Pulaski’s Water Board is pursuing up to $2 million in federal block grant money for Phase II of its water main replacement while the village’s $5.9 million sewer plant project works through DEC and Army Corps permitting. The clock that matters is the fall salmon run.
PULASKI, N.Y. The village that carries the Salmon River through its downtown is spending the quiet weeks of summer doing what it always does before the crowds arrive: working on the pipes.
This story came from public records we pulled ourselves
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On June 8, the Pulaski Water Board voted unanimously to move ahead with an application for a federal Community Development Block Grant to help pay for Phase II of the village’s Water Main Replacement Project, according to the board’s draft minutes. Five weeks later, on July 13, the Village Board of Trustees held the required public hearing at the Snow Memorial Building on North Jefferson Street, where the village laid out an ask of up to $2 million.
The public notice posted by the village spells out the stakes. “Village of Pulaski is applying for up to 2 million in CDBG funds to Water System Improvements,” the notice reads. The state program behind the money, administered by New York State Homes and Community Renewal, “will make available to eligible local governments approximately $29.2 million in funding for the current program year for housing, public infrastructure, public facilities, economic development, imminent threat, and community planning, with the principal purpose of benefiting low- and moderate-income persons.”
Written comments on the application were accepted through July 16, routed to Village Clerk and Treasurer Catherine Spinney. If the state says yes, Pulaski would capture roughly 7 percent of the entire statewide CDBG pool for one water project in a village of 2,186 residents, the population recorded in the 2020 Census.
The water main push did not stop at Phase II. At the same June 8 meeting, the board’s engineering consultant, identified in the minutes as BCA, “recommended that the Board apply for a WIIA grant for Phase III of the Water Main Improvement project,” referring to the state’s Water Infrastructure Improvement Act program run through the Environmental Facilities Corporation. The minutes note BCA “will reach out to the bond lawyer and Municipal Solutions to discuss moving forward.” In other words, before the second phase is funded, the third is already being scoped.
There is visible progress on the ground, too. The board reported that 637 water meters have been installed across the system, part of the modernization work that runs alongside the main replacement. A separate item in the minutes notes a new contact at AT&T is working with BCA to reinstall cellular equipment, the kind of unglamorous detail that determines whether remote meter reading actually functions.
The other half of the dig: a $5.9 million sewer overhaul
Water mains are only one side of Pulaski’s underground ledger. In May 2024, the state awarded the village a $1,540,500 WIIA grant plus $4,371,500 in short term interest free financing “for the planning, design, and construction of upgrades to the wastewater treatment plant and collection system,” according to the governor’s office announcement of that funding round. That is a combined package of just over $5.9 million for a village sewer system, and two years later the project is grinding through the permitting phase.
At the Sewer Board’s July 9 meeting, Jeffrey Tubolino of Cedarwood Engineering walked commissioners through a letter from the state Department of Environmental Conservation, item by item. Per the draft minutes, “he noted that the Freshwater Wetland shouldn’t be an issue,” while floodplain and floodway questions “just needed confirmation from the code officer.” The project is still waiting on the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers regarding the Water Quality Certification, and cultural resources review “would not have any effect.” Tubolino told the board that once the state Department of Transportation signs off, he will pursue the easements needed for the Laveck section of the work.
That is five separate agencies touching one village sewer project: DEC, the Army Corps, DOT, the local code office, and the village’s own engineers. None of the items was flagged as a likely dealbreaker in the minutes, but none is finished either.
The sewer fund is carrying real money through this stretch. Commissioners approved Sewer Fund Abstract No. 3 at $197,327.46 in July, and the June Treasurer’s report was tabled because it was not ready. The board meets next on August 13 at 4 p.m. in the Snow Memorial Building.
The July meeting also showed the board holding the line on billing. Commissioners discussed a request to waive the sewer bill for the Congregational Church and “concluded that they are unable to waive the bill,” the minutes state. They agreed to reclassify 3 South Jefferson from 1.5 billing units to one, and talked through tightening the sewer hookup form so that a property is considered an active account 60 days after signup whether or not the owner has tapped into the line, with a note that sewer service cannot simply be shut off. Small decisions, but in a system carrying nearly $6 million in state supported work, every billing unit is part of how the debt gets repaid.
Why pipe schedules in Pulaski run on a fish calendar
Every capital project in this village works against a seasonal deadline that has nothing to do with construction weather. The Salmon River runs 17 miles from Lighthouse Hill Reservoir in Altmar to Lake Ontario at Port Ontario, and the DEC maintains 12 miles of public fishing rights along the way. When the Chinook and coho start staging in late summer, Pulaski’s population of 2,186 becomes a rounding error against the visitors.
The scale of the fall fishery is documented in state numbers. DEC survey data from 2005 found the Salmon River alone accounted for 30 percent of all angler trips and 60 percent of total angler effort across every New York tributary to Lake Ontario. A DEC creel survey of the fall 2011 season, reported at the time by Oswego County Today, counted 85,106 Chinook and 29,113 coho landed on the Salmon River and put angler effort at more than 1.1 million hours across the surveyed Lake Ontario tributaries between September and November, with the Salmon River the largest single draw. A 2015 state report cited by Assemblyman William Barclay’s office put sport fishing’s economic impact in Oswego County at $42 million a year.
The river’s reputation rests on more than volume. It has produced the Great Lakes record Chinook salmon, at 47 pounds 13 ounces, and the world record coho, at 33 pounds 4 ounces, according to the DEC. The agency stocks the river yearly with around 300,000 Chinook salmon, 80,000 coho, 150,000 steelhead, and 30,000 Atlantic salmon, and estimates that roughly 70 percent of angler caught Chinook, excluding age 1 fish, are wild. Most of the hatchery fish come from the Salmon River Fish Hatchery in Altmar, built in 1980, which raises about 1.4 million Chinook fingerlings, 155,000 coho fall fingerlings, 90,000 coho yearlings, and 750,000 steelhead yearlings each year and supplies more than 100 public waters.
Right now the river is in its summer idle. The U.S. Geological Survey gauge at Pineville, a few miles upstream of the village, showed a provisional flow of 252 cubic feet per second this week. The fishing calendar published by the DEC puts the Chinook and coho peak from Labor Day through October, with steelhead following from late October into spring. That gives village crews and contractors roughly four more working weeks before Salmon River season traffic starts building on Route 13 and the Short Bridge.
Small board, long list
The June 8 Village Board budget workshop, held the same evening as the water meeting, shows how much of Pulaski’s civic machinery points at the river and the season around it. Trustees renewed the intermunicipal agreement with the Salmon River Council of Governments, the regional body whose monthly bulletin was presented by Tug Hill Commission circuit rider Heidi Tompkins. The board also passed Resolution No. 6 of 2026 supporting increased state funding for the Tug Hill Commission itself, on a 5 to 0 vote.
Trustee Jan Tighe updated the board on planning for the nation’s 250th anniversary celebrations, which Pulaski intends to mark in 2026 alongside its Mayor’s Monarch Program pollinator effort. Mayor Jeffrey Fowler reported meeting with Department of Public Works employees about selling outdated and damaged equipment to fund replacements. And in the public comment period, resident Tom Fahnestock pressed the board about speeding on Lake Street; Fowler described tactics the village is using to slow traffic on the roads coming into the village, per the minutes.
The board’s routine business gives a sense of the budget scale these grant applications sit against. The General Fund abstract approved in June totaled $60,350.94, with a separate voucher batch at $31,499.60. The water fund’s June abstracts came to $58,309.31 and $6,240.60, plus $11,595.79 from the capital account. Set those monthly figures against a $2 million water ask and a $5.9 million sewer package and the math explains itself: without Albany and Washington money, a village this size does not replace its underground infrastructure.
What happens next is largely out of Pulaski’s hands. The CDBG application goes into the state’s competitive 2026 round against other municipalities chasing the same $29.2 million. The sewer project needs the Army Corps and DOT to close out their reviews before easements and construction sequencing can firm up. The Sewer Board reconvenes August 13, the Water Board and Village Board meet on their regular second Monday schedule, and the first staging Chinook will show up on their own schedule, the way they have every year since the hatchery fish and their wild descendants rebuilt this fishery.
The village, as usual, is trying to get its digging done first.
Sources and verification
Every fact in this article was checked against primary documents and official records, including: villagepulaski.com, governor.ny.gov, dec.ny.gov, waterservices.usgs.gov, oswegocountytoday.com, assembly.ny.gov, en.wikipedia.org. Direct quotes are verbatim from the cited documents.
