Council urges affordable housing, career training for Moriah Shock facility

A satellite view of the Moriah Shock Incarceration Correctional Facility complex. (Photo courtesy of Google Earth)
MORIAH — The Adirondack Council is championing a plan to reuse the former Moriah Shock Incarceration Correctional Facility property in Mineville, in Essex County, for affordable housing and for a training facility for conservation careers.
“The (Adirondack) Park has a great need for affordable housing for people who live and work in the Adirondacks full time, including forest rangers, trails crews and summer help,” the Adirondack Council, an environmental organization, said in a news release. “Meanwhile, New York needs training facilities for a new generation of conservation personnel, including a Civilian Conservation Corps to cope with record-breaking visitor levels and to carry out the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act.”
Adirondack Council officials, along with Moriah Supervisor Thomas Scozzafava, area state legislators and a representative of the Adirondack Mountain Club will discuss details of the proposal and the need for the project at a news conference Tuesday morning at the site of the correctional facility.
“They bring a use for the facility. Whether it will ever happen remains to be seen,” Scozzafava said in a telephone interview on Monday.
He said that if nothing else, it will bring attention to the need to reuse the facility, formerly a boot camp-style program for non-violent offenders, which the state closed in March.
“If they can get the governor’s attention on the importance of this facility, it’s more than I could do,” he said.
Scozzafava said he hopes the Adirondack Council will be able to convince Gov. Kathy Hochul to tour the facility and learn firsthand about economic challenges the town faces.
The shock camp was one of six correctional facilities statewide that the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision closed in March.
A state commission is working on reuse plans for these and other previously closed state correctional facilities.
Before the closing, Scozzafava, state Sen. Dan Stec, R-Queensbury, and Assemblyman Matt Simpson, R-Horicon, proposed reusing the facility as an alternative sentencing program that counties could send incarcerated individuals to, but that proposal never gained traction.
Scozzafava said since the closing he has spoken with Empire State Development Corp. representatives and members of the reuse commission about several concepts, such as using the facility as a specialized correctional facility for elderly incarcerated individuals, but none of his ideas have gained support.
Scozzafava said he is pleased that the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision has continued to maintain the facility.
“They have kept the lights on,” and kept an employee assigned to the facility to monitor the property and provide security, he said.