July 2014
The annual membership meeting/party this year will be on Wednesday, July 30, 5 to 7 p.m.
at a stunning great camp on Upper Saranac Lake. An invitation has already been sent out to members.
This event will also include a silent auction. You will not want to miss this event.
Don’t miss two of the loveliest evenings on the Adirondacks calendar this summer. Only
AdkAction.org members and special guests will be invited to our annual meeting and silent auction July 30 and a pop-up art gallery and sale benefiting our non-profit on Aug. 15. Both events are at not-to-be-missed private great camps on Upper Saranac Lake. If you have meant to join us and keep forgetting, or if you forgot to pay your annual dues this year, go online and pay simply and easily by credit card or PayPal. This link makes it quick and simple online .
Please help us recruit new members by forwarding this newsletter, with your personal message, to urge your friends and neighbors to join us too.
Transportation: Why You Can’t Get Here from There and Vice Versa
AdkAction.org is excited to announce a new project. We are organizing a transportation summit, tentatively scheduled for next June in Lake Placid ti tled “Adirondack Transportation: Why You
Can’t Get Here from There and Vice Versa”.
A prominent Lake Placid attorney contacted AdkAction.org in July to ask us to help improve transport to the Adirondacks. The summit will explore ways to improve the now totally undependable train service to Westport, to explore ways to encourage airline service to the
Adirondacks from Albany and the New York metro area and to entice a bus company to run express service on comfortable buses from New York City to provide skiers and other tourists with dependable, affordable access to the Adirondacks.
We will invite representatives from airlines, Amtrak, bus companies, federal, state and local political offices, ORDA, Adirondack museums and non-profits and many others to the summit.
A committee has been formed to organize the summit, including Barbara Plumadore, Fred
Schwarz, Marsha Stanley and Al Crispo. If you would have time to help in even a limited way, please contact us at info@adkaction.org
.
AdkAction.org Board Member Dave Wolff Receives Broadband Award
Dave Wolff, AdkAction.org broadband committee, in June was recognized for his extensive efforts for expanding broadband access and adoption in the Adirondacks in June by the New York State
Broadband program office. He was named a 2014 Extraordinary Broadband Leader.

“I applaud you for your perseverance, innovation, and for forging the necessary partnerships needed to help bridge the digital divide in New York State,” wrote David Salway, director of the state broadband program office.
For more than three years Dave has hosted a monthly broadband call which now attracts broadband business leaders, federal officials, representatives of local, state and national office holders and the US Department of Agriculture. Dave also serves on the Saranac Lake Central
School District Technology committee. He recently coordinated surveys in Harrietstown and
Franklin to determine the location of residents unserved and under-served by broadband providers. Dave would like to extend these surveys to other towns who are interested in participating. A town supervisor or town board can contact Dave@AdkAction.org
to express an interest.
The first surveys indicated that the largest non-served population in those two towns were 200 households near Loon Lake. Dave is now working with broadband companies and local officials on innovative ways to extend coverage there.
Adirondack artists and art galleries are increasing in the Adirondacks and present towns and villages, particularly Saranac Lake, with an opportunity to brand themselves as artistic communities. To encourage this trend AdkAction.org sponsored a project with the Village of
Saranac Lake and Saranac ArtWorks to hang banners in Saranac Lake downtown with a different arti st’s work on both sides of the banners. The banners were hung in the early July and will remain all summer. These banners were suggested by a visiting preservation architect who was familiar with a similar banner program in Easton, MD.
Another way in which AdkAction.org is working to promote our local art community is to sponsor
Holly Friesen, a Canadian painter and speaker who will give a lecture and workshop at The Wild
Center on Monday September 8, 2014. At this session Holly will speak about “The Wilderness
Within” which is at the core of her paintings. This will be followed by a workshop in which she discusses her special use of social media to promote her work. Both sessions are free and open to the public. The workshop will be of particular value to artists. Holly is an artist/painter based in
Montreal and has painted the boreal forests and Precambrian rock of Northern Quebec for decades. She first visited the Adirondacks last summer when she had a solo exhibition at the
View Arts Center in Old Forge. Holly’s artwork can be seen at http://hollyfriesen.prosite.com/ . To see how effectively she uses other social media, check also her blog and her Facebook page .
The most significant water quality issue for AdkAction.org over the past three years has been our attempt to get New York to reduce its use of sodium chloride on winter roads as a means of ice and snow control. New York stands out at the heaviest user of this salt, spreading around 225

pounds of pure salt per lane per mile each time the plow passes. Towns, villages and counties generally use sand with a modicum of salt to keep the sand from clumping, an entirely different approach. Which is better? In 2010 AdkAction.org underwrote a study of what other states do, and most had chosen other means than pure salt. That report was presented at the First Winter
Road Maintenance Conference in 2010. In 2011 a second conference was held, this time with a detailed study partially underwritten by AdkAction.org that looked at where the salt buildup in our watersheds was actually coming from. In a landmark study, conducted by the
Watershed Institute at Paul Smith’s College, it was conclusively demonstrated that 86% of the salt pollution was directly attributable to New York State.
From 2011 through the winter of 2013/14 New York’s department of Transportation cooperated with AdkAction.org in a study designed to reduce salt use. First, NYDOT adopted an across the board reduction in salt use, for the entire state. Second it agreed to add three test road to an existing test on Route 73 but with added parameters. Speeds would be reduced on salt-spreading plows from 35 mph to 25. Secondary blades would be added to reduce the number of passes needed. Drivers would be retrained to be sensitive to when and where salt could be use (e.g., not in environmentally sensitive areas or below 21 degrees Fahrenheit). And trucks would be equipped with telemetric devices so what the driver was doing and where could be monitored. The three roads added for these tests were Route 8 west of the Northway, Route 3 from Tupper to Saranac Lake, and Route 30 from Route 3 to Lake Clear.
In parallel, AdkAction.org helped the Watershed Institute acquire fifteen steam monitors. These devices are installed upstream and downstream of the test roads on streams that cross them. They provide real-time readouts of the chemistry of the water passing through them, allowing a precise analyses of what the chemical changes are as the water passes the roads being treated.
The next Winter Road Maintenance Conference will take place on September 16, 2014, cosponsored by AdkAction.org and the Adirondack Council. Speakers from the Carey Institute will p resent their studies of the deleterious impact of New York’s salting policies. A speaker from
Colorado’s DOT will describe how they chose other chemicals for their roads. The Watershed
Institute and New York DOT will each present their findings based on the test runs. And a legal expert will present the liability implications of reducing salt use even further, with ways to minimize any risks to travelers and to the State. At the end of the conference recommendations will be made as to how dramatic further reductions in salt can be made.
Monarch Butterfly Preservation
Monarch sightings in the Adirondacks are up this year over last, as they are in many other parts of the country. Favorable weather this year along the butterflies’ migration path seems to indicate a slight resurgence of the threatened Eastern Monarch. Whether it is a strong enough recovery to increase their numbers in Mexican wintering areas will not be known until the official count by scientists in spring, 2015.

However, it is encouraging that Monarchs are once again being spotted in the Adirondacks after last year when almost literally none were seen here. AdkAction.org members Lewis and Sheila
Rosenberg, who have participated in the annual butterfly census by conducting counts in the Lake
Placid area for the past 10 years counted 19 Monarchs during the July census. They counted none last year. AdkAction.org members paddling in the Essex Chain of Lakes saw eight
Monarchs on a large stand of milkweed.
On June 26, 2014, Professor Lincoln Browner spoke at The Wild Center to a packed auditorium on his work with the Monarch butterflies. Dr. Brower is an internationally recognized scientist and is renowned for his early work in demonstrating that the toxin the Monarchs ingest from feeding on milkweed plants is so potent at sickening birds that a blue jay once exposed to Monarchs and then exposed to them months later will vomit at the sight of a Monarch. Those who did not hear
Dr. Brower ’s lecture can access it live on The Wild Center web page . In addition there was an article about his lecture in the Adirondack Almanac .
AdkAction.org sponsored Dr. Brower’s visit as it did last summer’s appearance and lecture by another noted Monarch scientist, Dr. Orley R.
“Chip” Taylor, as part of the non-profit’s Monarch conservation initiative. The year-long run of the big-screen movie “Flight of the Butterflies” at The
Wild Center ended June 30. AdkAction.org provided the funds to bring the film to the
Adirondacks, where it attracted thousands of viewers.
As it did last year, AdkAction.org has again written to every highway superintendent in the
Adirondacks asking them to delay roadside mowing from July 1 to the end of September to spare milkweed plants, which thrive along highways. Milkweed is the only plant on
Monarchs reproduce. Late-season Adirondack Monarchs lay eggs and caterpillars hatch on these plants to become part of the final annual Monarch generation, which lives long enough to fly 2,500 miles to Mexico for the winter, and then return to the U.S. next spring.
AdkAction.org wants to share with our members the story of how our small organization quietly had a national impact this year to help Monarchs. Dr. Brower and AdkAction.org worked behind the scenes to convince First Lady Michelle Obama to install a butterfly and pollinator garden at
The While House in April. The chance of sending a random letter to Mrs. Obama to get her support seemed daunting, especially since AdkAction.org brochures about Monarchs contained milkweed seeds and were likely to be intercepted by security. AdkAction.org founding member Marsha
Stanley had a friend who is close to the Carters. That friend proved the key link. That friend asked Rosalynn Carter to forward a packet of letters from Dr. Brower and AdkAction.org and other materials to Mrs. Obama. T he mailing included a signed copy of Barbara Kingsolver’s book as well as a beautiful coffee table book The Amazing Monarch for the First Family. Mrs. Carter, who remembered Dr. Brower from their visit in Mexico , included a personal appeal of her own as well.
Mrs. Carter heard from Mrs. Obama this spring that the first ever butterfly and pollinator garden would be added at the sixth annual White House Garden planting in April, 2014.

Board Membership
We were all saddened to have Marsha Stanley step down from the Board earlier this year to attend to medical issues. She has added so much with smart ideas and even smarter ways to carry them out. We wish her well and will welcome her back at any time.
We are planning to expand our board and thus are looking for candidates interested in working on some of our issues. If you are interested in being considered as a board candidate then please send your request along with a summary of your background to the chair of our nominating committee, Barbara Plumadore at Barbara@adkaction.org.