Before being hired a decade ago, executive director of the Catskill Center for Conservation and Development (CCCD) Jeff Senterman said he had been hearing the same question from various local groups: Why wasn’t New York State government investing in the Catskills? The answer: “We came to the conclusion the Catskills didn’t have a squeaky wheel.”
Senterman has helped create a very squeaky wheel.
Senterman now spends time in Albany each year speaking to the regional priorities and the importance of the Catskills, which together with the Adirondacks attract 12 million visitors per year, generating billions of dollars in economic activity. But the region, he tells the legislators, contributes more than money. The trees of the forest preserves can be considered the lungs of the state, releasing oxygen and cleaning the air. The waters are the circulatory system, supporting the communities along the streams and providing drinking water for the nine million residents of New York City.
More attention has been focused on the recognition of the Catskills as having a distinctive role in its contributions to the state’s human environment. “Ten years ago, legislators would ask me where the Catskills were,” recalled Senterman. “Today, they say, Oh, you’re the Catskills guy. We went from zero dollars to a $10-million line for the forest preserves of the Catskills and the Adirondacks.”
A state-budget line item is the holy grail in New York State. With few exceptions, if you’ve got one, more often than not the only question becomes how much money it will have.
Senterman was a prime mover in forming the Catskill Park Coalition, consisting of about three dozen groups, including the Open Space Institute, the Nature Conservancy and various chambers of commerce. The focus is on connecting with the state legislature. “Each year we establish priorities for the Catskills, what each community needs, and we use that to communicate with legislators. The coalition works by mutual consent — we only advance priorities that every member can support, whether it’s public safety, protecting the environment, or improving communities.”
Senterman is coalition co-chair.
Last April, the state budget allocated $10 million to the Catskills and the Adirondack forest preserves, a $2-million increase from the previous year. The Catskills Visitor Center in Mount Tremper, which the Catskill Center manages and operates, got $250,000 — an increase of $50,000 from the previous budget. A Catskills stewards program, which places stewards at high-use trailheads and along outdoor recreation hot spots, was awarded an additional $50,000 in the Aid to Localities budget championed by state senator Michelle Hinchey. Other related programs prioritized by the Catskill Park Coalition received funding, too.
New ways to connect
The CCCD’s revenue stream is heavily dependent on governmental and foundation support, which varies greatly from year to year, while payrolls — now over a million dollars a year — must be met like clockwork. The organization has solved that problem, reporting a $6,833,170 fund balance in its non-profit tax return for 2023 — the most recent year available — an exponential increase during Senterman’s tenure. According to the same source, Jeff Senterman’s compensation has increased from $93,094 in 2020 to $111,143 in 2023 — not a bad deal from the employer’s perspective.
CCCD’s central office, for more than a half-century in Arkville, near the geographical heart of the seven-county region of jurisdiction, but four years ago it moved that office into the visitor center. Mount Tremper was a more convenient location. It’s a small office space, with three cubicles crammed into a tiny space. Most of the CCCD’s work is done remotely or on Zoom.
In 2015 the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) finally constructed the building and the nearby fire tower — the sole state fire tower situated on flat land next to a much higher hillside.
The Maurice D. Hinchey Catskills Visitor Center was the realization of a 40-year dream by the congressmember, who is buried on the property.
An hour before closing on the brisk, bright second Sunday of April, visitor center director Katie Palm was pleased to report 45 attendees that day. “From exhibits to nature trails and community events, there’s something for everyone at the Catskills Visitor Center, and visitors and residents alike will find new ways to connect with the nature, history and culture that make this region so unique,” says the CCCD website.
Founding president of the organization Sherret Chase had written in an essay almost 60 years ago that the natural environment of the region could be preserved only if “regional land use is carefully and responsibly planned,” a message initially unpopular with the proud but impoverished home-rule advocates of the deeper Catskills. That attitude hasn’t changed much. It’s taken decades for the players to reach the conclusion that all do better by working together despite their profound differences.
Raising awareness
This year also marks the tenth year of employment for deputy executive director Kali Bird. “The success of the last ten years has been our work as a team,” said Senterman. “We found in each other the best of all working worlds. I’m an ideas guy, and Kali says, Well, how are you going to do that?”
Senterman and Bird operate an organization that has been largely faithful to its overall goals “while changing considerably in their execution,” its executive director proclaims.
Bird said her role at CCCD was “to “keep everything going and solve problems as they arise.”
Her three-person team raises awareness of how to cope with invasive species and to preserve biodiversity.
“It’s impossible to do without a partnership, and we’ve got a great relationship with all the players,” Bird said. “We’ve eliminated new invasives, identified emerging threats and facilitated rapid responding. We are relatively uninvaded compared to a lot of the Hudson Valley and Long Island.” The emerging threat of giant hogweed, for instance, did not materialize in the Catskills following a publicity campaign by CCCD and their affiliates.
Bird was also key to organizing the stewardship program, which has been educating visitors to pristine swimming holes and waterfalls threatened by a sudden influx of people as a result of Internet and print publicity. Stewards teach visitors how to treat the natural environment.
A NASA-funded citizen science project to measure snowfall has brought Catskills volunteers into their project. “Feeding national data and working with researchers brings our local area to a recognition of regional importance,” said Bird, who appears in a photo of volunteers on the X-Snow project website, taken in front of the visitor center. “Even one landowner can make a difference on their property, and the Catskills have a role in the country.”
“In any place that mixes communities, activities, stakeholders and priorities,” said Senterman, “it’s a challenge to find a path to progress. There are many viewpoints and voices. Sometimes we are the odd duck out because we’re not solely focused on the environment or development.”
Finding the best lane
It’s not easy to forge relationships with government agencies, which involve slow movement and abundant red tape.
CCCD is one of the organizations that signed the Memorandum of Agreement (MOA) with New York City 25 years ago, to regulate the city’s relationship with upstate communities around the city-owned reservoirs. Because of the MOA, said Senterman, “We are deeply enmeshed in ongoing negotiations” with the New York City Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) and other stakeholders. DEP’s economic interest has been to avoid — or at least delay — the billions of dollars that filtration of its water supply — the largest unfiltered water system in the world.
Organized in 1995, The Coalition of Watershed Towns (COWT) has been the main voice in municipal protection against DEP purchase of developable Catskills land. To this day, COWT and DEP continue to haggle over what land DEP can purchase, and how COWT towns and counties can opt out of allowing DEP purchase of arguably developable Catskills land. The oft-distrustful monthly public discussions between the two entities are reaching the 30-year mark in 2025.
Under Senterman’s leadership, the CCCD has positioned itself as an honest broker, modifying Sherret Chase’s vision of regional land use through careful and responsible planning. Though Senterman’s work includes tourism development, Main Street revitalization, smart-growth initiatives, historic preservation and other activities, he has left the classical economic development lane largely to COWT.
“The Catskill Center’s programs are aligned “so that we can protect the natural environment while at the same time support a sustainable human environment,” he told Roxbury consultant Simona David in 2021.
That concept lacks not ambition. “The term ‘human environment’ is not simply about the physical surroundings we inhabit,” according to the Enviroliteracy website. “It’s a complex tapestry woven from the interplay of natural, social, economic and cultural elements. Understanding the human environment is crucial for comprehending our place in the world, our impact on it, and the possibilities for sustainable co-existence.”
The COWT-DEP meetings don’t spend time discussing concepts of sustainable co-existence – even though on a certain level that’s exactly what they’re engaged in. They leave that lane of opportunity to the Catskill Center.
What’s in a name?
The CCCD’s mission, its website declares, is “to protect and foster the environmental, cultural and economic well-being of the Catskills region.” Despite a name suggesting the contrary, the Catskill Center for Conservation and Development doesn’t have a major direct connection to development in the sense of the region’s residents making a living in the Catskills. Its website listing 19 staff names provides paragraphs of backgrounds of each. Most have strong environmental backgrounds and interests.
The titles of two staff members, development director Danielle Tucker and development associate Sarah DiMaggio, use the “development” word, but their jobs are not to participate in economic development but to raise money for the Catskill Center.
On the other hand, a million-dollar payroll and the employment of 19 Catskills residents are a significant contributor to the local economy. Their work may also be, as Jeff Senterman believes, a harbinger of the region’s changing economic activity.
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