Puddle Jumpers #4 - Kevin Kennedy
Puddle Jumpers is a podcast produced by the Paul Smith’s College Adirondack Watershed Institute. Hosted by Stephanie Rock and Brett Wimsatt. Edited by Stephanie Rock with assistance from Tom Collins, Brett Wimsatt, and Jennifer Denny.
Music: In the Forest by Lesfm from https://pixabay.com/
Transcript
STEPHANIE: Welcome to Puddle Jumpers, a podcast where we jump in the big puddles of the Adirondack lakes and ponds to learn more about science, stewardship, and community. My name is Stephanie, and I’m the Watershed Science Communication Fellow for the Paul Smith’s College Adirondack Watershed Institute with funding from the Lake Champlain Sea Grant.
This episode, we are joined by Aquatic Invasive Species Program Director Brett Wimsatt as we celebrate Kevin Kennedy as he enters his 10th season with the Adirondack Watershed Institute stewardship program.
BRETT: All right. So, we are joined by Kevin Kennedy here today. He's a watercraft inspection steward with the Adirondack Watershed Institute at Paul Smiths College, and Kevin is coming up on an important milestone here with our program. He is coming into his 10th summer working with us. He's had an incredible few years with us going from a steward to a regional supervisor, back to a steward again and working in a number of places throughout the Adirondacks.
So welcome, Kevin. Thanks for being here with us. Have a few things we'd like to discuss and just get to know you a little bit better as we as we go through this podcast and conversation.
KEVIN: Great to be here.
BRETT: Great. So first off, would you mind just giving us a little bit of background on who you are, where you're from and go from there?
KEVIN: I'm Kevin. I grew up in Schenectady. Joined the Navy for, and was there for 27 years and I retired in 2011 and I moved back to Piseco in 2014, in the fall, and when I got here in the spring, the Piseco Lake Association said, hey, you'd be perfect for this new program they're starting in Piseco. And so, I said, OK, so what's the program? And they said we're going to be inspecting watercraft to make sure weeds and insects that don't belong in our water can't get here. And I said OK, how do I do that? So, they put me in touch with the AWI and I was hired on Memorial Day weekend on a part time basis because I had a lot of other commitments that summer. That morphed into not only being a steward, but we had just introduced decon stations down there halfway through the summer, so I had to learn all that stuff. And that went well for the first two years I worked you know, part time, weekends. And when I came back for season three, we had no supervisor. The supervisor we had got promoted to a full-time position here at Paul Smith’s, and so I was told you can be the supervisor, which I did for six years, maybe? I think 6 years.
BRETT: Sounds about right. Now, what was your first year like stewarding with us?
KEVIN: The first weekend, first couple of weeks were difficult, because I got hired after training. So I mean, if you have time for a brief story of my introduction to AWI.
BRETT: Let's hear it.
KEVIN: The person who had your job came to Piseco with all these papers for me to fill out. You know, I-9, proof that I can work here, that sort of stuff. Said you're hired. And then my supervisor came by about 1/2 hour later and said here's the tablet. And these are the questions we need to ask every boater. So, I read all those questions, yeah, nope I can ask everybody that. If you find anything on the boat, collect it. Put it in one of these bags and I'll be back later. Everything else you want to know, you can read about in the in the tablet, all the PowerPoints were there. So, imagine my surprise when the second year I actually came to training where we came to campus for two weeks, er one week. Supervisors came one week, but all the stewards came here for a whole week of training, and I found, you know, the science behind the plants and how to properly do inspection, I mean, learned a whole lot to that would have been my second year where I actually came to training and now the way training is today, partially forced by the COVID where we could, we're forced to do it online and that seems to work really well. And then a short one day in person where we can just focus on the meat of the program. It seems to be working out really well.
BRETT: Right, right. And so that actually leads into one of the next things I wanted to ask you was just being that you've been with the program for 10 years now. You've really seen us from our infancy back when we were working with anywhere from single digits to 10 to 20 watercraft inspection stewards across the park to where we've grown now where we're exceeding 115 seasonal employees. So, what's your take on how AWI has expanded over the years and what improvements you've seen, you know, in that amount of time?
KEVIN: The training is definitely better. We're more focused on what our mission is. We used to have, I call it fluff, in the program. I mean things that kind of were outdoorsy, but didn't really focus on training stewards to be stewards and that's our job, so that's what we need to focus on. And the quality of the people seems to be much better and I think we're getting better applicants. I mean, you would know that more than me, but it seems that even though sometimes we have trouble fulfilling positions because there's no place to live in a lot of portions of the park, the applicant quality has gone up. And the people we get are super motivated to keep their water clean and help the environment and just be a good steward of what we have to live with here.
BRETT: That's great. So, getting a better idea of where you've worked and the sites that you've been at, can you can you share with us what sites you've been at around the Adirondacks? I know most of it's kind of central to the Piseco/Speculator area, but where have you worked and to share a little bit of your experience in that region?
KEVIN: I started in Piseco and that's where I'm currently working now. That's my home lake.
So I have a, I really like that area. Of course, Speculator with Moffat’s Beach, and we have a decon in Speculator. That was pretty much my first two years. Oh, and Indian Lake. We rotated the steward's a couple weeks here a couple of weeks there so everybody got to see all the different places. Not like today where you’re pretty much hired for one location and you work your whole season in one place.
And when I became supervisor, I had Indian Lake, Speculator, Piseco. And then they sent me down to West Lake and Caroga Lake in the in the southern, extreme southern corner of the park. As we brought the, the Caroga Lake, Caroga Lake something Association, protection, whatever they are. They came into the fold, we started helping them steward, and they finally joined on with us.
And then the big year, I picked up Blue Mountain decon and Long Lake, Racquette Lake, 4th Lake, 8th Lake, Rocky Mount decon, Stillwater Reservoir, Brantingham, and White Lake.
BRETT: So you took on all of southwestern Adirondacks.
KEVIN: And some days it was over a 200 mile commute to get to, you know, from my home to all the way to Stillwater and hit the other ones in between, it was like 215, 220 mile round trip. So a lot of windshield time but…
BRETT: Drive your truck right into the ground.
KEVIN: You get to meet a lot of interesting people because depending where you go in the park, it's different. Like the High Peaks region has its certain personality. Old Forge has a different personality. If you're over by Lake George, that's way different. And then if you're down in the, we call it the quiet section of the park, there's not a lot of big tourist industry stuff. It's all more mom and pop operations. You know, we don't have water parks and, you know, huge arenas and it's very, very rural and low key. So that makes for an enjoyable summer.
BRETT: Great. So now with working at these different sites, you know obviously your responsibilities have varied as it went from stewarding and spending time with the physical launch to logging windshield miles, checking in with the staff and then now back to doing more of a stewarding based position. Obviously, when you're supervising, when you're working directly with the stewards, you have that, you know, a little bit more personal connection with them and when you're steward and you have more of that personal connection with the with the, the boaters that are using the launches, but, you know, beyond that, what what's really motivating you at the launch or as you're supervising to be able to kind of move forward with that work?
KEVIN: At the launch, it's just to do a good job. I mean, the public has come to expect us there and, I mean, if they've ever been inspected by a good steward and somebody's not so good, they know. They know that somebody hasn't met the mark and they'll probably let somebody in the program know. So you have to always be on your toes and do the best you can do. You can't see everything. You can't catch everything, but you have to know where to look and you, you do your best.
As far as being a supervisor, I think one of the greatest things was folks who were in high school started working for me as stewards and because they couldn't decon because they were too young and then a decon. And now one of them's actually my boss this year again. So, he's he started out, you know, at 17 and now that he's 21, he's the boss. And watching these folks grow and there's several others that have, you know, come into the program since I've been here, started out as a steward or a, well you, Brett, as a decon manager and now you're the, you know, the head honcho. I mean it's gratifying to see people do good and, you know, I look at part of my job as not only do I have to do my job, but I want to make my supervisor’s job easy. So, if he never has to come and tell me to do something, that's good because I've already, I know what needs to be done and I just do it. And that makes him look good because he doesn't have problems in the region, so you know, maybe he'll be on the short list for a higher position if that's what they're looking for and it's like, you know, grow your own people.
BRETT: So now possibly the most important question here that I have for you is no doubt you're passionate about the work. You're committed to AWI. You're committed to stewardship in the Adirondacks, and you know, as you've just shared, you have a really strong motivation to doing the work and protecting the resource. Does that dedication to what we're doing, does that waver when the black flies mosquitoes come out in force? And what is the buggiest area of the Adirondacks?
KEVIN: Yeah, sometimes it, you would think it would get overwhelming, but you know, they're only here for a couple weeks and then the nice weather comes and you know, just when you're at the launch and you know that loon flies by or you see a beaver swim by or, I mean, we've had turkeys.
BRETT: Yeah. Certainly no shortage of wildlife sightings. You're right. It's incredible what we hear from stewards. You know, we've had stewards that, you know, see a cow and a calf moose every single morning at a specific bog right next to their site. We have the eagles. We have some incredible photography from stewards capturing all of these, these very unique scenes, you know. You're in a unique position where you're able to sit waterfront, you know, at a lake or a pond or a river for 8 hours a day and really absorb it and oftentimes being just a quiet bystander taking it all in.
KEVIN: Right. Especially with when it's a slow day, you know, early June in the middle of the week, there's not a lot of boaters around because school and work and all that. And you can see a lot of wildlife. Maybe you don't see the animal, you know, if you walk down by the water you can see prints in the sand.
And just watching the vegetation from you know, we're just getting leaves most years are just coming out now we're a little ahead this year, but to go from the spring to the full green and then the wonderful fall colors here, especially when I was driving all that, all over the park. I mean it's just, you couldn't wait to turn the next corner to see what might be there.
BRETT: So now over your last 10 years, no doubt you've seen some interesting things. You've had some good moments. You've had some tough times. Could you share with us maybe your proudest moment over the over that time?
KEVIN: I think just the successful seasons and seeing people that work for me succeed, you know, become something. You know, and the opposite would be the people who don't. You know, sometimes I think I took some of them a little personal that that guy didn't turn out to be such a good steward. It's like, what could I, and I think about it sometimes over the winter. What could I have done different to change? But some people they just, that's their personality and you have to accept that not everybody's going to be a steward. But there's way more positive to this job than you know the one less than 1% that's negative.
BRETT: That's right. No, that's absolutely the case. It's, you know, it's not necessarily that this job is for everyone. You know, it does require a unique skill set and mindset to spend your time outside and have that, you know, personal, deep and ingrained passion for the outdoors and stewardship of the resource in our region. So yeah, it's OK if it's not for everyone, but we do appreciate those that are able to do it and do it to such a high level.
Yeah. Great. So, I guess related to that, I mean, is there anything else you'd like to share from your last seasons, an interesting stories, something surprising, anything along those lines?
KEVIN: I mean, you know, you see the surprising stuff. Where people back boats in and hit the brakes and the whole trailer comes right off the bumper because they didn't put a pin in the hitch. You know, I've seen that. I've seen people try to launch boats without undoing the straps in the front and the boat tips almost straight up on the where the motors in the water and the nose is pointing straight up. And just especially in the spring, watching people make that first attempt at launching. I mean, it's funny stuff like that and just conversations with people. You never know, you know I would’ve never met somebody like that had I not been working there.
BRETT: Fully agree and I'll echo the interesting launching that happens at boat launches, it's incredible. And you know, never cease to amaze you and provide a laugh on any given day of, you know, just instances at the launch. People backing up boats, falling off trailers, forgetting to put in drain plugs. You know, they all happen and it's, everyone's human and no, no one can avoid that.
KEVIN: Guy came with a brand-new boat. He picked it up in Utica Bass Pro Shops. Drove up to Piseco. I inspected the boat and he's so proud. “I got this brand-new boat, so I'm sure there's nothing wrong with it” and there wasn't. I mean, it still had the sticker, the bar code on the engine and the hull where they could scan it out.
And I asked him, I said, have you ever boated before? “Ohh yes. I used to come here all the time.” I said so. You're familiar with the lake and you know the sandbars and the buoys? “Oh, yes, we know all that.” I said, would you like any help? “Nope, everything's fine. I know what I'm doing.” He puts the boat in the water, and he makes it about 50 feet and you hear this God awful noise coming from the engine.
He forgot to take his transom saver off, so he shredded a brand-new prop. Spun up. So, he paddles back, puts the boat on the trailer, pulls off to the side, unhooks, drives the hour down to Utica, gets a brand new propeller and comes back and relaunches. And you would think now that guy would probably be having a bad day but he was the most positive guy maybe for the whole summer. He had a smile on his face the whole time. “Yeah, but what a dummy I am. I screwed this up and oh my God, my kids think I'm an idiot”, but he just, it's just, you know, the positivity from the boater was just. I mean, I was having a bad day because he ruined his boat.
BRETT: Sure. Oh, yeah. No, that's certainly not the best-case scenario, but hey, at least he had a plan to get back out on the water. Awesome. Great. So, do you have a favorite site? You've talked about Poplar a little bit, but what what's your favorite location that you've worked with us at? And you know what to you is, you know, been the piece that connects with you?
KEVIN: Well, I obviously like Poplar cause it's my home lake and I know most of the boaters there. But I do find it interesting, I enjoyed the time I was in Racquette Lake. That's a nice it has its own dynamic. And again, everybody there seems to know everybody and it's just conversely, I don't like the traffic flow at like 4th Lake or a couple of times down in Northville. That's just way, I like the more laid back where you couldn't have time to form a relationship with the boater. When you're at these busy launches, it's like you, you got to keep them moving so that the line doesn't get cause, you know, people get impatient when they're waiting in line. So, you really don't have time to go much beyond the basic information with those boaters. Whereas at the slower launches you can actually give more of our message and the why's and the how's than just you know you need to do this, but why?
BRETT: That’s so true and it's a really great point. You know, at those busier sites it can be difficult to find the time and space to have a meaningful conversation with a boater about what they can do to minimize the spread of aquatic invasive species. And so you're right and in your region there's more of the opposite in being that you have that time and space to have those conversations, so, no, that's great.
So talking about your home lake area there, Piseco Lake and spend some time with Poplar, but then also the surrounding areas. What invasive species do you have in and around the Piseco area or ones that you just came across while you were stewarding?
KEVIN: Piseco is spiny water flea. Lake Pleasant and Speculator is spiny water flea. Which I believe they found in 2016 in Lake Pleasant on a water shield school trip that Paul Smith’s does. They went up with the school there in Lake Pleasant and those kids were out doing the tour and they actually found water flea.
Two of those girls on that water shield boat ended up working for Paul Smith’s, one for one season and one for three or four seasons. So, you know, they learned at a young age and then once they were old enough, they came to work for us.
So, most of the waters we have something except for West Lake, which is in the southern part down by Caroga. They have no known invasives. So, as I tell every steward, when a boat leaves, every boat needs to go to decon cause it's potentially carrying spiny water flea except for the steward who works in West Lake. He doesn't have to worry cause there is nothing there. But there's milfoils and pond weeds working in Speculator because it's a corridor into the park, you see a lot of boats come from Saratoga, so there's a lot of zebra mussel interceptions there. So, we take care of that.
I mean I had a fella wave to me the first year as he passed by me on Route 30. He got to Indian Lake, they did an inspection and found zebra mussels, turned him around. He had to drive the 20 minutes back down to Speculator and he spent a good amount of time, we got to do some hand scrape and he was right down there helping me. And at the end, he said I should have just stopped on my way up. Again, you know, here's a guy who added an extra hour and a half to his launching day, but was still positive and was grateful for the information because he didn't know, he just thought it was something that grew on every boat that came out of the lake and didn't know that it was harmful. So, you know you make a difference.
BRETT: Absolutely. And I mean that's, you know, it takes time with a lot of these things and you know so the introduction of a lot of these roadside watercraft decontamination stations. It's, you know, it takes some time for people to become aware of them and to start using them. And that that's just a great success story of it actually working, you know, the boater made it to where they were launching. Steward was able to identify the aquatic invasive species on the boat, recommend that boat for a decontamination further down the road and was able to convey that messaging to the boater effectively to the point where they went back and visited you at that at that boat wash station.
And so, I mean, that's something that we're seeing that just with time, more boaters are becoming more aware of where these roadside checkpoints are. We have them on most of the primary, you know, roads and entrance points into the park, so they're coming in on 28 and on Route 30 and on Route 3, all these number of different primary…
KEVIN: And the Northway.
BRETT: …on the Northway exactly. And so there are these options for boaters to be able to both get an inspection and a decon on their way into the park which is great to have.
KEVIN: One thing that's nice about both Piseco and the Indian Lake launch site is in the town of Lake Pleasant. They have local laws that it is illegal to put a boat, knowingly put a boat with an invasive in the water. So I mean we have the blanket policy for the state, but they have a town law and they will, with the phone call to the Boat Sheriff to go out and investigate. And, as far as I know, they've never issued a ticket, but, but that's something that has the teeth of the law, which is even goes more in depth than the state mandate, you know, because as stewards, we can't refuse anybody, but we can point out the fact that there is a law that says this could happen so I think that helps. Especially at Indian Lake, because the decon’s right there, we can easily, you know, if you just go up there, you'll be in full compliance with the law. That helps as a selling point to the practice of getting your boat decontaminated.
BRETT: Great point. So now going into your 10th year, maybe 11th year, 12th year to come, what are what are your hopes for our program going forward? What would you like to see happen areas for us to improve and just further be able to serve the Adirondack region?
KEVIN: Well, in a perfect world, AWI would be in Blue Mountain Lake, right in the middle of the park, more or less. I would like to see some of the towns get more involved with workforce housing because there's a, I mean around Paul Smith’s, you have no problem finding rentals because the students live off campus, they can live on campus, so it works. Other places, you know, maybe by Glens Falls, there's a lot of rentals in Lake George/Glens Falls area. But the interior of the park, there's really not a lot. And people that used to rent now figured out Airbnb process and that's out of the stewards price range.
BRETT: Yeah. No, I agree with all that and you bring up a great point about housing and it's something that's certainly plaguing us and as well as most other seasonal employers and full time but seasonal employers across the Adirondack Park is just like you said, so many of the what used to be available seasonal housing has now gone to the Airbnb market or another similar platform. And so it's something that we have the interested applicants and individuals who want to be a part of our work and want to be a watercraft inspection steward. But if they can't find somewhere reasonable and affordable to spend their summer here, it's just not possible for them, and it's in many cases it's not even finding something that's affordable. It's something just at all that is available to rent. Yeah, it'll definitely need to be something that is addressed in the years to come to ensure that we have the people that we need to do work over the course of the summer.
All right, so when you are either during the summer while you're working for us or throughout the rest of the year, who's KEVIN Kennedy? What do you like to do? What are? What are your some of your other hobbies or general interests?
KEVIN: Well, I like to travel in the winter. We usually go away for two or three weeks, usually down south. I live in Virginia in the winter. We go all the way south to the Gulf Coast or to Florida to sight see some of the historic stuff. In the summer, there's, you know, hiking and boating and I am in an axe throwing thing on Saturday nights and we have a good time with that, throwing axes at targets.
BRETT: Perfect. No, I mean certainly a summer enjoying community down there around Piseco. It's an amazing recreational area.
All right, so we're starting to come to a close here, but I wanted to just open it up to you. If there's anything else you'd like to share with us, either about yourself or your time with AWI or anything in between.
KEVIN: I think this is a great job for two types of people, so it was a high school kids and college kids. Maybe their first job or second job. Definitely if you're thinking of going into the natural resource, outdoor conservation type stuff, this is a steppingstone. So many folks have started here and gone on to get jobs with DEC or with Paul Smith’s or partner organizations, and that never hurts a resume to work in the field.
And the other point I would make is for those retirees who listen to podcast, this is a great part time job. You still have time to see your grandkids and do all that stuff. But you're doing something positive for the community, and maybe you're taking up the slack where they can hire somebody for five days, but who does the other two? So, if you're available for two days during the middle of the week, you can help the program meet its 7-day coverage and you know, they don't have to look for a steward to work two days here, 2 days there so somebody can work in the same spot all the time. It's not a physically tough job, so even people with mild handicaps, especially as you get older, maybe you're not as fast or as quick. But, I think I still hold the claim as a supervisor I had a steward who was 14 when she worked with us 1 summer her first summer. She came back like 3 summers in a row. And I had a gentleman who ran a decon, who was 81, was the oldest one, so everything from 14 to 81 you can do this job.
BRETT: Fantastic. Couldn't have said it better myself, and that's I think that's a great spot to leave this off. And just that, yeah, we hire a diverse work group and it takes a lot to man everything across the park and so yes, there's no definition of who a watercraft inspection steward is. It's high school students, it's college students, it's retirees, it's summer homeowners, it's people that want to relocate for the summer for a, you know, post grad opportunity.
KEVIN: Teachers.
BRETT: Exactly, we hire a number of teachers. And so and like you just said, Kevin, it's not only a 40 hour week that we're hiring for, we hire a lot of people across the park for two or three or four days a week to help supplement full-time coverage at site so that we can get seven day coverage. Or, you know, if we're able to stack together other part time coverage, we can get full time coverage. Much like the site that you're working at this year where we have 3 part-time individuals from the Piseco community working together to provide seven day coverage at that site. So, it's a great system and wonderful.
OK. Well, thank you so much, Kevin. Appreciate your time for being here having this conversation here today. And above all, thank you very much for 10 very dedicated years of service with the program. It's been a wonderful time working with you personally now for the last five years and I foresee a few more years still coming. So, thank you very much.
KEVIN: And you know, thanks for being a great organization. You guys make it so easy. Anybody can do it. You tell us everything we need to do, how to do it. And then it's just showing up and doing the work. It makes it easy. And if it wasn't fun, I wouldn't be here.
STEPHANIE: Congratulations again to Kevin Kennedy on his 10th season in AWI’s stewardship program. Your dedication helps to keep our Adirondack waters clean for all to enjoy.
Thank you for listening, and the next time you find yourself jumping from one of these big puddles in the Adirondacks to another, remember to do your part to protect our water by making sure your watercraft is clean, drained, and dry!
Puddle Jumpers is a podcast produced by the Paul Smith’s College Adirondack Watershed Institute. Hosted by Stephanie Rock and Brett Wimsatt. Edited by Stephanie Rock with assistance from Tom Collins, Brett Wimsatt, and Jennifer Denny.