North Country population slips downward
Hamilton County’s population has dropped by more than 1% since 2010. First day of school at Indian Lake Central School in Hamilton County. Photo of the Day, 9/7/12: George DeChant.
New US Census data released last week shows many counties in the North Country taking another significant hit to their population.
The drops aren’t precipitous, but the latest numbers continue a trend that many local government leaders have described as disturbing.
Essex County lost nearly 600 residents over a two-year period, from 2010 to 2012, according to Federal estimates. That’s a decline of roughly 1 percent. Clinton County, meanwhile, lost more than 500 people, reflecting a .6% erosion.
One region that’s been heavily debated in recent years is Hamilton County, where the number of residents declined by just over 50 people. That may sound trivial, but the population there is now under 4,800 — for the entire county.
Other counties in the region, including Franklin, Lewis, St. Lawrence and Warren, were essentially flat or saw modest increases.
The one North Country county that bucked the trend was Jefferson, home to the Fort Drum Army base, which grew by more than 4,000 residents. That’s a 3.5% increase.
On his blog, Watertown Mayor Jeff Graham noted that Jefferson County has more than 120,000 residents, a big milestone.
“We are whiter, poorer, less educated than the average New Yorker,” Graham writes, “but our per capital retail spending is above average, likely a reflection of Canadian shoppers.”
Census figures also show that North Country residents tend to be significantly older than New York state as a whole, with far more residents over 65 and far fewer young people, under the age of 18.
The significance and impact of the region’s gradual demographic shift has been hotly debated in recent years, with some local government leaders arguing that rural communities face serious decline.
Others, including some environmental activists, have asserted that the numbers reflect a relatively stable population when compared with parts of central and western New York that have seen much steeper declines.
Tags: aging, census, population
“This certainly worked for Lake Placid…”
Hmm… Placid is one of the places where schools are failing.
Economic development is a long term effort. All of those things Brian mentions are great and should go forward, I don’t think they will impact the next two to three years of budget issues facing our communities however.
For those we need a plan that is stable and shows a path forward for the next five years.
I don’t think we have the luxury of opposing every medium to large scale business that wants to come to he North Country however. I am not saying open the flood gates, just that we don’t reflexively oppose everything if it is corporate or if it involves energy or agri-business.
The APA has since its inception, to the best of my knowledge, encouraged urbanization within the Adirondacks within the context of small dense hamlets surrounded by moderate and low density, or wild areas. It is a pretty good concept but one that has had too much opposition to allow the concept to work. Certainly many people who own property in lower density areas feel they have lost value of their property. In some cases I’m sure that is true; in other cases it may be false.
It may be that part of the reason the dense hamlet idea hasn’t worked well so far is that the population of the ADKs is old and stuck in older paradigms of thinking about what the American Dream is. Many people from high density areas downstate or elsewhere dreamed of having a cabin in the woods or on a lake and when they accrued enough money they made it happen. I suspect that for many the reality isn’t what the dream promised, but now that they have built their cabin there is no going backwards in the short term.
Eventually people with different ideas will re-make the ADKs and it may be that the ideas the APA put forward for zoning will be allowed to work, or at least tried.
I would like to see an example of a small community region that went through what we are going through and come out the other side?
I am not seeing any where I am from? The upper midwest has been going through this for quite some time, as I said earlier my cousins closest school in South Dakota is now 70 miles away. They home school and then when high school comes they board them in town usually with an adult parent who supervises a couple of families.
All of their small rural schools closed and they don’t have nearly the regulatory burdens that we have, not even close and they could not keep them open.
So I would be interested in hearing about success stories in this area?
Brian…
Thanks for your reporting work. Does the 500 loss number in Clinton County reveal an actual movement of people or could this just be a result of an older population passing away?
“new uses for natural resources”
It’s not ‘complicated’. As Brian points out and Paul ‘gets’. It’s ‘simple’… Water.
This month’s ADK Life highlights the ‘tip of the iceberg’ that can/will be the basis for creating thousands of sustainable, blue-green, family-wage jobs in/around the Blue Line of the Dacks by leveraging a local, regenerating, natural resource that we enjoy in abundance our Blue Gold, our water.
Trillions of gallons / year flow out of the five [major] watersheds of the Adirondacks and the movement to ‘brand’ nationally / internationally the only constitutionally-protected watersheds and the world class craft beers and spirits that will be born and grow, here in our ‘backyard’, is just beginning.
Take heart. Stay ‘tuned’. Na zdravi! #ADKBREWCO