“Infrastructure pushed beyond the range for which it was designed (will) become stressed and fail,” a 2008 report titled “Potential Impacts of Climate Change on U.S. Transportation” by the National Research Council (NRC) warned. Now, sixteen years later, culverts throughout Warren County must be replaced and enlarged, and at considerable expense to local taxpayers.
Any new culvert installed by the county – or by the towns, for that matter – must meet the 2024 standards for right-sized or resilient infrastructure recently promulgated by the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
According to County Administrator John Taflan, the cost of replacing those culverts has almost doubled, in part because of the changes in rules.
“Some of our larger culverts are required to become bridges in order to meet the new standards, which increases the cost of repairing roads significantly,” said Taflan.
According to Taflan, the cost of replacing those culverts is among the reasons why members of the Board of Supervisors are willing to consider a vote to raise the sales tax from 7% to 8%.
“Since January, we’ve withdrawn $7.7 million from the general fund to finance the repair of roads that were damaged during the storms of December, 2023,” said Taflan.
“Moreover, the county must take out a $15.4-million bond to purchase equipment and fund additional repairs to roads that were damaged by the four, once-in-every one-hundred-year storms we’ve experienced during the past year and a half,” said Taflan.
Replacing a washed out culvert that closed County Route 11 during the December, 2023 storm in Bolton to outbound traffic for more than six weeks is expected to cost $1.5 million.
“We couldn’t leave those roads in an impassable state,” said Kevin Hajos, Warren County’s Superintendent of Public Works. “But we’ll be paying for those repairs for the next five years.”
Federal and State Funding
Local governments are responsible for maintaining 50% of New York’s bridges and 87% of its roads; without federal and state aid, 100% of the costs of rehabilitating that critical infrastructure falls upon the shoulders of local property taxpayers.
County and municipal officials are therefore alert to possible sources of outside funding.
The federal government has appropriated funds to make roads, bridges, and highways resilient enough to withstand extreme weather. The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) aka the Bipartisan Infrastructure Bill, for instance, includes $12.5 billion to help rehabilitate bridges, but it is not clear how those funds are to be allocated or whether they are sufficient to meet the nation’s needs. Replacing a single deck of a Hudson Valley bridge cost $47.6 million, according to a press release from US Senator Kirsten Gillibrand.
The state’s $4.2 billion environmental bond act approved by the voters in November, 2022 will generate significant funds for green infrastructure. But according to some commentators, the periodic need for bond acts is itself evidence that New York’s regular funding streams fail to produce enough revenue to harden our highways, bridges and culverts against climate change.
Making Big Oil Pay
Environmental Activists such as Bob Cohen, Policy and Research Director of Citizen Action of New York and a Rensselaer County resident, agree that the cost of making infrastructure more resilient falls unfairly on the shoulders of local taxpayers.
“Tropical Storm Debby was just the latest reminder that climate change is disrupting the lives of millions of New Yorkers and other Americans,” said Cohen. “Storms and other forms of severe weather also threaten to wreak havoc on the finances of our cities and towns, and the situation will only get worse as the effects of climate change become even more severe in coming years.”
But rather than looking to the federal or state government for relief, Cohen and other activists have in mind another solution to the problem of funding repairs to infrastructure damaged by extreme weather: the Climate Change Superfund Act.
That bill, which passed both the state Senate and the Assembly during the 2024 legislative session, will, if adopted, require fossil-fuel companies to pay for costs associated with climate change.
As of now, Governor Hochul has neither vetoed the bill nor signed it into law. To encourage her to do the latter, a group called “Make Polluters Pay” has launched a billboard campaign in Albany, showcasing the impacts of extreme weather with the slogan “Superstorms: Sponsored by Big Oil,” and urging Governor Kathy Hochul to sign the state climate bill.
“The Governor has a simple choice: allowing the costs of cleanup and prevention to fall solely on struggling New York taxpayers, or forcing the oil companies that caused the problem to pay for a share of the damages they caused,” said Bob Cohen.
Reducing Regulations
Warren County’s Budget Officer and Stony Creek Supervisor Frank Thomas said damage from the December 2023 storms will cost Warren County approximately $4.5 million to repair.
Nevertheless, he described the proposal to make fossil fuel companies pay for infrastructure repairs “bizarre.”
According to Thomas, the new regulations about resizing culverts, passed down from the federal and state government, are the source of the difficulties faced by the county when financing infrastructure repairs.
“Regulations are responsible for driving up our costs,” said Thomas.
An alternative to increasing the sales tax or raising property taxes is “a little less of the regulations from the Army Corps of Engineers, the DEC and the Adirondack Park Agency that require more engineering and the construction of bigger, wider culverts,” said Thomas.
“Less regulation, and a little more cooperation from those agencies, would go a long way toward reducing our costs,” Thomas said.
