip right through.

Jay advocates hope motorists will stop to connect. Right now, there are three spheres of public Wi-Fi in Au Sable Forks: the Community Center, Grove Road park and Riverside Park next to the Tops supermarket.

“Once you connect your phone, no matter which one you go to, it’s all got the same wireless network, so your phone automatically recognizes it and jumps right on,” Stanley said. “If you’re in a pinch and you need to make a call, go down where the rivers meet.”

The town plans to build out the system from there.

Adding a visitor center, EV chargers

The Ausable River Valley Business Association, in conjunction with the town and the Regional Office of Sustainable Tourism (ROOST), is opening a visitor center on the ground floor of the Tahawus Cultural Center in Au Sable Forks.

“From my perspective the visitors center will liven up Main Street by bringing a vacant store front to life, where we can help promote our region and area activities, along with our businesses,” said ARVBA President Knut Sauer. “It will help us tell the story of the Ausable River Valley—our businesses, our people, our natural beauty, and our opportunities. We’re thrilled to be opening our doors and to welcome a part‑time manager who will help us make this a vibrant and helpful hub for everyone who stops by.”

The town is also adding electric vehicle chargers in Jay and Upper Jay, where kiosks will tell the story of Jay—although again, the ubiquitous QR codes that provide further information will have to wait until there is Wi-Fi.

A game-changing moment for Jay

The utility of Wi-Fi, and its importance in the modern world, can manifest in interesting ways.

At a meeting in Upper Jay with the Adirondack Innovation Initiative (A2i) in mid-March, Stanley told the tech-savvy crowd that when the ice jam on the East Branch of the Ausable River broke, Stanley was in Florida, where his daughters attend school. No matter.

“I was able to watch the flooding, communicate with all the emergency personnel and declare a state of emergency from Florida while I was down there for parents’ weekend,” Stanley said. “And that’s all because of the tech side of stuff that we can do.”

To spread the signal through the hamlet, the town will beam signal from one utility pole to another by way of small-cell nodes.

A fiber installed by the Development Authority of the North Country on the east side of the East Branch will carry signal to the covered bridge in the hamlet of Jay and then on to Upper Jay. There won’t be push notifications alerting motorists to Wi-Fi’s availability, so the town will depend on signage to spread the word.

“The more reasons we can get people to stop and get out of their car in the town of Jay, the better it is going to be for us to create tourism and economic development for our town,” Stanley said. “This is, in my opinion, a pilot program that, once people can see what we’re doing, can be a model for other rural communities.”

Take a step back and consider that the guiding force behind perhaps the greatest economic engine in the Adirondacks this decade has a meager $175,000 annual operating budget, gets half its money from donations and has one full-time employee who is only grant-funded for two more years. Not to mention that a quarter of its budget goes to pay for portable toilets.

This would be the nonprofit Adirondack Rail Trail Association (ARTA), which was officially incorporated in 2012. Unofficially, the association came to be during the debate over the rail corridor running between Lake Placid and the Town of Remson outside the southwestern rim of the park.

The debate focused on whether the railbed was best used for a scenic railroad or a multiuse trail. In the end, the state did both, fixing up the track between Remsen and Tupper Lake and tearing it out between Tupper Lake and Lake Placid.

After successfully advocating for a trail, ARTA pivoted to become a friends group and a liaison between the state, which was building and maintaining the trail, and the communities that the trail would impact.

“In order for the rail trail to be the successful economic development engine that everybody foresaw, you needed more than just a trail,” said Julia Goren, executive director of ARTA. “You need a way for people to navigate off the trail, to get into downtown areas to spend money, to get back on the trail, to find a place to stay and to have information about the amenities that would make the trail really appealing.”

The final phase of the rail trail was completed in the fall of 2025, which shifted the focus from construction to making the trail a “transformational asset for these communities,” she said.

That isn’t as straightforward a mission as it might sound. The rail trail is actually part of the Adirondack Forest Preserve, which means that, for example, signs pointing the way to local businesses are prohibited. As such, the rules are understandable—it would be no more appropriate than a sign advertising a lunch counter on Mount Marcy, Goren said.

Nor can the state be seen as being partial to one business or another, so it falls on ARTA to work with the towns to develop commerce-related corridors off the trail into their communities. Instead of service signs on the trail or adjacent parking lots (the state corridor is 100 feet wide), ARTA relies on maps that show local business, and soon the Regional Office of Sustainable Tourism (ROOST) will have an app doing the same.

Even though the full trail has yet to log a full season, the numbers are already indicative of the trail’s economic potential. While in the planning stages, the state estimated the trail might attract 80,000 users. ARTA believed it could be far more than that, and as the Adirondack Rail Trail prepares for its first full season of end-to-end use, its own estimates of 330,000 users looks solid.

The traffic has already had a demonstrable impact. When Canadians boycotted U.S. travel last year due to unfavorable trade policy and derogatory comments emanating from Washington, it looked  to be a bad year for tourism, particularly for counties such as Franklin that share a border with Canada. But tourism held steady, which local officials attributed to the rail trail.

To establish a baseline, ARTA will work with Franklin County tourism officials and SUNY-ESF this summer to start quantifying the economic impact of the trail. That will allow officials to track growth over time in metrics such as sales taxes.

“My expectation is that there will be substantial economic benefit, however you have to be intentional about making that happen,” Goren said. “Like right now in Saranac Lake, if you are from another area and you are riding on the rail trail, there is no way for you to know that a block and a half away, you can have a meal, you can see a play, you can get your bike repaired, or you can get gas for your snowmobile, or you can go shopping or buy a painting. There’s no way for those folks to know that, and this is where I think ARTA is so critically important.”

Economics, of course, are only part of the equation. Goren said the trail has been surprisingly popular with the community as well, from kids riding to get ice cream to grown ups commuting to work, to people hauling a bike that hasn’t been used in years out of the garage. There are runners and dog walkers and birders. There are people in wheelchairs. The trail is a cross-section of people, and also a cross-section of the park. 

“It’s a microcosm of what makes the Adirondack Park special because you get to experience the hamlets, and the backyards of  people living in the park, as well as the wilderness and Wild Forest,” Goren said. “You go right past the St. Regis canoe wilderness, and you get these really distinct and very different ecosystems like a boreal swamp, or a northern Tamarack swamp.” 

The health benefits, while difficult to quantify, seem obvious, and the trail, smooth and flat, is accessible to all. But perhaps most important of all, it is making thousands of people happy.

“If you are out on the rail trail on a nice day you can feel it, because people are smiling, they’re happy, they’re saying hello and they’re engaging with people,” Goren said.

For a small-budget nonprofit with one staff member that relies heavily on donations and volunteers, it is hard to imagine a better return on the dollar than that.

This story was collected as part of OurStoryBridge Listens: Present in the Moment, a new, non-partisan Partner Project by OurStoryBridge Inc.

A long-awaited consultant report on High Peaks visitor use proposes curtailing hiker access at key launching points into the High Peaks Wilderness during the region’s busiest trail days.

The report summarizes years of study of how to best manage visitor use of the High Peaks, where hikers, park advocates and land managers have all fretted over the negative impacts of high use, particularly during summer and fall weekends. That high use can diminish the wilderness experience codified in the Adirondack State Land Master Plan, harm the mountains’ sensitive ecosystems, strain trail infrastructure and increase the risks to hiker safety, according to researchers and park advocates.

The report’s recommendations — which are now up to the state Department of Environmental Conservation to adopt or reject — call for a broad emphasis on education and ongoing monitoring. But it also proposes limits on the number of daily visitors to three popular areas of the High Peaks: Adirondack Loj in North Elba, Cascade Mountain and the Garden trailhead in Keene. The proposal suggests managing trail use with parking restrictions and, potentially, a hiker permitting system.

The report finds that the Adirondak Loj and South Meadows trailheads, the most used access point in the High Peaks, can sustain about 400 visitors per day “without unacceptable impacts to visitors’ wilderness experience, park and partner operations and public safety.” 

A study of daily visitor use in the High Peaks conducted in summer 2023 as part of the broader work culminating in the new summary report identified around 15 days where daily use was estimated to exceed the 400-person threshold, often by more than 100 hikers. On most days, visitor use falls well below 400, but during popular weekend days in August and September, usage approached nearly double that level. 

The report proposes restricting daily visitors on the Cascade Mountain trail, one of the most popular and accessible trails in the park, to 240 visitors per day. The 2023 study identified about a dozen days when usage exceeded that level, reaching as high as 450 visitors on the busiest days. 

“Current levels of visitor use on weekend days and holidays during the summer season create parking, traffic circulation, crowding, and public safety issues,” according to the report.

The report recommends 2026 as a planning and public outreach year ahead of implementing the visitor limitations in 2027. It also outlines a long-term monitoring plan to continue tracking High Peak trail use and to refine use limits. The plan calls for measuring the number of people on a particular mountain summit, the frequency of encountering other hikers on trails and vehicle traffic at key parking locations. 

The state and the private Adirondack Mountain Reserve in Keene in recent years have been testing a parking reservation system in an effort to control usage at a separate gateway to the High Peaks.

In a statement on Friday, state officials highlighted that the report’s release “did not signify DEC adoption of the recommendations,” calling it “one set of tools and recommendations that DEC will utilize in future land management decision making.”

The Adirondack Mountain Club, which owns and manages the parking lot and trailhead at the Adirondak Loj, in a statement on Friday applauded the release of the report and called it a “first step” in developing a visitor use management strategy for the area.

In the statement, ADK Executive Director Cortney Koenig Worrall emphasized the importance of strengthening public education and infrastructure in managing visitor use, calling hiker permits a “last resort.”

“ADK remains committed to ensuring access to the High Peaks Wilderness for all people,” Worrall said. “Although the report recommends permits as an option for the High Peaks Wilderness, permits are the management tool of last resort. Education, infrastructure, and staffing are the only first management tools, and these elements have not been fully implemented to date.”

What are your thoughts on the plan? Leave a comment below.

ITHACA, N.Y. — About six transgender rights demonstrators braved a thunderstorm as they briefly blocked rush hour traffic to march down Seneca Street late Tuesday afternoon.

The demonstration coincides with International Transgender Day of Visibility, which is held annually to raise awareness of discrimination and violence against transgender people.

The demonstrators, some wearing the colors of the transgender flag under their umbrellas, seemed equally unfazed by the torrential rain and lightning as they did by the honks of some frustrated drivers. 

A demonstrator with a bull horn led the small group in chants as they set off from The Commons around 5:30 p.m. The event was organized by the Queer Anarchy Collective, a recently formed local activist and community group.

Legislation targeted at the trans community has seen an uptick during the second Trump Administration. More than half of U.S. states have passed laws banning some kinds of gender affirming care. A recent law in Kansas immediately invalidated identification documents for people whose gender marker does not match their sex assigned at birth.

Transgender people are more than four times more likely to be the target of violent crime compared to cisgender people, according to a study by researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles. The disparity is even greater for trans people of color.

On Tuesday evening, at least five Ithaca Police Department vehicles were on hand to direct traffic along Seneca Street. The group of demonstrators was able to block all lanes of traffic for at least part of their march, which appeared to continue at least until Meadow Street.

At several points, the driver of a silver pickup truck revved his engine loudly and briefly appeared poised to rush at the small group. The driver eventually turned off of Seneca Street, but not before driving past the group loudly a second time.

The post Small group of protestors block traffic on Transgender Day of Visibility appeared first on The Ithaca Voice.

March went up and down like a yoyo—maple sap ran well for a few days then locked up with colder temperatures that were popping the trees outside my bedroom window. It looks like it should be running good by the end of the week. My neighbor, Eric Sutherland, at Moose Maple, said he had a good run and made 30 gallons one day that it was running for his one-man operation. If his open sign is out, he sells it right there while he is processing. The color looked exceptionally good from the syrup he has been making. 

The geese have been flying over and there was a flock in Old Forge Pond today along with a few mallards. My evening grosbeak flock has remained about the same—75 to 100 most everyday and I got out to band few of them. The blue jays are still hogging the feeders with around 20 each day. A few red-winged blackbirds come and go, and a few common grackles are here. Not many small birds but a few slate colored juncos and American tree sparrows. The black capped chickadees, both nuthatches and the woodpeckers are about the same all winter with the red-bellied woodpecker still showing up each day working the peanut butter logs. With his longer bill he doesn’t take any guff from the jays. 

The snowpack is about a foot in the woods but looking across the pond to the south slope of Potter Ridge is about bare. The one big rain day and night plugged the culvert on the ski trail up from the house with sticks and leaves which gives added water flowing into my pond that the outlet won’t manage. I must keep checking that. When I see water going down the gully in front of the house I know there is a problem up above. With that culvert open, it flows under my driveway with no problem and not into the pond. 

This year, View Arts Center is celebrating 75 years in operation from the start on Mernie Kashiwa’s chicken wire fences with art on her front lawn to the green building it now operates out of. Just opening last Saturday is the regional show of artwork in the main galleries and artwork from many young adults from many of the local school’s art classes in the Hank Kashiwa Gallery. 

I’m sure as most have noticed there has been a big up tick in gas prices locally. It went up a week ago from $3.39 to $3.79 and then this week it went to $4.99 which I think is $5 a gallon. Then I got fuel oil today and that went from $3.59 a month ago to $4.79 today. I know President Trump keeps telling us that we don’t need any of the oil that his war in Iran has stopped flowing to other countries as we have all our own oil supplies. Well, can’t be the oil companies that are drilling in the U.S. that feel that way or our prices would have remained the same.

Many say when I write about these things, especially our president, and now his war, what does that have to do with outdoor adventures? Again, if this had occurred a couple of months ago my trip to Yellowstone Park, which was certainly an outdoor adventure with car travel, air travel, vehicle rental, room rental, meals and the many other things you encounter on any trip, it would have been double what I paid. That’s what people are now going to be encountering even if you can get on your plane trip on time. The environmental damage of this war will be catastrophic to the oceans, the land and civilian damage involved, and it is not over yet. The loss of life on both sides may never be known, and the president’s campaign promise of no more foreign wars was just one more of his many lies to the American public. 

The DEC announces record-breaking 2,925 bear harvest estimates, but that’s another story. See ya.

The Appellate Division, Third Department, in Albany, granted a motion by Protect the Adirondacks (PROTECT) and two other appellants for a preliminary injunction preventing LS Marina, LLC (LSM) from installing new docks and dock covers at two marina sites located on Lower Saranac Lake. The injunction will remain in effect pending resolution of the appeal.

The appeal arises from State Supreme Court decisions dismissing two legal challenges to the Adirondack Park Agency’s (APA) 2023 approval of a major expansion of LSM’s commercial marina. The project involves the installation of new docks and dock covers in and over regulated freshwater wetlands. A prior permit issued by APA in 2020 for the project was annulled by the Appellate Division in 2023 on the grounds that the agency failed to properly value wetlands at the project site, as required by APA regulations. Following that ruling, APA issued a new 2023 approval for the marina expansion, determining that the project no longer required a wetlands permit. 

PROTECT, Adirondack Wild: Friends of the Forest Preserve, Inc. and former Department of Environmental Conservation Commissioner Thomas Jorling challenged APA’s approval. Those proceedings were dismissed, leading to the present appeal. 

“We are pleased that the Appellate Division granted our motion for a preliminary injunction pending resolution of the appeal. This ruling marks a critical step in safeguarding the valuable and irreplaceable wetlands of Lower Saranac Lake,” said Christopher Amato, conservation director and counsel for PROTECT. 

“In issuing this decision, the Appellate Division is preserving the status quo by allowing existing operations to continue while preventing further expansion of the marina. We look forward to presenting our full case to the court and demonstrating why APA erred in 2023 when it approved the marina expansion without requiring a wetlands permit,” said Claudia Braymer, executive director of PROTECT.

The circus was coming to town.

“North’s Circus is coming to Fort Edward on Tuesday, May 29. The array of talent embraced in this troupe is seldom equaled and never excelled,” The Fort Edward Ledger reported on May 25, 1860. “Mr. N. has a great reputation as a horseman, and is one of the most celebrated exhibitors in the country.”

Other 19th century circus news collected from historic newspapers of the region:

1879

“The circus at Port Henry today has created quite a furor here, and large numbers of our citizens have gone to see it,” the Mineville correspondent reported in the Elizabethtown Post & Gazette on Aug. 7.

“A great excitement, particularly among the women and children of our village, was caused last Monday afternoon by the appearance in our midst of a large bear, which, however, so far as we can learn, did but little real damage,” the Bloomingdale correspondent reported in the Elizabethtown Post & Gazette on Oct. 9. “He was a trained, performing bear, said to be one of the cinnamon species from France. In fact, he was a show and was accompanied by a French gentleman who controlled all his actions, making him climb telegraph poles, dance, wrestle etc., and who collected the nickels and pennies bestowed on him.”

1882

“A hotter, dustier day than Monday last is seldom recorded in this latitude, and yet, the throng of people who came to see Jumbo and the rest of Barnum’s ‘great aggregation’ could scarcely have been greater had it been a temperate as a day in early June,” The Glens Falls Messenger reported on Aug. 18.

“Before 7 o’clock, people began to come in from the country, and the numbers upon the streets gave the village all the appearance of a holiday occasion,” the report continued. “The show had rested here over Sunday, arriving late Saturday night, and for once the parade came off at the appointed hour. The display was very fine, differing in many points from the ordinary circus process. There was an unusual amount—brass band, martial drum corps, Scotch bag pipes, plantation negro singers, steam calliope, etc., etc.”

The noon show sold out, but attendance at the evening show was “not so great,” likely due to a rainstorm.

“It is safe to say that notwithstanding his enormous expenses, Barnum was not the poorer for sending his show to Glens Falls.”

“Circus today,” the Port Henry correspondent reported in The Elizabethtown Post & Gazette on July 6. “There are more little horses in it than in 20 ordinary shows. An elephant helped the mired wagons along by pushing with his forehead.”

A Milan man who falsified records to gain admission for his kids to Red Hook public schools has been arrested and charged with several felonies, the State Police reported.

The arrest of Michael Cola, 48, follows an extensive investigation conducted by the New York State Police Bureau of Criminal Investigation (BCI) at Rhinebeck after officials at Red Hook schools reported their suspicions, police said.

Cola was successful in enrolling his children in Red Hook schools for 1.5 years, State Police Trooper Krystal Paolicelli told The Daily Catch. The district reported a loss of $59,327.30, according to police.

The ages of the children, their grades in school, and the years they attended were not immediately available. But the police data suggest that two children were involved.

Red Hook Central School District accepts non-resident students. For the 2025-26 school year, the fee is $17,185 per student for grades K-6 and $21,510 for grades 7-12, according to the district.

District spokesman Michael Benischek declined to comment on how frequently officials believe families misrepresent their residency.

Cola has been charged with Grand Larceny 2nd, a class C felony, and Falsifying Business Records 1st, a class E felony. The grand larceny charge, under the State Penal Code, involves the theft of property valued at over $50,000 or extortion. It is punishable by up to 15 years in state prison, a fine of up to $15,000, or double the offender’s gain, according to the code. The Class E felony carries a maximum sentence of four years in prison.

Investigators began working the case in December 2024 and determined that Cola lived in the Pine Plains School District.

Cola was arrested on Thursday and released on an appearance ticket returnable to the Town of Red Hook Court on March 28 at 4 p.m.

The post Milan Man Arrested After Allegedly Falsifying Address to Enroll Children in Red Hook Schools first appeared on The Daily Catch.

Northern Forest Center is building what may be the first structure in the Adirondacks to use cross-laminated timber, an emerging sustainable building material, as part of a new 9-unit apartment building in downtown Tupper Lake.

The nonprofit, which owns the property, is hoping the Tupper Lake project and a companion project in Greenville, Maine, will raise awareness of engineered wood products— known broadly as mass timber—and be a catalyst for its expanded use across the region’s forest products sector.

“We’ve been excited as an organization about what mass timber could represent for the forest product sector in the region,” said Leslie Karasin, the center’s Adirondack program director.

What is mass timber?

Mass timber is a category of engineered wood products made by bonding or fastening lumber into large, strong structural components such as panels, beams and columns. This creates “mass” (thickness and density), allowing the wood to bear the weight of large commercial buildings, airports, and apartment complexes.

Some forms of mass timber have been used for more than a century, but modern versions have been in use for the last few decades, particularly in Europe.

Older forms include nail-laminated timber, which consists of lumber products such as 2-by-6-inch pine boards nailed together to form a more structurally formidable piece such as a beam. Nail-laminated timber can be created in a factory or on-site by carpenters.

Other factory-built forms include cross-laminated timber, in which wood is glued and pressed together at right angles; dowel-laminated timber, held together by dowels or rods; and glue-laminated timber, in which pieces are bonded with the grain running parallel to make trusses, beams and other products.

Mass timber is most commonly used in larger structures. It is a major component of the planned expansion at Burlington International Airport in Vermont, and a small but growing number of developers in cities such as New York and Boston have used the product for office and mixed-use buildings. Some colleges, including Amherst and Rutgers, have also chosen mass timber for new construction.

How is it being used in Tupper Lake?

The center has hired contractors to build a 9-unit apartment building using floor assemblages made of cross-laminated timber for apartments at the rear of the building. The large pre-constructed panels were set in place by crane and now serve as the ceiling for the first floor, structural elements between floors and subflooring for the upstairs space.

The building also uses laminated beams for support of the mass timber flooring and in several other areas.

Rob Armstrong, project manager with JFP Enterprises, which is overseeing the construction, said the material has practical advantages on the job site.

“It’s good to work with, and it cuts down on time,” Armstrong said. “(It’s a) trend of what we’ve seen in the industry to use this more innovative and sustainable product.”

The Tupper Lake project is one of two major mass timber efforts for the Northern Forest Center. The other is in Greenville, Maine, where mass timber will be used in the construction of 28 homes, a project expected to begin this spring. That demonstration project aims to show that mass timber can work in smaller residential buildings, where it is less commonly used.

What are the potential advantages?

Some mass timber products, such as the floor assemblages used in the Tupper Lake building, can speed up construction and reduce labor costs. Proponents also note that wood products carry a lower carbon footprint than concrete and steel, and that wood is a renewable resource. Some builders and buyers also favor its aesthetic qualities.

Using wood could also be an economic boon for local communities if mass timber creates additional demand for regional timber. Spruce, fir, hemlock and pine — all species grown in the Adirondacks and the broader Northern Forest — are among the species used in mass timber products.

If this takes off, this will help anchor that age-old industry of logging. We won’t be buying steel from China. We won’t be bringing stuff overseas. It’ll be here, grown here, harvested here, made here, used here.”

Jerry Delaney, executive director, Adirondack Park Local Government Review Board

“If this takes off, this will help anchor that age-old industry of logging,” said Jerry Delaney, a former center board member and current executive director of the Adirondack Park Local Government Review Board. “We won’t be buying steel from China. We won’t be bringing stuff overseas. It’ll be here, grown here, harvested here, made here, used here.”

What are the challenges?

While mass timber is gaining ground in some building circles, it remains an emerging market in the Northeast. Contractors are still familiarizing themselves with the product and how to use it. Mass timber applications aren’t always covered by standard building codes and can require special permits — wood buildings taller than six stories, for instance, require special authorization.

One of the biggest obstacles is the absence of supply chain infrastructure and manufacturing plants in the Northeast. There are currently no cross-laminated timber plants in the Northeast or Mid-Atlantic regions, though plans for plants have been proposed in places such as Maine. There are no mass timber mills in New York.

Without regional manufacturing, products must be trucked in from elsewhere, increasing the carbon footprint of the material and raising costs. The Tupper Lake building used floor assemblages from Sterling Structural, based in Illinois. Beams were supplied by Unalam, based in Sidney, New York.

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“The absence of Northeast (cross-laminated timber) factories is notable given the growing capacity elsewhere, with concentrations in the Pacific Northwest, the South, and Eastern Canada,” according to a January report on the state and future of mass timber in the Northern Forest, commissioned by the center.

For the Northern Forest Center, the Tupper Lake building is both a housing solution and a proof of concept—a tangible argument that the region’s forests could supply the next generation of building materials, starting in its own backyard.