ALBANY — Shortly after midnight on June 18, the 2025 state legislative session was gavelled to a close.

That meant, for the second year in a row, a bill seeking to implement and expand the findings of the Adirondack Road Salt Reduction Task Force — which released its report in 2023 — failed to become law.

Assembly Bill 4481 was sponsored by Assemblyman Billy Jones (D-Chateaugay Lake). It sought to establish two groups — the New York Road Salt Reduction Council and the New York Road Salt Reduction Advisory Committee — that would be tasked with developing and overseeing the implementation of findings from the Adirondack task force statewide by Jan. 1, 2028.

The bill proposed 15 members on the council, including representatives from the state Department of Transportation, state Department of Environmental Conservation, state Department of Health, state Thruway Authority, New York City Department of Environmental Protection, local government associations, legislature appointees and the chairperson of the advisory committee. This, in turn, was proposed to include up to 25 members tasked with supplying the council with data and findings about the impacts of road salt on drinking water and road safety implications that come with potentially reducing salt usage.

The bill was supported by the Lake George Association and Adirondack Council, which both would have received seats on the advisory committee.

Lake George Association Executive Director Brendan Wiltse felt it was important for the DOT, DEC and DOH to be on the same page when developing these recommendations statewide.

“They were working together on the (Adirondack Road Salt Reduction) Task Force when that was in existence, and we feel that having those three agencies continue to have a venue for conversation around salt reduction is important to move these efforts forward,” he said. “The committees would also bring in expertise and other insights from across the state to bear on that conversation.”

Adirondack Council Director of Communications John Sheehan said maintaining safe roads does not mean stopping road salting.

“We’re not asking anybody to stop it,” he said. “We’re simply asking that we use a lot less and take into consideration what the capacity of the landscape is to withstand it. That’s going to make a big difference in terms of how many people’s water gets contaminated in the future.”

Sheehan added that salt concentration data, and specifically the timing of those elevated levels, from Adirondack streams points to a troubling picture.

“I think we are reaching the point where we’ve already seen groundwater being contaminated in the Adirondacks,” he said. “And streams that are saltier in the summertime than they are in the spring, which should be troubling to us because, essentially, summer flow comes from underground instead of from runoff.”

It was the second year in a row that the bill had passed the state Senate, but failed to make it beyond the state Assembly’s Transportation Committee. Despite this, the committee’s chairman, Assemblyman William Magnarelli (D-Syracuse), said road salt reduction statewide is an issue that’s front-of-mind for him, and something he’s pushing for.

“I know that people in the Adirondacks have been affected and their wells have been contaminated and we’re very, very, concerned about that, and so is the DOT,” he said. “I want to make (it) absolutely clear that just because this bill did not pass doesn’t mean that it isn’t being looked at very seriously in Albany. It is.”

Magnarelli didn’t agree with the way this bill went about trying to reduce road salt application.

“Passing that piece of legislation that creates another commission to tell the DOT what to do, to me, is just superfluous,” he said. “I don’t understand why we need commissions on top of commissions on top of commissions to get things done. I guarantee we won’t get it done any faster (that way). We have the DOT’s attention right now, very much so, especially with New York City and the Adirondacks being involved.”

Magnarelli was referring to the discovery of salt contamination in several reservoirs in the Catskills that provide water to the roughly 8 million residents of New York City. It’s a startling development that Magnarelli said could have major implications down the road. He said that the trend at one reservoir put its viability at risk.

“So much so that in the next 10 (to) 15 years, one of them might have to shut down,” he said. “And now you’re talking about water to 8 million people.”

Magnarelli said these findings only came to his attention during the second half of the 2025 legislative session.

“All the sudden, you’ve got something brand new that I was not aware of until this year,” he said. “And that new part of this is that New York City is as concerned as the Adirondacks with the salt on the roads. Low and behold, we have a coming together of upstate and downstate and a push to really make things happen.”

This summer, Magnarelli said he plans on hosting a roundtable to gather input ahead of next year’s legislative session. He wants to hear from experts in salt application technology and stakeholders from New York City, the Adirondacks and other areas of the state.

“We’re going to have a roundtable of the experts to kind of map out where we should be going on top of the (Adirondack Road Salt Reduction Task Force) report we already have, which was isolated just to the Adirondacks,” he said. “We need to know on a statewide level, not just the Adirondacks, ‘What are we going to do about salt?'”

Jones said he’d continue efforts with road salt reduction in the next legislative session, and was hopeful that lawmakers will then take action to reduce it.

“I think we are in a good position to pass it next year and get it out of committee and get it to the floor,” he said.

Magnarelli said the next couple of months will be important to get a running start ahead of next year’s legislative session.

“We need to just move forward and keep the momentum going,” he said. “I think I can do that during the summer.”

The Adirondack Road Salt Reduction Task Force report can be found at tinyurl.com/mr48nv6e. To view the report on the New York City reservoir salt contamination, which was publicly released on March 21, visit tinyurl.com/mpp5ftrr.