AI-assisted summary Vermont Gov. Phil Scott signed a bill to overhaul the state’s public education system.

The law changes the funding formula and aims to consolidate school districts.

The changes will be implemented over three years and some details are still to be determined.

While supported by many, the law faces criticism for potentially underfunding schools and reducing local control.

Gov. Phil Scott signed into law the highly anticipated “education transformation” bill on July 1, legislation pitched as a long-term solution to the state’s myriad public education system woes, including rising property taxes, declining test scores and system inefficiency and inequity.

“For over 30 years, the state has tried to fix a broken system by tinkering around the edges,” Scott said during a press conference tied to the law’s signing, and argued the new reformative act “creates a blueprint to build one of the best education systems in the world.”

The new law, formerly known as H.454, will roll out over a period of three years. Most notably, it will switch Vermont to a different education funding method called a “foundation formula” – which gives the state the power to set statewide base spending versus taxpayers passing district budgets each year like they do under Vermont’s current system – and launches extensive consolidation efforts, such as condensing Vermont’s over 100 school districts down to roughly a dozen and establishing minimum class sizes.

“This legislation moves Vermont to an education finance system that is fairer and more predictable for communities and our families,” said Rep. Emilie Kornheiser (D-Brattleboro), chair of the Ways and Means Committee. “It provides better opportunities for our kids, particularly those in under-resourced schools and it provides stability for public schools, so teachers and admins can focus their energy where it matters – the kids.”

However, Vermonters shouldn’t expect property taxes to decline or for other bugs in the public school system to be fixed overnight, Scott and top lawmakers warned during the press conference.

“I want to remind everyone that this is just the beginning,” Scott said. “The work we need to do over the summer and into next session will be just as difficult and just as important as what we did this spring.”

What else is in the Act?

As Scott and lawmakers reiterated throughout the press conference, the new education transformation act primarily sets the reform process in motion, kicking the can down the road on many key decisions, including the creation of new district boundaries, a statewide school construction aid program, a statewide school calendar and graduation requirements and more. Lawmakers have also delegated the planning of most reforms to newly created focus groups, the Agency of Education and other state agencies and departments.

“There’s so much work to do, I can’t even see the finish line,” said Senate Minority Leader Scott Beck, a Republican from St. Johnsbury, during Tuesday’s press conference.

What the act does directly accomplish is outline how the new foundation formula and property tax structure will work. Under the new formula, school districts will receive a set base amount (tentatively $15,033 per pupil) plus additional money to educate certain populations, like English language learners, who require more spending. School districts can vote to raise additional money through supplemental spending. The act adds another property tax classification for second homes and replaces the current property tax credit with an income-based homestead exemption.

Average class size minimums will be 10 students for first grade, 12 students for second through fifth grade, 15 students for grades 6 to 8 and 18 students for grades 9 to 12.

Whether the act will truly improve education affordability remains to be seen, as many pieces of the transformation will not go into effect until July 2026 and heavily depend on future legislative action, according to the most recent joint fiscal office note on the bill.

Why some lawmakers oppose the education transformation act

Scott’s signature comes just over two weeks after H.454 passed in both chambers, albeit not without noteworthy opposition from some Democratic lawmakers, whose dissent contributed to the House’s lukewarm 96-45 vote on the bill. Critics’ common fears include that the Act will underfund schools and programs for vulnerable students like special education, potentially close small schools, overburden rural areas, reduce local control and more.

“This bill reflects a complete disregard for the voices of our public educators,” said Democrat-Progressive Rep. Troy Headrick of Burlington after the vote. “Those on the ground – who know our students and communities the best – were sidelined while this bill was shaped around political convenience.”

Many lawmakers who voted to pass the act said it is imperfect but at least gets the ball rolling.

“I believe this gives us the opportunity to finally start necessary reform to improve education for our students and provide tax relief to all the Vermonters that must fund it,” said Rep. Chris Pritchard of Barnard after the vote, adding that “While I have concerns with some of the content, I am hopeful and optimistic they can be improved upon as this reform evolves.”

Previous versions of H.454 were even more polarizing. Widespread disagreement over the bill, which Scott repeatedly urged the legislature to pass this year, prompted lawmakers to extend the legislative session almost a month past its typical late May adjournment.

Top Vermont politicians respond to criticism

Despite some mixed reviews, Scott and legislators generally spoke optimistically about the education transformation law, reassuring constituents that the reform process will be deliberate and meticulous.

Senate Pro Tempore Phil Baruth said he understood why the act’s “level of ambiguity” might concern some educators.

“It makes sense that people would want to know what’s happening and they would express that sort of anxiety, but I want those people to know that this bill is very carefully designed,” Baruth said, adding that the act won’t “roll out” until after legislators “gather additional information and data,” create sensible statewide maps, consult with constituents and then conduct another legislative vote.

“Again, it will come back to the voters’ representatives for another check,” Baruth said.

Lawmakers reconvene for the second half of the biennium next January.

Megan Stewart is a government accountability reporter for the Burlington Free Press. Contact her at mstewartyounger@gannett.com.

With the future of federal environmental protections in question, some local organizations are focusing on inspiring the next generation to care for their ecosystems.

Two dozen third graders from the Hartford Central School District in New York are packing onto a Lake George Association boat and fastening their lifejackets.

The boat doubles as a so-called “floating classroom,” and materials for a number of experiments are stored all over the boat.

The classroom arrives at a quiet, relatively calm cove along Lake George’s eastern shore. Students drop modified measuring tapes into the water to gauge the lake’s cloudiness – also known as “turbidity.”

“You have to instill in these kids at a young age the importance of not just protecting Lake George but every water body, stream, pond, lake. Everything that they care about. These are the kids that are going to be dealing with environmental issues. Certainly—probably at a more progressed rate due to climate change as they grow up and to be able to give them this experience means everything,” said Kenna.

Lindsey Kenna is the LGA’s Education for Action Manager. The association oversees the maintenance of the lake in collaboration with organizations like the Lake George Park Commission. It also runs annual shore clean-ups.

While federal spending cuts under the Trump administration have threatened some of the LGA’s operations, Kenna says the floating classroom is here to stay.

“One of the main grants for the boat is federally funded, so we are concerned but we’re not letting that stop us. We are actively seeking other grants and moving forward. If that funding was to go away we will seek other funding sources out in the future. We are very fortunate we have a lot of support here on Lake George. Our federal funding is quite minimal compared to every other funding source we have. So, we’re concerned but ready and have a plan to move forward and the program’s not going anywhere,” said Kenna.

While the pandemic caused a dip in the number of students taking tours on the boat, Kenna says the floating classroom now hosts upwards of 2,000 students annually.

Instilling the next generation with an appreciation of the 32-mile-long lake is especially important as a changing planet could threaten its long-term viability.

According to the LGA, over the past 40 years the temperature of the top 10 meters of water in the lake has risen by 2.5 degrees. Over that same time period, the concentration of chlorophyll a, the green pigment in algae the LGA tracks to monitor algal blooms, has increased by 29%. In 2020, the lake experienced its first confirmed harmful algal bloom. So, the association says, it’s vital that more people are invested in protecting the sparkling Adirondack gem.

Next up, students dunk hand-held trawls to capture the critters that form the lake’s ecosystem. Kyson Hammond and Mason Monrien are hard at work.

“So what are you guys doing right now, talk to me.”

“We’re trying to catch the zooplankton. Pull it up, man,” said Hammond.

“It’s leaking out,” said Monrien.

“Yeah it does that, man,” said Hammond.

The two take their captured lake water to one of several microscopes.

Aaron Shellow-Lavine / WAMC Students aboard the LGA’s floating classroom examine plankton specimens under microscope

“There’s a big one, he’s right there,” said Monrien.

“Alright so can you tell describe to me what you’re seeing in there?”

“They’re like little green planktons and they’re moving,” said Hammond.

“What do they look like?”

“Little green things!” said Hammond.

Apart from learning how to catch and identify various plankton, students learn the roles those organisms play in the local ecosystem.

Teacher Victoria Vanier says her students get way more out of the annual boat trip than just an afternoon out of the classroom.

“One of the reasons why we keep coming back to the Lake George floating classroom is because the kids really love it. They learn about the environment, they learn about the health of the lake and how and why it’s so important for them. And not just Lake George, any water source,” said Vanier.

Ellen Wetherbee has been running classes on the boat for three years, but she’s been around the lake her whole life. It means the world to her that she gets to share her passion for the Queen of American Lakes.

“When I was a kid, one of the more impressionable things for me was a whole thing in sixth grade about pollution. And that’s one of the things I tell them, it’s not just this lake, it’s any body of water, any place that you feel you want to protect it’s important. And I think it is important at this young of an age because obviously it made an impression on me when I was in sixth grade. I get that, they’re very impressionable at this point,” said Wetherbee.

Rep. David Durfee, D-Shaftsbury, chair of the House Agriculture Committee, explains details of a farming regulations bill to the House Democrat caucus at the Statehouse in Montpelier on Tuesday, May 27. Photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger

In December 2019, state agriculture investigators observed manure from Iraburg’s Nelson Farms, a dairy in the Northeast Kingdom, running into a local waterway.

The staff from Vermont’s Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets were required under a 2017 interagency agreement to report the runoff to Vermont’s Agency of Natural Resources immediately. But they failed to do so until four months later, according to a petition filed to federal officials by environmental advocates.

This misstep wasn’t uncommon. A month earlier, the agricultural agency had inspected the McKnight Farm in East Montpelier and found agricultural wastes flowing through a barnyard and entering surface water, but didn’t refer the matter for over a month.

The mistakes are part of a broader problem in Vermont, state environmental advocates say, in which a conflict between the agencies that govern natural resources and agriculture has thwarted a regulatory system that’s required under the federal Clean Water Act. Since January, they have urged the Legislature to step in.

“I feel strongly that this is not a choice,” Elena Mihaly, vice president for the Vermont chapter of the Conservation Law Foundation, said in a legislative committee hearing on May 15. “We’ve gone too long trusting that this system is working and it is not.”

Last summer, the federal Environmental Protection Agency agreed that the state has been violating the law.

The only way to come into compliance, the EPA told the Agency of Natural Resources, would be to put the state environmental agency in charge of inspecting farms and issuing permits related to water quality — dramatically shrinking the agriculture agency’s role.

This legislative session, a debate about how to fix the system has been playing out in Montpelier. A bill, S.124, which cleared the Vermont Legislature on Friday and is headed to Gov. Phil Scott’s desk would give the Agency of Natural Resources a greater role.

If the bill becomes law, the agency will be authorized to hire three new staff members who would lead some farm investigations. The agency would also be tasked with undertaking a new permitting program to align with federal law and with forming a stakeholder group to work on water quality regulations that includes environmentalists and farmers. The leadership of both of the state agencies have backed the bill.

But critics say this solution may not move the needle. Beyond these changes, the bill looks much like the ghost of regulations past: by maintaining a familiar split between agencies, it could also amount to maintaining the status quo.

“We’re in the middle of a long-term process to build a better regulatory program,” said Scott Sanderson, director of Conservation Law Foundation’s farm and food initiative, in a statement. “This bill takes important first steps and creates a needed stakeholder process, but it doesn’t confront what EPA identified as a root cause of Vermont’s broken system: the division of jurisdiction over agricultural water pollution between the Agency of Natural Resources and the Agency of Agriculture.”

‘Zero is unique’

Under federal law, farms are allowed to send runoff into local waterways only if the farm is monitored under a Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation, or CAFO, permit.

Vermont has more than 140 medium and large animal operations that could be CAFOs, defined as where animals have been stabled or confined for at least 45 days, which includes most dairy farms. Another 1,000 small farms are potential CAFOs and need to be monitored for unpermitted waste discharge, according to the federal Environmental Protection Agency.

For more than half a century, the Environmental Protection Agency has delegated the authority for ensuring that farms, waste systems and waterways comply with the federal Clean Water Act to the Vermont Agency of Natural Resources. In a small state, Vermont’s authority to administer the 1974 federal law meant it could staff its state agencies with experts more capable of managing rural places than federal officials traveling in from outside regions, according to Julie Moore, secretary of the Agency of Natural Resources.

The Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets oversees state monitoring of water quality on farms.

The CAFO program is the natural resource agency’s vehicle for that federal regulation, but the state has never issued a single CAFO permit.

This fact, and the corroborating examples, became the foundation of a 2022 petition filed by the Conservation Law Foundation, along with the Vermont Natural Resources Council and Lake Champlain Committee, that claimed Vermont was polluting its waterways in violation of the Clean Water Act.

The Environmental Protection Agency studied the state for the following two years, launching its own investigation into Vermont farms and the two agencies in charge of monitoring them.

In the EPA’s 2024 response to the petition, they wrote that the failure to implement this law was caused by “the division of Vermont’s agricultural water quality program between ANR and AAFM, which has resulted in ANR’s nonperformance of delegated duties,” along with insufficient resources given to ANR to administer the federal program.

If the agency didn’t make significant changes, the state’s authority to implement the Clean Water Act would be revoked and the federal government would take over, according to the EPA’s 2024 letter in response to the petition.

EPA staff conducted 10 on-farm investigations and found several farms “had evidence of ongoing or recent discharges that appear unaddressed.”

EPA staff also looked at 113 complaints about discharge received by either agency between February 2021 and January 2023. Many complaints described discharges to surface waters, but almost a quarter of these complaints were unresolved, and about 45% were concluded without a violation notice from ANR, according to the EPA. Only 7% were noted as Clean Water Act violations, and even then, the farm was allowed to correct the violation without a penalty or CAFO permit requirement.

“Us issuing zero is unique,” said Moore of the lack of CAFO permits in the state. But even with a better system, still only a small subset of farms would likely be required to obtain a CAFO permit. In neighboring states like New York, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts, a vast majority of farms are not regulated as CAFOs, Moore said.

While the agriculture agency has no authority to enforce the law, it has nine staff at least partially responsible for investigating farms for pollution to surface water, known as discharges, while the natural resources agency only has two. Because of their limited staffing capacity, ANR has long relied on agriculture officials to report discharges back to them.

“If we’re going to have a robust CAFO program, we don’t have enough capacity currently,” Moore said. By the end of 2026, ANR will have to report back to EPA on what they think they’ll require in staffing, according to their corrective action plan.

While the EPA gave four options to remedy the problem, the federal agency said the only viable option that would allow the state to stay in charge of enforcement was “consolidated agricultural regulatory authority with ANR,” meaning ANR should be the lead agency monitoring water quality on farms.

The Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets declined an interview request for Secretary Anson Tebbetts and instead sent a comment over email.

“The Agency of Agriculture, Food & Markets is working closely with the Agency of Natural Resources to address the issues raised by the EPA,” wrote Scott Waterman, director of communications for AAFM. “We are proud of the work of our Vermont farmers who are doing the hard work to improve our environment. That work will continue today and well into the future.”

Julie Moore, Vermont’s secretary of the agency of natural resources, speaks during a roundtable hosted by U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack held to discuss the role of agriculture in addressing climate change and water quality at the ECHO, Leahy Center for Lake Champlain in Burlington on Aug. 19, 2021. File photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger

Source of pollution matters

The split between the two agencies goes back to the split between how Vermont monitors water quality, distinguishing between two kinds of sources of pollution: nonpoint and point sources. Nonpoint pollution is diffuse, like runoff from rain or snow flowing over land, while point source pollution comes from a singular and identifiable source, like a pipe or ditch.

For decades, Vermont has regulated farms with this separation in source pollution. Nonpoint sources are regulated by the state’s agricultural agency, while point sources are meant to be regulated by ANR.

CAFOs are considered point sources due to the amount of waste they produce and how that waste is stored, in lagoons or spread as fertilizer over farm fields. When manure or waste is discharged into a waterway, the CAFO needs a permit.

In the last five years, the state Agency of Agriculture has reported 170 potential discharges to ANR, according to the agriculture agency’s attorney, Steve Collier. But neither agency knows how many of those were investigated, nor how many showed evidence of an actual discharge, according to attorneys for both agencies who testified in front of the House Environment Committee in May.

Farmers have long worked with the agricultural agency and have developed trust that its officials are working to protect their interests as agriculture faces increasing challenges from global economic rifts and climate change.

They’re not as used to working with ANR, largely because Vermont’s CAFO program is underfunded and understaffed, meaning farmers have interacted less frequently with ANR than they might have under a more robust program, according to Moore.

“I anticipate there are some farms that would require CAFO permits,” Moore said. “But part of our challenge as we sit here today is that we don’t know what we don’t know as far as the number of farms.”

Because no permits have been issued before, implementing such a system has struck a nerve in the farming community.

“It doesn’t exist, but people worry about the worst version of it,” Moore said. “Most Vermonters prefer not to be regulated.”

Collier told lawmakers in May that it wasn’t a victory for the state to issue a CAFO permit. “It’s a victory to have farms not discharging,” Collier said.

But as the 2022 petition and the EPA response showed, farms are discharging, and a CAFO permit is meant to predate a discharge. Without the permit, that discharge is illegal under the Clean Water Act. Therefore a CAFO permit could be a protective measure for farmers, but only if they’re issued.

“We all agree that (the agency of) agriculture’s program is pushing farms to achieve a no discharge standard, so the question is what happens when they don’t, and if they need time to come into compliance,” Moore said.

Caroline Sherman-Gordon, the legislative director for Rural Vermont, a group that advocates for small farmers, said farmers would adhere to CAFO permitting if necessary: “They’ll bite into the sour apple,” she said.

Rep. Amy Sheldon, D-Middlebury, left, and Rep. Larry Satcowitz, D-Randolph, listen as Scott Sanderson of the Conservation Law Foundation testifies before the House Environment Committee at the Statehouse in Montpelier on Jan. 21, 2025. File photo by Glenn Russell/VTDigger

’Dysfunctional and broken’

This isn’t the first time Vermont’s approach to monitoring water quality on farms has been put under a microscope.

Challenges can be traced back to 2008, when the Vermont Law School Environmental and Natural Resources Clinic filed a petition that resulted in a 2013 corrective action plan. Vermont agreed to improve its approach to farms under the requirements of the Clean Water Act.

But by 2016, both agencies were attending a bureaucratic version of couples counseling. The Center for Achievement in Public Service began hosting a series of meetings and retreats for staff members. Early in that process, the center noted the two agencies had divergent missions and cultures and a lack of a shared vision. It noted a history of errors, exclusions, misunderstandings and misinterpretations that “was long and unaddressed,” according to details in the 2022 petition.

After a retreat a month later, the center concluded that the Agency of Agriculture focused on promoting farms and supporting people, the other focused on policy and enforcement. When issues arose, so did groupthink: each agency “tended to rely on assumptions about the other group’s motivation,” according to the center.

For example, when an ANR officer expressed frustration that an agricultural officer had failed to contact him about a point source discharge in a timely manner, after some back and forth the ANR officer emailed, “It seems pointless to discuss these details anymore when we are both working within such a confusing and highly flawed system.”

More emails in 2019 showed that the agricultural agency had called ANR’s work “a waste of taxpayer dollars,” in an email quoted in the petition.

Moore wrote in an email to agricultural secretary Tebbetts: “The assertions that our work is either poorly conceived or nefarious makes [it] extremely difficult to engage constructively and needs to stop.”

A year later, Moore wrote a memo in response to the governor’s call to improve efficiency across state agencies. She said the dual oversight was fact-intensive, time-consuming, and reduced clarity for the farming community. She proposed transferring agricultural staff responsible for inspections under the Clean Water Act to ANR to create a single program because the division had “led to tension and conflict between the agencies, regulatory uncertainty for farmers, and more time-consuming outcomes for water quality resulting in more pollution.” She suggested it would save two inspector positions and an estimated $350,000.

In an email to Secretary of Administration Susanne Young, she called the challenges that existed between the agencies not only institutional and statutory but “at times, even personal.”

The Vermont Agency of Administration declined to act on Moore’s suggestion.

“It’s really easy to write it in a memo and much more challenging to implement as it involves real humans and changing where they work and who they work for,” Moore said of the memo five years later. “It raised concerns in the agricultural community that they don’t have the same relationship with ANR and therefore we haven’t built trust in that community yet.”

But by 2022, the petition was filed by three environmental organizations to the EPA alleging that the relationship was “dysfunctional and broken.”

“All Vermonters are harmed by AAFM’s stubborn rivalry with ANR, including farmers,” the petitioners wrote.

The EPA report noted that for over 15 years, Vermont has had “ample time and opportunity to cure longstanding program deficiencies” but failed to do so. The EPA concluded that consolidating the authority to implement the agricultural water quality program into ANR “is the only workable solution” to avoid losing the state’s ability to oversee the Clean Water Act.

‘This is crazy’

Early in the current legislative session, a different bill, H.146 — endorsed by the environmental organizations that filed the 2022 petition — suggested an easy answer: entirely transition the state’s water quality regulation and enforcement to ANR and require all large and some medium farms to obtain federal permits. That bill never left committee.

Sherman-Gordon, the legislative director for Rural Vermont, said her organization opposed the original House bill.

“What we often hear is that if farmers have to deal with ANR, then they feel less heard and less seen,” Sherman-Gordon said.

She said farmers feel historically underrepresented in the legislature, and she doesn’t feel that farmers were appropriately consulted or invited to testify on H.146. “The issue is that ANR hasn’t been doing the job they’ve been told to do, and instead of holding them accountable, the discourse is can we take away jurisdiction without hearing from farmers.”

Instead, by mid-May, the compromise bill, S.124, was being discussed in the House Environment Committee as members tried to determine whether to add language that could make the bill more stringent.

On May 21, when the committee was voting on that amendment, Collier, with the state’s agriculture agency, interrupted the meeting with a raised hand. In a previous meeting, he’d told the committee that the Agricultural Agency felt the regulatory work was getting done. He argued that the only reason they were discussing this issue was because “the advocates filed a petition and they want ANR to do all the work.”

“We have some of the most restrictive water quality regulations in the country so the question is not about whether ANR should do more, it’s whether anyone should do more,” Collier told the committee on May 21.

“That’s crazy,” said committee chair Amy Sheldon, D-Middlebury, clearly frustrated.

“We’ve been confronted with a petition that has been years in the making. We have water quality issues, staff are under stress. We need to be engaged in this and empowering the agency to take responsibility,” Sheldon said. “Under the current political regime, ANR hasn’t taken responsibility, and we’re saying they need to take responsibility.”

Rep. Rob North, R-Ferrisburgh, encouraged his fellow committee members to “take a breath.”

“There’s been a fair amount of animosity pointed towards these two departments that are trying to work together,” said Rep. Christopher Pritchard, R-Pawlet. He claimed that the advocates who wrote the petition had “no skin in the game” and wouldn’t have to deal with the repercussions of the amended bill.

“From the point of view of the advocates, the skin in the game we all have is that if we want to have better water quality in our state, this is how to go about it,” Rep. Larry Satcowitz, D-Randolph, said in response.

While the EPA’s most recent letter supported S. 124, it acknowledged that it would likely require more legislation in the future.

Moore said she expected more information from the federal agency in the coming weeks. ANR plans to do 10 farm inspections this summer and take the lead on inspections required on medium and large farms next year under its revised corrective action plan with the EPA.

If the EPA approves of the legislation, ANR will draft a new document that will outline the agreement between the dual agencies by September 1. That document could give ANR new authorities related to inspections and establish a more thorough stakeholder process to help the agencies coexist and reconcile their responsibilities.

In the background is an unsettling federal landscape under President Donald Trump’s administration. In committee meetings, legislators have wondered about including language from the federal Clean Water Act into state law. That way, if the federal law is overturned or changed, the state law will remain strong.

“There’s real value in having people on the ground doing work that are familiar with the specifics of Vermont and our rural nature and the small, small size of many of our systems,” Moore said. “A lot of that would be lost if the programs were returned to EPA.”

A coalition of environmental and water-policy groups is calling on the New York state legislature to pass a measure that would limit road salt use statewide.

In 2020 the New York State Randy Preston Road Salt Reduction Act was signed into law mandating a regional task force assess the effects of road salt and draft recommendations to reduce road-salt use in the Adirondacks.

Now, a bill currently pending in the state legislature, would create a New York state Road Salt Reduction Council and Citizen Advisory Committee to implement the Adirondack task force’s recommendations statewide.

Environmentalists are calling for the bill to pass.

ADKAction Executive Director Sawyer Bailey says reducing the use of road salt has been a priority for the organization since 2010.

“Road salt dissolves in water. It flows into our streams and lakes and contaminates our aquifers, our wells, and effectively poisons drinking water. Not only that, but it disrupts the trophic cascade of our ecosystem. So this is really an interdisciplinary issue that affects all aspects of human and natural life,” Bailey said.

Bailey notes that the task force report included more than 160 recommendations, but there was no implementation guidelines, timelines or budget.

“Which is why this bill really fills a need. The creation of this multi-agency council can help really align disparate agencies, disparate systems and reporting structures to have the kind of conversation needed to actually put rubber to the road to implement these solutions,” noted Bailey. “But we also have the second body, this stakeholder and expert committee, that can make sure that people across the state who have really important knowledge and experience in implementation can be a part of the conversation.”

Lake George is among the Adirondack communities that have implemented salt reduction pilot programs. Lake George Association Executive Director Brendan Wiltse says the pending legislation would move toward implementing a statewide salt reduction.

“We’ve also heard very recently about rising salt levels in the New York City drinking water system, specifically the New Croton Reservoir and also some work by Riverkeeper showing concerns related to road salt impacting drinking water supplies in the Hudson River watershed,” reported Wiltse. “The Road Salt Reduction Advisory Council would establish basically the human infrastructure necessary to implement the recommendations that were in the task force report, not just in the Adirondacks, but across New York state.”

Wiltse researched salt concentrations in Lake Placid’s Mirror Lake before moving to Lake George.

“The salt concentrations in Mirror Lake are coming down quite rapidly as a result of implementing these types of practices. And so we’re not proposing something that is sort-of pie-in-the-sky or not really tangible or hasn’t been done. We’ve done this work in various places in the state. We know these practices work and so we would really like to see these practices implemented across New York state,” Wiltse stressed.

The bill passed in the Senate in 2024 and is awaiting floor action. No floor vote has been taken in the Assembly.

Saranac Lake, NY – Adirondack Center for Loon Conservation (ACLC) staff said they are thrilled to unveil the first set of exhibits in the new “A Year in the Life of a Loon” series. This initial installation focuses on Courtship and Nesting behaviors of the Adirondacks’ iconic bird and officially opened to the public on Saturday, Feb. 15.

“We are so excited to introduce the first stage of these museum-quality exhibits,” said Dorothy Waldt, Executive Director of the Adirondack Loon Center. “More than 10,000 visitors came to the center last year, up nearly 20 percent from the year before. The more we can engage visitors in understanding how important this species is to the health of the Adirondacks, the more awareness there will be for protecting loons into the future.”

The new exhibit, designed and installed by Hadley Exhibits, Inc. based in Buffalo, NY, will offer interactive features and bright, engaging wall panels with photographs by local photographers. Hadley Exhibits, Inc. also provided in-kind support for the design and fabrication of the exhibits.

Dr. Nina Schoch, founder of ACLC and current Director of Science and Conservation, has been conceptualizing the exhibits since the organization received nonprofit status in 2017. At the time, the organization was in a much smaller space.

“I felt we should be an education facility where people could come to learn about loon ecology and conservation, as well as our research and conservation programs,” Dr. Schoch said. “When we moved to our current location in the summer of 2021, we had more room to begin planning. We chose to work with Hadley Exhibits because of their reputation, expertise and in-house facilities, as well as their familiarity with other Adirondack organizations.”

The Courtship and Nesting exhibit was funded wholly or in part by the United States Environmental Protection Agency under assistance agreement (LC00A0141-1) to New England Interstate Water Pollution Control Commission (NEIWPCC) in partnership with the Lake Champlain Basin Program.

North Elba Local Enhancement and Advancement Fund (LEAF) and Brookfield Renewable N.A. also generously funded the project, as well as donations from individual supporters.

“We are so grateful to the sponsors and donors who supported this first installation,” said Waldt. “We look forward to raising the remaining funds for the other three exhibits and to continuing to build this community resource.”

Visitors are welcome to stop in and see the new exhibits during ACLC’s winter hours: Wednesdays – Saturdays 10 am – 5 pm. To learn more about how you can contribute, visit adkloon.org/support.

The Adirondack Center for Loon Conservation is a 501(c)3 non-profit that conducts scientific research and engaging educational programming to promote and inspire passion for the conservation of Common Loons (Gavia immer) in and beyond New York’s Adirondack Park.

To learn more about the Adirondack Center for Loon Conservation visit www.adkloon.org or www.facebook.com/adkloon, or contact info@adkloon.org or (518) 354-8636. The Adirondack Loon Center, located at 75 Main Street in Saranac Lake, is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day.

Photo at top: The first of four new exhibits has been installed and opened to the public at the Adirondack Loon Center in Saranac Lake. Photo courtesy of the Adirondack Center for Loon Conservation.