North Country events throughout the region this week include the Great Adirondack Birding Celebration, outdoor adventures and community discussions.

Guided paddle for Great Adirondack Birding Celebration kick-off

9 a.m.-12 p.m. on May 28 in Saranac Lake

Join Adirondack Center for Loon Conservation staff for a guided paddle on Little Clear Pond (20-30 minute drive from Saranac Lake) to observe loons. This paddle will be one hour longer than the center’s regularly scheduled paddles as a special offer to those participating in the Great Adirondack Birding Celebration.

Registration is required and participants should plan to bring their own boats.

Registration and more information can be found at adkloon.org.

Rhubarb Festival at the Warrensburg Riverfront Farmers Market

3-6 p.m. on May 29 in Warrensburg

Rhubarb Festival vendors will be on hand at the Warrensburg Riverfront Farmers Market, offering locally-grown rhubarb stalks, bundles and plants for sale, rhubarb recipes and free sampler plates, live music, free crafts and more.

Great Adirondack Birding Celebration

May 29-31 at Paul Smiths VIC in Paul Smiths

Northern NY Audubon will host the Great Adirondack Birding Celebration, inviting birders and nature enthusiasts to experience peak spring migration in the Adirondacks.

The weekend features guided birding trips, workshops and a keynote presentation by acclaimed wildlife photographer and conservationist Melissa Groo. Participants will have the opportunity to seek out iconic boreal species such as Canada Jay and Bicknell’s Thrush.

For more information and to register, visit nnya.org/gabc.

Black Birder’s Week event

7 a.m. on May 30 in Lake Placid and Tupper Lake

Bird enthusiasts from across the state are invited to gather in the Adirondacks for a special celebration of birds and the diverse birding community that admire them. Two local events offer birding opportunities, workshops, presentations, family activities, and more. 

Morning activities will begin at 7 a.m. and conclude at 12:30 p.m. A special evening talk featuring ornithologist, naturalist and author J. Drew Lahham will take place at The Wild Center in Tupper Lake at 6 p.m.

More information, including registration, can be found at adirondack.org.

Frozen Feathers performance at the children’s museum

2:30 p.m. on May 30 at the North Country Children’s Museum in Potsdam

Kids’ Stage Productions at the North Country Children’s Museum presents Frozen Feathers (and Other Stories). The performance will take place on the stage of Addie’s Opera House on the museum’s second floor.

This Senior Storytelling production brings North Country stories shared by older adults in the community to life through live theater performed by local actors. Filled with warmth, humor and heart, Frozen Feathers (and Other Stories) celebrates the voices and experiences of community members through the magic of theater.

The performance is included with regular museum admission and is appropriate for children of all ages. For more information, visit: northcountrychildrensmuseum.org.

New exhibit opening at Tahawus Gallery

4-6 p.m. on May 30 at Tahawus Gallery in Au Sable Forks

A new exhibit “To the Water” will be opening May 30 at Tahawus Gallery. The exhibit will be on display through June 27. To RSVP to the opening reception, email tahawuscenter@gmail.com or call 646-734-0703.

Afternoon Tea discussion of the history of female illusion performance

4 p.m. on June 2 at the Saranac Lake Free Library 

Tri-Lakes Pride will be hosting a presentation and panel discussion at the Saranac Lake Free Library entitled “Afternoon “Tea,” a presentation and discussion of the history of female illusion performance. The discussion will touch on topics from within the Adirondacks, the North Country, nationally and internationally. There will be a brief question and answer period at this event as well.

For tickets to this and other Tri-Lakes Pride kick-off events, visit eventbrite.com.

This month, as communities across the Adirondacks vote on school budgets, many districts are under varying degrees of stress. Some districts maintained current levels of education by draining savings, while others cut spending and/or asked taxpayers for significant help—some with more success than others.

A school in Bloomingdale is closing, while another in Au Sable Forks is threatened. Schools must live with the state’s 2% tax cap, even though the cost of gas, electricity and healthcare are spiking at far higher rates.

However, there is a potential solution—address a quirk in the state funding formula that, particularly since COVID-19, has inordinately punished Adirondack communities.

The small district of Northville on the southern edge of the Adirondack Park, with a graduating class of 42, is trying to rally support among other Adirondack districts and put the matter before the state education department.

Northville, on the shores of Great Sacandaga Lake, is by most measures an exemplary system. It will likely have a graduation rate of 100% this year, it teaches advanced technical skills, and it saves families with college-bound kids thousands of dollars in tuition.

“Northville, being a small district, is doing amazing work,” said Superintendent Sarah Chauncey. “We’ve got kids who are going off to college with one year under their belt. So their parents have actually saved money because they’re saving a whole year of college.”

But a quality education isn’t cheap, and the Northville budget is feeling the strain of a state funding formula that does not account for vacation-town hardships. 

At root, the issue is that the economic health of the Adirondacks looks good on paper, while the reality is just the opposite.

Chauncey and her supporters call it the Adirondack Paradox, and its effects spill beyond the  schoolyard. For example, in a region where there is so much wealth, how can local institutions be so poor? In communities where there are so many vacant homes, how can there be no place to live? In a world of such natural abundance, how have human populations failed to keep up?

After taking the job four years ago, Chauncey, who has a background in data and technology, quickly identified the reason so many school systems are struggling.

“About a year or so in, we knew that (state funding) was a real problem, and we wanted to understand the problem,” she said. “And what we found is that it wasn’t just a Northville problem, so I backed out and started looking at the Adirondacks as a whole.”

RELATED READING: Dealing with decades of decline in enrollment, Adirondack schools are finding new ways to serve students—and do more with less

The state aid formula, in theory, helps poorer communities while asking wealthier ones to pay more of their own way. It looks at two things: the value of property in a district and the incomes of residents who live there. Across most districts in the state, those two numbers track together, since people who earn more tend to live in pricier homes. The formula assumes the property inside a district belongs to the people who live there.

The Adirondacks break that assumption. Great Sacandaga Lake has 115 miles of shoreline lined with vacation homes. Most belong to seasonal owners who live elsewhere, pay their income taxes elsewhere and don’t send children to Northville schools. To the state aid formula, those homes still count as Northville wealth. The families who actually live here, though, earn a median household income thousands of dollars below the state average of $84,578.

The result shows up in the state’s wealth-per-pupil calculations. Northville’s property wealth per pupil comes to about $1.6 million. In Johnstown, just outside the park to the south, it’s about $407,000. The state pays nearly 60% of Johnstown’s school budget. In Northville, it pays 36%.

Making it worse, many seasonal properties have encroached on the supply of housing for working families. With nowhere to live, these families have disappeared, which depresses state aid even more, because enrollment is another factor in assessing a district’s allocation.

AuSable Valley School District, which straddles the Essex-Clinton county line, is facing similar challenges. Rating services such as Niche and U.S. News and World Report rank it slightly above average for the quality of its education. But its sweeping, 250-square-mile territory serves a number of impoverished communities, which hurts its reputation in the eyes of some parents, who send their kids to other districts or to private schools or opt to homeschool.

This, along with the transition of housing into vacation properties, has hollowed out the student population; incoming classes were once in the 80s and are now in the 60s.

AuSable Valley School District suffers from the same property value problems as Northville, with lots of expensive houses that diminish state aid.

Because of these factors, state funding for the AuSable Valley has cratered, and the system is in crisis, eliminating teaching positions, cutting bus runs and consolidating classrooms. A facilities committee is currently studying whether it can afford to maintain its elementary school in Au Sable Forks. 

State aid annual increases have shrunk from $657,600 in 2024-25 to $134,000 this year—and it’s only that much because of state-imposed floors to funding. That’s just a 1% increase over a year ago. “We’re seeing limited revenue growth at a time our expenses are rising rapidly,” said Superintendent Mike Francia. “Yes, we may be land-wealthy, but that’s not necessarily a reflection of the students and families that we serve.”

Because funding from the state has failed to keep up, AuSable Valley cut $1.3 million from its current budget proposal and asked taxpayers for a 12% increase in the levy; breaking the cap required approval of 60% of the voters, but only 45% voted in favor.

Unlike AuSable Valley, Northville decided not to risk voter wrath, but the bottom-line issues are the same: Schools aren’t able to raise their revenues, even as the providers they depend on are raising theirs.

“Our (tax) cap this year is 2.7%, but look at all our other costs,” Chauncey said. “The BOCES administrative budget that we all have to share in is up 3.5% because nothing keeps them within the cap. Our healthcare costs are going up. Our retirement costs are going up—all the things that it takes to run a school.” 

Healthcare can be particularly vexing. In AuSable Valley, more than one-fourth of the educational budget goes straight to covering healthcare costs for current and retired employees. Cutting benefits is not an option, because teachers are scarce and neighboring school districts must compete fiercely for their services.

Northville through the years has reacted to these financial stresses by paring its budget, but this year it’s drawn a line in the sand, spending $1.5 million in reserves, which will fund academics, extracurriculars and athletics at their current levels.

“We can do this for two years, and within these two years, we’re going to work very hard, to say, ‘You need to recognize this problem—New York, state legislators, everybody needs to recognize you’ve got an excellent school district that deserves to be here.’ This school district is an excellent district that serves an excellent community. Let’s try to get things to change.”

April is the cruddiest month. Mud, rain, lingering ice and snow. Cold nights and often cold days. Ugh, right?

And yet a pleasant day in early spring can be ideal for rock climbing. Just find yourself a south-facing cliff warmed by the sun and get reacquainted with Adirondack anorthosite, unmolested by bugs, unbothered by crowds.

That’s what Will Roth and I had in mind as we toted our gear a half-mile uphill to Hurricane Crag to climb Quadrophenia, a route given five stars in “Adirondack Rock,” the book’s highest rating.

Quadrophenia has an interesting history. It was on another early-spring day, in March 1984, that two of the region’s better climbers, Jamie Cunningham and Bob Hey, ascended the route in four pitches. They named it after the Who album, which blasted from a boombox at the base as they made their way up the cliff. 

For years, the guidebooks credited Cunningham and Hey with the first ascent of Quadrophenia. But in 2007, Richard Parker reached out to Jim Lawyer, a co-author of Adirondack Rock, and revealed that he and Geoff Radford climbed the route in May 1976, eight years before Cunningham. They called it Bara Bara, which means “road” in Swahili. This month is the 50th anniversary of their feat.

“It was pretty intense steep climbing,” recalled Parker, who now lives on Mount Desert Island in Maine. To protect against a fall, they clipped the rope to nuts placed in cracks. Modern camming devices were still in the future.

He and Radford were students at Middlebury College in Vermont. Few people climbed back then, so Parker and Radford consulted Trudy Healy’s slim guidebook, “A Climber’s Guide to the Adirondacks,” to find routes. The book described only two climbs on Hurricane Crag, which was then known as Pitchoff Mountain. 

“It was a different era,” Parker said. “When you were starting up a blank piece of rock, every pitch was kind of a full-on adventure. Luckily, I had Geoff Radford with me—this crazy Californian who didn’t seem to be afraid of anything.”

Though Radford did most of the leading, Parker assumed this duty on the first pitch. He found a piton pounded into a crack, evidence that the pitch had been climbed before.

That fall, Parker returned to the Adirondacks to climb on Washbowl Cliff with his younger brother, Douglas, also a Middlebury student. Tragically, Douglas fell on the rappel. Richard ran for help, but his brother died before reaching the hospital.

After graduating Middlebury, Parker went on to receive a doctorate and teach English at private schools in New England. Throughout his career, he continued to climb in the U.S. and Europe. At 72, he still climbs on Mount Desert.

Radford, a geologist, moved to Alaska and became an accomplished alpinist. In 1992, he died in an avalanche while backcountry skiing in the Chugach Mountains outside Anchorage. It was Radford’s death that prompted Parker to report their climb on Hurricane Crag. “If it wasn’t for Geoff being killed, I wouldn’t have given Jim Lawyer the information,” he said.

“Adirondack Rock” now credits Radford and Parker with the first ascent, but the name Bara Bara never stuck. And so “Quadrophenia” it remains. Other climbers have picked up on the Who theme, as evidenced by the routes My Generation, Squeeze Box and Hooligans. 

Hurricane Crag can be seen to the north as you drive on State Route 9N between Elizabethtown and Keene. The first to put up a route was none other than Fritz Wiessner, the celebrated alpinist and rock climber, who ascended a 100-foot chimney and then continued to the top of the cliff.

Wiessner’s chimney is one of the longest and deepest in the Adirondacks. It’s great fun to climb, but the rest of the route cannot compete with Quadrophenia for rock quality or for the variety and exhilaration of the climbing. So when Will told me he had a free day to climb, I suggested Quadrophenia, even though I had done it a few times in the past.

We parked on the shoulder of 9N and followed a steep herd path covered with oak leaves to the cliff. No one else was there. The sun was out, and 350 feet of dry rock loomed above. Eagerly, we dropped our packs, put on our harnesses and climbing shoes, and tied in to the rope.

Quadrophenia is a moderate route, rated 5.7+ on a scale of difficulty that ranges from 5.0 (super easy) to 5.15 (super hard). The crux, or toughest part, comes toward the end of a steep hand crack on the first pitch. It had always given me trouble.

Will, a professional guide, did the leading. He scrambled over easy rock to a corner, ascended the hand crack, disappeared for a bit and then re-emerged on a ledge where he put me on belay.

I headed up the crack, stuffing a foot or hand inside as necessary to keep from falling. I also made frequent use of holds on the face next to the crack. When I got to the crux, I jammed my left hand in the crack. It was bomber. I pulled and stepped up. Ta da! The crux never seemed so easy. I felt confident that the rest of the climb would go well.

Alas, it didn’t.

Like most parties, we combined the second and third sections. The resulting 150-foot pitch climbs to and then around a pair of roofs and ends on a narrow ledge, invisible from below. Will made quick work of the pitch and shouted down for me to begin.

Ascending a steepish face and then a crack in a groove, I soon arrived at the first roof. It had been years since I had climbed Quadrophenia, but I recalled underclinging the roof while sidling to the right—a tiring but manageable technique. 

I don’t know what happened this time. I found myself scrunched under the roof, feeling for handholds, stepping down, and then trying again. On one of these attempts, my feet skittered off the rock.

“Falling!” I yelled.

I swung to the right and plummeted maybe 10 feet before Will caught me. If there is a good spot to fall on Quadrophenia, this was it: smooth rock, no ledges to hit. Other than a scraped knee, I was fine.

“You OK?” Will shouted.

“Yeah.”

“Can you get back on route?”

“Yeah.”

Will then suggested another strategy. Instead of underclinging, I stayed below the roof, using a handhold to lean and step far to the right and then climbing on small holds. It worked, but I felt chagrined and demoralized after the fall. I did a sloppy job on the rest of the pitch.

Fortunately, the last pitch posed no difficulties, despite loose rock. Above the belay ledge, we joined Wiessner’s Old Route and traversed left to a corner with an ancient piton, turned the corner and went straight up to an open summit with a marvelous view of the Giant Mountain Wilderness on the opposite side of Route 9N. 

I later asked Will what makes Quadrophenia a classic climb. “That roof system,” he replied. “It’s so improbable that it goes at only 5.7. That’s crazy. For the time it was wildly bold, given the old gear that they had.”

Fifty years have passed since the ascent by Radford and Parker. The sport has evolved a lot, but the status of their improbable route, whatever you call it, hasn’t changed. It’s one of the best in the Adirondacks.

Jamie Cunningham, though he can no longer claim the first ascent, deserves credit for resurrecting Quadrophenia and bringing it to the attention of the climbing community. He is still proud of the effort he and Bob Hey put in on that March day on Hurricane Crag. “Bob and I were absolutely thrilled we had put up, we thought, such a quality multi-pitch climb,” he said in an email.

In the years since, Cunningham has participated in scores of other first ascents in the Adirondacks and New England, so perhaps losing one FA doesn’t matter much. And yet…

“If Quadrophenia had been a true first ascent, it would rank as my best route I had done in the ‘Dacks,” he said.

Sara Burke was a vegetarian before she was a beef farmer. 

She and her husband Dan Burke, who together run Atlas Hoofed It Farm on state Route 3 in Vermontville, also never expected to buy a decommissioned missile silo. But sometimes life in the Adirondacks flows in unexpected directions.

The remnants of the property’s nuclear past are still in place, with the deep silo shaft partially flooded, but the Burkes hope nearly two decades of regenerative farming practices have helped restore the land and heal its spirit. 

“We wanted to try and change the karma of the place back to something that promotes community and sustainable farming,” Sara Burke said at the outset of a farm tour last week. 

Burke, who also works as a nurse in Saranac Lake and previously worked as a water chemist for the Adirondack Lake Survey Corporation, hosted the tour as part of the Adirondack North Country Association’s (ANCA) annual Climate and Energy Conference. 

Burke highlighted how the farm utilizes silvopasture practices, integrating wooded and open areas into their livestock grazing rotations, learning over the years when to cut trees and when to keep them.   

The farm aims to reduce its waste and energy use. With the help of specialists at ANCA, the Burkes won a grant to help install a small solar panel array that powers a water pump and other farm essentials. They hope to install a battery system to get more out of their solar power.

The Burkes also imagine what the farm can grow to be. Sara said she dreams of using the missile silo as the foundation of a geothermal system that could heat a series of barns and other essential farm buildings, putting to use the deep hole filled with water, two essentials for any geothermal system. They also want to welcome others to the property to learn sustainable farming practices. 

“We grow and adapt and learn and make mistakes and are happy to share those mistakes,” she said.

Big energy projects are hard…not impossible

With the Champlain Hudson Power Express transmission slated to start delivering a consistent flow of power from Quebec dams to New York City on June 1, a trio from the development team reflected on 16 years of getting the project over the finish line.

“Everything about it made so much sense,” said Jen Laird White, who managed external affairs for Transmission Developers Inc., which built the power line. “But it was hard to get all the pieces to come together.”

The 339-mile-long transmission line required hundreds of easements across private properties and entailed thousands of stakeholder meetings across the state. During a presentation at the ANCA conference, the project developers said it was that kind of persistent engagement that made it possible to complete.  

White said the developers instituted extra water monitoring and conducted a test run of installation along a section of the Hudson River where local communities withdraw their public drinking water. Residents had raised concerns that the installation project would stir up contaminants and harm their water supply, so the developers sought to demonstrate the project would be safe.

White also recalled how a pair of bald eagles nesting near an area of construction hatched a young eagle — that delayed construction at the site for months. During the unexpected delay, the construction team pivoted to other areas while they waited for the hatchling to fly away.  

When the project is fully energized by the end of the month, it will provide about one-fifth of the energy needed to power New York City.

“This links our hydropower as if they are sitting right next to New York City, your highest load area,” said Serge Abergel of Hydro-Quebec Energy Services. “It bypasses (electrical grid) congestion and brings all that renewable energy to a place that is essentially fossil fuel.”

State officials say nuclear build out critical to decarbonization 

A group of nuclear energy specialists delved into the state of modern nuclear reactors, which are gaining traction around the country.

Gov. Kathy Hochul earlier this year started to push for a buildout of nuclear energy to help New York meet its goal of an emissions-free power grid. 

“We need firm, clean capacity to help,” said Liam McAuliff, who is helping lead the state’s nuclear program at NYSERDA. “Nuclear is essential.”  

McAuliff said nuclear power can complement new wind and solar sources, since it provides a steady stream of consistent power while other renewable sources are dependent on weather conditions. Nuclear, as it already does for the state’s energy mix, provides a base of power that helps smooth out the intermittency of other sources. Without a growing contribution from nuclear sources, the state would need to overbuild its renewable capacity along with a significant expansion of battery storage facilities at a major cost to transition to an emissions-free power grid, McAuliffe said.

Michelle Zietlow-Miller, of the federal Gateway for Accelerated Innovation in Nuclear, said that communities around the country are seeking nuclear power projects as a source of jobs and energy. A series of new nuclear development approaches are expected to be tried out in the coming years, with the potential to demonstrate how nuclear energy can be expanded to help meet the nation’s energy needs in the coming decades.

Already, state officials have started conversations with New York communities that have expressed interest in hosting new nuclear reactors, including in St. Lawrence and Jefferson counties.

Nuclear projects are costly and time-consuming to develop, but they promise jobs and decades of power, the advocates said.

“Upfront costs are high, but we are looking at potentially 80 years of benefits it can have for a community,” said Zach Koshgarian, an analyst with the Nuclear Innovation Alliance.  

Data center uncertainty is a confounding factor 

Massive data center projects are starting to line up on the state’s interconnection queue, the first step to connecting to the power grid. The New York Independent System Operator, which oversees and administers the state power grid, has highlighted the potential surge in energy demand from data centers as a future strain on the grid.

While it’s unclear what data center projects will actually come to fruition, they represent a potential pool of significant new energy demand coming online just as the state seeks to transition its current demand to renewable sources and account for a demand surge from electrifying buildings and shifting to electric vehicles. 

While no sessions at the conference focused squarely on data centers, some attendees raised concerns about how their construction would impact the state’s progress toward an emissions-free grid. 

Laurie Wheelock, executive director of the Public Utility Law Project, said she supported a proposed three-year moratorium on new data center construction so that lawmakers and local officials can work through the water and energy needs of data centers, as well as better understand how they will impact host communities.  

Assemblymember Scott Gray, R-Watertown, the ranking member on the Assembly’s energy committee, said he opposed the moratorium, noting that the extensive interconnection and permitting processes would provide plenty of time to work through issues.  

“I believe New York should be open for business,” he said. “We have an energy supply issue. Renewables are nice but they can’t meet the demand. We have to be careful about how much (fossil fuel power generation) we are retiring.”

Standing on a palatial salmon farm next to the Florida Everglades, Damien Claire isn’t bothered by the water dripping from the pipes and ducts overhead, even as it soaks his company-issued button-up and shaggy brown hair. Instead, the 47-year-old chief marketing officer for aquaculture company Atlantic Sapphire ASA is focused on the 450,000-gallon tank before him swirling with some 30,000 fully grown salmon. When one, a 10-pounder, leaps from the water, Claire yelps, “She says hi!” 

This wasn’t the future he’d imagined for himself two decades ago, when he was a “tech guy” at a Wall Street hedge fund. But Claire couldn’t resist the pivot when, in 2011, he met Atlantic Sapphire co-founder Johan Andreassen, who said to him, “I’m going to change the world—do you want to be a part of it?”

Salmon are an unlikely vehicle for a world-changing venture, but Andreassen and his cousin Bjorn-Vegard Lovik saw potential to alter the way fish are grown for human consumption. In the 1990s the cousins were the first to introduce tiny, sea-lice-eating fish into open-water salmon cages, called net-pens, in their native Romsdal, Norway. The tactic has been successful at curbing sea-lice-related deaths, yet infestations, along with disease outbreaks and mass escapes that threaten native marine species, remain major problems. The net-pen industry produces 99% of the salmon the world eats, yet the mortality rate is estimated at 10% to 15%.

Andreassen and Lovik were looking for a better way to raise the fish, so in 2010 they founded Atlantic Sapphire and established their first “bluehouse” in Denmark. The bluehouse, like a greenhouse with water, utilized a complex filtering technique called a recirculating aquaculture system (RAS) to raise Atlantic salmon in highly controlled conditions entirely on land.

Some 3.8 million metric tons of salmon—about 700 million individual fish—are consumed globally each year, fueling a $19 billion industry that’s projected to more than double over the next decade. By volume, the US is the planet’s largest salmon consumer—the average American eats about 3 pounds per year—yet it imports 96% of the fish, primarily from Canada, Chile and Norway. Andreassen and Lovik understood that an oceans-spanning supply chain not only was economically vulnerable but also left a massive carbon footprint. The “dream,” Claire explains as we sit in Atlantic Sapphire’s sleek, unabashedly Scandinavian-design conference room, was not just to take salmon farming out of the ocean but also to bring it to its biggest market.

Andreassen initially wanted to set up Atlantic Sapphire’s first American bluehouse in Maine, where Atlantic salmon are a native species. Then he learned about South Florida’s subterranean geography, which is layered with both fresh and saltwater aquifers—a huge advantage for raising fish that are born in freshwater in the wild before they migrate to saltwater as adults. In 2017, Atlantic Sapphire broke ground on a $250 million facility with the design capacity to produce about 9,500 metric tons of fish every year. The complex is located on what used to be tomato and squash fields inside a chessboard of farms in Homestead, a dusty agricultural hub that grows many of the houseplants sold in the US. 

In 2019, the first year Atlantic Sapphire successfully hatched salmon, it announced plans to scale up to 90,000 metric tons by 2026 and to more than double that volume by 2031. To accomplish that, the bluehouse would have to be massively expanded. So, in 2021, construction on the second phase of the facility started. Where rows of tomato plants once stood, three dozen 580,000-gallon concrete tanks began rising into the sky. 

Atlantic Sapphire’s Homestead Bluehouse is the largest land-based salmon farm in the world, but according to a 2024 report by Boston Consulting Group, more than 110 similar projects are in various stages of completion. Most are in Iceland and Norway, where the salmon aquaculture industry has been operating the longest, but others are sprinkled around the globe, including in the United Arab Emirates.

Superior Fresh, which runs a 100,000-square-foot facility in Northfield, Wisconsin, became in 2018 the first land-based farm in the US to send salmon to market. The company has since opened a second location at a former fish farm in Albany, Indiana, which will start shipping fillets to retailers this summer. “It’s precision agriculture,” co-founder Brandon Gottsacker says of raising salmon in an RAS. “If you create an ideal environment for the fish to thrive in, you don’t need to add any harsh chemicals, pesticides, antibiotics.”

Lars Daniel Garshol, a salmon industry expert for the Norway-based seafood analyst Kontali, estimates that land-based salmon farming will eventually achieve industry dominance. Traditional net-pen farmers, he says, are facing “barriers of trade and stagnation” because of geopolitical turmoil and capacity caps on farms in places such as Norway. Negative public perception is also growing due to the environmental and mortality risks; net-pen farming is banned in several US states and is being phased out in British Columbia.

But overhead remains the primary obstacle for the land-based industry, with initial investment up to 12 times higher than for a net-pen farm. And operational costs—particularly the immense amount of electricity required to power an RAS and pump cool water—can be up to 50% higher. Andreassen, who left Atlantic Sapphire in 2023, has been candid about the challenges facing the industry he pioneered. “Without better volume performance, the cost structure won’t work,” he wrote in a LinkedIn post in April 2025, noting that a handful of the world’s leading land-based salmon farms had fallen short of their production goals the year prior, including Atlantic Sapphire. “Reality must come before theory.” 

On the morning I meet Claire, he structures our tour to follow the life cycle of an Atlantic Sapphire salmon. Our first stop is the hatchery, where one side of the room features a floor-to-ceiling rack of black trays full of bright orange roe, resembling a bank of glowing database servers. Claire carefully pulls out a tray, revealing thousands of eggs in a bed of crystalline water. On the other side of the room, a gigantic computer cycles through data from some of the facility’s roughly 10,000 sensors, which monitor every step of each fish’s existence, from yolk sac to packaged fillet. 

Atlantic Sapphire, Claire says, is leaning more on artificial intelligence to raise better fish. The facility’s tanks, for example, are equipped with cameras whose output is analyzed by AI to optimize feeding. As they mature, the salmon move through a network of pipelines to progressively bigger rooms until they reach their final tanks. Then they’re sent through a pipeline that’s pulsed with electricity to stun them unconscious. After the fish are processed, their fillets are shipped out to grocers like Publix, Sprouts and, most recently, Fresh Thyme Market. 

At times, it’s hard not to feel bad for the land salmon, who never get to experience the marine world of their wild cousins. But Atlantic Sapphire’s mortality rate, which is below 2%, speaks to their pristine conditions. Everywhere, enormous filters and sophisticated machinery, all of it either damp or soaking, hum—laying bare the technological and financial wherewithal needed to raise creatures on land that are meant for the sea. “In the ocean, you just wait for Mother Nature,” Claire says of his company’s ultimate goal of producing one-seventh of the US’s salmon. “Here, we need to use, to the best of our abilities, the infrastructure that we built.”

ALBANY — Gov. Kathy Hochul and Democrats in the state Legislature have reached a deal on a state budget that seeks to curb car insurance costs, accelerate housing development and delay the state’s strategy to combat climate change.

The nine bills that make up the remainder of the spending plan aren’t expected to be approved by lawmakers until next week, which will make it the latest state budget since 2010.

But that wait was worth the outcome, Hochul said as she announced the agreement Thursday morning at the state Capitol.

“I’m very proud to announce that we’ve reached a general agreement for the fiscal year 2027 state budget,” Hochul said. “I’m not going to mince the words, the negotiations were not easy. There were very substantive disagreements, tough choices, and powerful special interests trying to influence the outcome.” 

The $268 billion budget includes billions more in spending than what Hochul and lawmakers approved last year. That increase will not impact state income tax rates, which will remain flat under the new plan.

The deal instead seeks to lower current and future costs in a handful of other areas, including the price of car insurance and a spike in utility bills anticipated by the state as a result of its policies related to climate change.

Climate act

Democrats in the state Legislature struck a compromise with Hochul and changes to the state’s mandates to reduce carbon emissions first set by the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act of 2019.

The law required the state to develop regulations by 2024 to rapidly reduce carbon emissions across the state. But that never happened.

Environmental advocates then took the state to court, where a judge ordered the Hochul administration to produce those regulations this year. That decision is currently on pause.

But Hochul has argued, in what environmental advocates have framed as a worst-case, unrealistic scenario, that forcing the state to enact those regulations would raise energy costs for households by thousands of dollars as soon as 2031.

She had originally pushed to delay the regulations until then but, in the deal with lawmakers, they will now be due by 2028. The cost and environmental impact of that decision is unclear.

The 2019 legislation had mandated having 70% renewable electricity sources by 2030 and net-zero emissions by 2040 — mandates that critics of the law had said would be unattainable. On Thursday, Brian K. Mahanna, a counsel to the governor, confirmed that under the budget deal “there’s going to be a new target in 2040 for a 60% reduction in emissions.”

The deal also includes changing the formula used to measure greenhouse gas emissions from a 20-year to a 100-year time span, which will artificially lower the measurable amounts that some fossil fuels have on the atmosphere.

In addition, the budget will allocate $1 billion in rebates for utility customers, the governor said. The proposed budget also includes — for the second year in a row — a $1 billion allocation for sustainable energy projects, “with a specific carve out for environmental justice communities,” Hochul said. It’s unclear where that money will come from.

“We’re also establishing a ratepayer protection plan to hold utilities accountable and reforming the rate-setting process so utility companies can no longer pass their lobbying costs on to you,” the governor said.

“We’re also establishing a ratepayer protection plan to hold utilities accountable and reforming the rate-setting process so utility companies can no longer pass their lobbying costs on to you,” the governor said.

Car insurance

Car insurance companies will no longer be able to use certain criteria to determine the cost of each driver’s individual policy. That includes the ZIP code of that driver and their credit score.

Hochul and lawmakers have also decided to do away with the current framework for what’s called “flex rating,” in which car insurance companies can increase their rates by up to 5% without first seeking approval from state regulators.

New York’s definition of what’s considered a “serious injury” for victims of car crashes to seek damages for pain and suffering will also be narrowed by the deal.

That includes injuries that result in a fracture, permanent loss or limitations of parts of the body, dismemberment, loss of a fetus and disfigurement. It also includes any injury that prevents someone from their usual daily activities for at least 90 days.

The deal struck between Hochul and lawmakers will eliminate the last category. Victims would still be able to recoup other damages, like medical costs and lost wages.

“The average New Yorker was paying the highest auto rates in the nation, roughly $4,000 a year, $1,500 more than the national average,” Hochul said, pinning much of the blame on “stage crashes, organized fraud rings, corrupt doctors and legal loopholes that bad actors have exploited for years.”

“But that nightmare ends with this budget, and right now we’re going to go after the ringleaders, cracking down on fraudulent claims and closing loopholes that let people who are at fault or breaking the law walk away with large payouts,” she said.

New York City’s budget

Hochul unveiled an executive budget proposal in January that included $6 billion more in spending than what she and lawmakers approved last year. 

That was despite what her administration said was an expected $10 billion decrease in funding from the federal government. The Hochul administration has projected that strong income tax receipts will help bridge that gap.

But her plan became complicated weeks later when New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said the city’s budget, due at the end of June, faced a deficit of about $7 billion.

Mamdani had pushed Hochul and Democrats in the state Legislature to authorize the city to raise its local tax rates on high-income earners and large corporations as a solution. Hochul opposed that plan.

She instead committed to including an additional $1.5 billion in aid for New York City in the final state budget. Mamdani continued to push for tax hikes.

That led to an agreement between Hochul and Mamdani to levy a new tax on second homes in New York City valued at more than $5 million. The Hochul administration has projected that it will generate about $500 million in new revenue for the city each year.

Mamdani and New York City Council Speaker Julie Menin are expected to resolve the rest of the city’s financial problems as  part of discussions through the end of June.

When Andrew Weibrecht’s family bought the Mirror Lake Inn in 1977, the property was a handful of small cottages.

Then came the 1980 Winter Olympics.

Tourism in Lake Placid surged, and property values climbed. Weibrecht’s family business expanded into a 120-room resort. But as the inn grew, Weibrecht said it became harder to find enough local workers to staff it.

“The dynamics in Lake Placid changed a bit in terms of workforce housing,” he said. “The housing supply became more limited. Our staff started coming from farther.”

At first, the hotel expanded its hiring pool across the North Country, drawing workers from places such as Plattsburgh and Malone. At the same time, tourism continued to grow, as did the number of businesses competing for the same limited workforce. By the late 1990s, Weibrecht said the industry hit a breaking point.

Importing workers

Weibrecht’s family turned to what many businesses do in the Adirondacks:  hiring college students from other countries through the federal J-1 summer work program. Across the North Country, more than two thousand J-1 students come to the region each year to work in restaurants, at campgrounds and in amusement parks. They come from dozens of countries, including nations in Eastern Europe, the Caribbean and Central Asia.

Before coming to the U.S., students work with sponsoring agencies that match them with employers. They then apply for travel visas through the State Department, allowing them to live and work in the country for several months.

The majority of J-1 workers arrive before Memorial Day and work through Labor Day—a period considered the busiest time of the Adirondack tourism season—to augment hospitality staff and accommodate the region’s millions of annual visitors.

A reliance on J1s

The Weibrechts typically employ about 30 J-1 students every summer. Just down Main Street from the Mirror Lake Inn, the Golden Arrow Lakeside Resort brings in about 80 J-1 students annually between its summer and winter seasons.

“It’s made our business better,” said Andrea Holderied, the hotel’s operations director and a third-generation member of the family-owned business. “We wouldn’t be able to run our business as efficiently if we didn’t have the J-1s.”

Before turning to the J-1 program for workers, Holderied said her family tried to staff the hotel with locals, but the available workforce has not kept pace with demand.

“I’ve definitely heard people locally say, ‘You should be giving those jobs to local people,’” she said. “But it’s really hard to find quality people that show up to work on time, that want to work 40 hours, that want to stay in this job for two plus years.”

A changing labor force

The reliance on J-1 workers is not unique to Lake Placid. Last year, 6,657 J-1 summer work and travel students came to New York, the highest number among all 50 states. Since gaining traction in the 1990s, the program has expanded considerably across tourist regions nationwide, particularly in places with small year-round populations.

Dave Sherwyn, a professor of hospitality human resources at Cornell University, said the shift reflects broader changes in the American youth workforce.

“In the ’70s and ’80s, college kids in the summer worked in resorts,” Sherwyn said. “They waited tables, they worked on athletic staff, they did stuff like that. And a lot of that changed in the mid-’80s and beyond.”

Sherwyn said one simple reason for that phenomenon is the longer summer work season—lasting from late May to early September—that directly conflicts with many modern college academic calendars.

Sherwyn also said fewer college-age Americans are interested in service industry jobs, especially in rural communities. Instead, he said many pursue internships or career-oriented work that takes them away from home, leaving a gap for employers in need of short-term labor.

“The reality is, there isn’t another source of labor for these folks,” Sherwyn said. “You need people who are ready, willing and able to work hard for four months, and then you don’t need them anymore.”

That reality is especially clear in places like Old Forge, which has around 500 full-time residents but sees more than 20,000 visitors each summer.

At Enchanted Forest Water Safari theme park, about a quarter of the workforce is made up of J-1 students.

“To get an additional 100 employees every year is almost unrealistic, especially for us where we are,” said Brandy Weiler, the park’s human resources manager. “Let’s face it, we’re on the way to nowhere. So that definitely plays a huge part in it.”

In the Lake George region, which pulls its workforce from a population of about 65,000 residents across Warren County, a similar dilemma plays out.

“Our population swells to about 250,000 people,” said Gina Mintzer, executive director of the Lake George Regional Chamber of Commerce and Convention and Visitors Bureau. “We just don’t have the local workforce for that, and we never have.”

Mintzer said roughly 1,000 J-1 students come to the area every summer, making it one of the most popular spots for summer work and travel students in the entire state. She said even businesses that do not employ J-1 students bank on the population surge they bring each summer.

“This workforce is very important to us economically,” she said. “They come here, they make money. They spend money while they’re here. They’re paying for housing, buying groceries. And so they become part of our resident population.”

An uncertain future

The number of J-1 students that ultimately arrive in the Adirondack Park each summer depends on federal policy, and in recent years, that has created uncertainty for some local businesses.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, travel restrictions drove J-1 visa numbers down by nearly 70%. While participation has since rebounded, New York’s overall J-1 participation under the Trump Administration fell 5% last year, and this year’s numbers could dip even further.

That trend concerns Mark Overmann, executive director of the Alliance for International Exchange, a group that advocates for cultural exchange programs.

“That is definitely going to have a detrimental impact on tourist communities,” Overmann said. “They just won’t have the number of students coming to [work at] their businesses that they were expecting.”

Overmann said a new visa vetting process introduced by the State Department last summer has created a backlog in applications. While there have been efforts to speed up processing, he said the program’s outlook is uncertain.

“All of that said, we are still dealing with an approach to visas and international engagement that is really challenging right now,” he said.

In Lake Placid, Weibrecht said his business got a taste of life without J-1 students. COVID-19 restrictions limited his ability to hire J-1 visa holders, though he said the hotel’s slowed operations and decreased need for staff made it easier to absorb the loss.

Now back to full capacity, Weibrecht said even a modest decline in J-1 participation could have significant consequences for employers across the village.

“There would be some really difficult decisions that would have to be made,” he said. “It would hurt the local economy greatly. I would expect that there would be businesses that wouldn’t survive it.”

David Escobar is a Report For America Corps Member. He reports on diversity issues in the Adirondacks through a partnership between North Country Public Radio and Adirondack Explorer.

North Country Nicotine Consultants (NCNC), a service provided collaboratively by the Heart Network and Glens Falls Hospital, with support from NYS BTC’s Tobacco Control Program–Health Systems for a Tobacco Free NY, is marking five years of partnership with health systems across a 10-county region to increase the delivery of comprehensive, evidence-based treatment for nicotine addiction. 

“Tobacco use is still the number one cause of preventable death in this country, and the North Country is not immune to that,” said Hanna Schneider, Tobacco Project coordinator at the Heart Network. “What these five years have shown us is that when health systems commit to treating nicotine addiction as a clinical priority, patients respond.” 

The tobacco industry continues to target vulnerable populations, including people living with disabilities, those experiencing mental illness and young people. Nationally, tobacco use costs health care systems $9.7 billion annually. 

Over the course of the grant cycle, NCNC partnered with health systems across the North Country to expand access to tobacco cessation services. Partnering organizations include Behavioral Health Services North (BHSN); ASCEND Mental Wellness; Glens Falls Hospital C.R. Wood Cancer Center; UVM Alice Hyde Medical Center; Nathan Littauer Hospital; UVM–Elizabethtown Community Hospital; Citizen Advocates; St. Joseph’s Addiction Treatment & Recovery Centers; Essex County Mental Health; and SUNY Adirondack. 

This year alone, 10 newly-certified tobacco treatment specialists were trained across North Country health systems and added to the growing cessation network. 

The results speak for themselves. For the first time, New York State’s adult smoking rate has fallen to 9.3%, well below the national rate of 12%. That milestone reflects the power of partnerships working together toward a shared goal. 

The science is clear: a brief three-to-five minute conversation using the 5 A’s framework with patients who smoke more than doubles their chances of quitting successfully and staying quit. NCNC is committed to continuing this work with medical and behavioral health providers across the region to drive smoking rates even lower. 

As the current grant cycle concludes, NCNC and its partners are looking ahead to new opportunities and continued progress. 

Residents interested in more information about quitting tobacco should talk to their doctor and/or call the New York State Smokers’ Quitline at 1-866-NY-QUITS (1-866-697-8487). 

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Sew a quilt. Sing a song. Write a poem. Perform a one-act play. Help fight climate change?

An association of public health professionals met in Lake Placid on Earth Day to explore how the arts can help overcome the disconnect between the science of climate change and the slow pace of political and policy responses to that science. 

Art engages our minds and bodies in ways that science and policy simply cannot, presenters said, and art can serve as a means to engage people in the challenges of climate change that can often feel overwhelming or too big to tackle. 

Pamela Mischen, a professor of environmental studies at SUNY Binghamton, said that after the 2024 election she was dismayed by the lack of discussion of climate change. She wondered if there was a better way to reach people with a message of its importance.

“I realized at that moment climate change wasn’t even on the national scene,” she said. “We need to be more visible and more vocal about climate change.”

Taking inspiration from the AIDS Memorial Quilt, a sprawling community art project that raised awareness of the disease, Mischen sought to enlist crafters in a project instead focused on telling the story of how climate change will impact communities.

“Sometimes it’s hard to see climate change, but we can see quilts,” she said. 

Mischen, who led a sewing workshop during the event, said in the months after the election she and others on campus and the surrounding community made over two dozen quilts with varied designs. She said her goal is to inspire quilters around the country to participate and ultimately produce over 1,000 quilts to be presented at the National Mall on Earth Day 2028. 

“Quilters are getting mad,” she said. 

Mischen cited studies that showed people who experienced the AIDS quilt demonstrated greater empathy towards people who suffered from the disease than those who had not seen the quilts. She said she has been inspired by a rising wave of so-called “craftivism” and that it helps engage people searching for solutions. 

“There is something about this art form that connects people,” she said. 

Susan Harris, climate committee chair of the New York State Public Health Association, organized the event to bring together public health professionals with artists and cultural leaders in the region. 

“We are trying to show there are different ways of communicating climate urgency and the actions we can and need to take,” Harris said. “People disregard the arts as fluff, but they are anything but. Arts are an emotive tool and can move people to action.”

Roger Catania, the former Lake Placid schools superintendent who now serves on the state Board of Regents, shared an update on a new requirement that K-12 schools across the state infuse climate change lessons into their curriculum. Catania said it was ultimately the voice of students that drove the board to adopt the mandate. 

“We weren’t confronting the challenges they knew were happening right now,” he said of students. “They demanded we teach climate change.”  

The requirement to include lessons on the causes, impacts and solutions around climate change at all levels goes into effect for the 2027-2028 school year. The state Education Department will release guidance outlining what that means for schools.

Event attendees and speakers explained the myriad ways the arts can provide new outlets for people to express how they feel about climate change, to inspire action and to overcome helplessness.

That helplessness is the new denialism, Paul Smith’s College Professor Curt Stager said, and is often seeded by incumbent fossil fuel producers. He cited research that a significant share of social media posts about climate gloom and doom are from coordinated bot campaigns seeking to foster those feelings. 

“It’s to get you paralyzed, to feel like it’s too late and not realize your power as a force of nature,” Stager said. “The fossil fuel companies are promoting hopelessness because it’s too hard to deny the science.”