In Adirondacks, a furious debate over people
The last couple of years, a furious debate has raged in the Adirondacks over what sounds like the wonkiest, nit-pickiest thing in the world: demographics.
Is the Park’s population growing or declining? Is the community aging its way into a Japan-style senescence, where nursing homes will replace public schools?
Or are we a hip, lifestyle-driven region, where a lot of active baby boomers are choosing to retire, investing their dollars, their creativity and their leisure time in our mountain towns?
The reason that this debate takes on such intensity is that population trends are seen as a shorthand for the state of the Park itself.
If communities are thriving, or even doing sort of okay, then maybe the regulatory scheme, environmental controls, and state land ownership that define the Adirondacks aren’t so bad after all?
This is the position generally taken by prominent blogger John Warren (who curates Adirondack Almanack) and conservationist Brian Houseal (head of the Adirondack Council).
“It shows that environmental protection doesn’t drive away residents,” Houseal said, in a press release, following release of US Census numbers earlier this month.
“It reinforces out believe that the Adirondack Park is a special and desirable place to live, not in spite of special land use rules, but because of them.”
On the other hand, if our small towns are tipping off the edge of a demographic cliff, then surely that’s an indictment of job-killing over-regulation, and expansion of the forest preserve that’s squeezing out private sector development.
This is the position adopted broadly by Fred Monroe, head of the Adirondack Local Government Review Board.
“The Council is wrong,” Monroe told the Glens Falls Post-Star. “They’re trying to say everything is just rosy. They’re just trying to discount the APRAP.”
He’s referring to a study conducted by the Adirondack Association of Towns and Villages which first raised alarms about demographic trends in the Park and our aging population.
NCPR will be looking at these questions in more detail in the weeks ahead, but in the meantime here are a couple of observations:
First, it’s obviously good news that the population inside the Park overall is fairly stable, especially when compared with other parts of upstate New York.
Over the last half-century, Buffalo has lost more than half of its population, while Rochester and Syracuse have lost about a third of their people.
By contrast, the Post Star’s analysis found that towns located entirely inside the Park lost about 1,800 people over the last decade, roughly a 1-2% decline.
What’s more, a big share of the slippage inside the blue line occurred in one place: Hamilton County.
I make this point because I think Hamilton County is a unique situation and warrants special attention. New York’s most rural, remote county is clearly teetering and it’s unclear why.
Maybe it’s entirely because of the Park and its rules, but if that’s true then why is Essex County — also located entirely inside the Park — growing modestly?
(I suspect that Hamilton’s woes have more to do with extreme isolation, distance from interstates and even modest urban centers, than with the Park and its regulations, but this is a question that deserves a lot more scrutiny.)
It’s also pretty clear that population is trending toward the fringe of the Park, with most of the growth concentrated in communities that straddle the blue line. Indeed, growth in those areas actually outstripped most of New York state.
I think it’s also fair to say that our current stability is a fragile thing, which is why it’s good that we’re having this conversation.
While some Park communities (Saranac Lake, for example) are doing very well by rural American standards, others (Indian Lake, Willsboro) are on downward trajectories, losing grocery stores, schools, churches and (most importantly) young people.
What’s more, as local and state governments move aggressively to cut jobs, the economy of many Adirondack towns faces an existential crisis.
So long as communities like Moriah and Tupper Lake rely on Albany for their prosperity — such as it is — they will be communities on risky life support. That’s hardly a success story.
The bottom line is that the latest Census numbers paint a fairly nuanced, complicated portrait of the Park’s population. Neither side in the debate can say flat-out that their point of view is vindicated.
Which means we need to keep poking hard at these questions:
In what ways is the Park boosting our communities as desirable, attractive destinations, for visitors, but also for families and businesses? What advantages does it give us over other rural regions? How can we enhance this?
In what ways is the Park choking our communities with over-regulation? Are we discouraging even those kinds of development and growth that don’t significantly harm the beauty and wildness of the place? If so, how can we eliminate some of these hurdles?
As always, your thoughts welcome.
Tags: adirondacks
Scratchy, there are 13 houses for sale right now in Saranac Lake for under $100,000 (the bottom of the list is a 3-bedroom, 1400 sq ft house– it needs work).
Mervel – this is a point that Walker has made many times. The villages outside the park are poorer than the ones inside. It is also probably true that without the park, the adirondack villages would be the poor cousins to St. Lawrence Valley villages.
“Name one.” OK — John Davis, formerly of the Adirondack Council and, years ago, of EarthFirst!
Is he on record saying this? Or is Will Doolittle being libelous?
I agree in a sense Knuck, but why did logging and mining die out? What spurred the decisions to move elsewhere? The minerals from Tahawus are still needed in industry, but the industries that need them aren’t located in the US anymore and wood products are certainly needed but it’s cheaper to import them, why? It’s all part of the bigger picture, we’ve let the US and NY especially become business unfriendly. Taxes, fee’s, regulations, wages, benefits, etc. Yeah, it’s all part of a more or less natural progression but there’s no reason we can’t alter that progression by making conscious efforts to turn things to our favor.
Bret – its globalization. Its not that we are business unfriendly. You can hire miners or loggers in China for $2.00 and hour and there is no OSHA – no environmental regulations etc. Put the stuff on a boat and ship it anywhere. There used to be a garlic industry in California. Now all garlic comes from China. Thats business.
Seriously? A poster asks me to name a hardcore environmentalist who wants fewer people to live in the Adirondack Park, I do, and 3 people dislike it? I’m starting to dislike the like/dislike function. OK, go ahead, dislike this comment.
Here’s an interesting bit of info– looking for newer median household income data took me to a map on Wikipedia that has 2008 data by county, and it bears out what Mervel is saying, showing St. Lawrence, Franklin and Herkimer are together in the under $41,500 category, while Hamilton is over $41,500, like the rest of the park. I guess the poor can’t afford to live there. Interesting.
The map is at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:US_county_household_median_income_2008.png
It will be interesting to find newer, finer-grained data.
Will – maybe the request should have been to not just name somebody, but document it with some kind of public statement the person has made. I, personally, didn’t hit the dislike button, but generally, if you mention someone by name you (should) have a responsibility to document what you say. It is quite possible that this is the reason people didnt like your comment.
I keep seeing people saying the State owns 95% of the land in Hamilton County and the county is overrun with poverty. Neither are true.
You see far more poverty in areas where the State owns very little land. There are places between Saranac and Lyon Mt that could compete for Dog Patch, USA.
Will, sometimes it really amuses me to give a dislike. Thanks for the opportunity!
Bret, Titanium is a useful mineral that was in great demand during WW2 so we paid to get a rail line to Tahawus. My memory may be fuzzy on this but I believe that somebody realized that all those white sand beaches in Florida have a lot of titanium in them and scooping beach sand is easier than mining rock in Tahawus.
On Finch. Do you remember when Finch Bruyn bragged that they made the best paper because they had the best wood pulp grown on their own lands? I do. High Hemlock content for long strand pulp, that’s the ticket! Then they sold the mill and they told us that they could make paper just as good with pulp they purchased on the open market. Does it seem like somebody wasn’t telling the truth in one situation or the other?
I know it may come as a surprise to you but BUSINESS PEOPLE LIE TO YOU ALL THE TIME!
Yeah guys, I got that people lie a long, long time ago. But as far as globalization goes, etc., as much as this pains me, I’m beginning to think that tariffs and import duties might be an answer- maybe not the whole answer, but maybe part of the answer. China can take unfair advantage of us and our markets, maybe it’s not a popular conservative answer, but maybe we need to consider it.
I really can’t believe I got a “dislike”
Hi Walker,
I agree.
This is a neat web site from the NYS OCFS kids well being indicators. It would be more interesting by zip but this is by county. I did a quick map using children in poverty within a county.
In the north County, St. Lawrence, Jefferson Lewis are in the top quartile of all counties in NYS for highest levels of childhood poverty. Clinton, Essex and Hamilton have rate comparable to places like Rockland county downstate and are in the bottom half of all nys state counties on that particular indicator.
http://www.nyskwic.org/gis/kwicmap.cfm?la=-1&si=1
“Scratchy, there are 13 houses for sale right now in Saranac Lake for under $100,000 (the bottom of the list is a 3-bedroom, 1400 sq ft house– it needs work).”
I missed something. Walker what is the point of this comment.
Will, the Like/Dislike function is a form of blog bullying if you ask me. You can’t believe what gets a thumbs down around here. It is like fraternity hazing.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e2/New_York_Population_Map.png/720px-New_York_Population_Map.png
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ef/South_Dakota_population_map.png
Hamilton County is fine.