A group of young people from the Adirondacks is in northern Ontario this week for a Youth Climate Action Summit. The students are there as part of the Wild Centerâs Youth Climate Program, and are attending workshops, presenting local community climate action plans, and connecting with other young environmentalists from around North America.
There are hundreds of dams around the Adirondack Park, many of them built a century ago by the logging industry. New reporting from the Adirondack Explorer finds that dozens of aging Adirondack dams are considered "high hazard," and that many of their owners have failed to comply with state regulatory standards.
The Explorer's Zachary Matson explains how integral dams are to the Adirondack landscape, how complex the regulatory system is for dams, and what risk these aging dams pose to the local communities.