(News Briefs MAY 10, 2007)

FAD Battle?
The Coalition of Watershed Towns and a number of state officials and local governments have decided to try fighting the federal Environmental Protection Agency’s decision to grant New York City a 10-year extension of a variance that allows it to avoid filtering its water supply, even though there deadline for such complaints is May 31..
Republican representatives from the Catskills watershed area, including State Senators John Bonacic and James Seward, as well as Assemblymen Clifford Crouch and Peter Lopez, have joined the Coalition and the Delaware County Board of Supervisors to
blast the federal agency’s proposal, which has generally received support from state, city and other county and towns’ support. The legislators cited, in particular, issues relating to recreational access to city-owned lands as problematic as well as the city’s reluctance to create adequate “voids” in their reservoirs.
A resolution drafted by the four lawmakers is circulating throughout the vast watershed region and was okayed Monday in Shandaken. It states that all local governments that pass the resolution unequivocally oppose the EPA’s proposed 10-year filtration avoidance determination and demands the agency reduce the term not to exceed five years, even though not all towns have, or will, vote on the measure. It also calls for several changes in the avoidance package, including: the incorporation of late comments made by municipalities within the watershed, the holding of more hearings on flooding within the watershed and in adjoining areas, requiring that New York City open its lands within the watershed for recreational purposes on par with state-owned lands, except for land that should be protected due to legitimate security and public safety concerns. requiring New York City to create voids within its reservoirs to take into account the effects of rain and melting snow, and requiring that New York City fund the Coalition of Watershed Towns in an amount adequate for the coalition to establish an ombudsman program to advocate for municipal needs… and avoid going bankrupt.
Last week, the executive board of the Coalition of Watershed Towns held a closed session to discuss possible legal action against the Environmental Protection Agency’s proposal. Talk from Coalition attorney Kevin Young and others this past week has suggested that there is currently a scramble to file necessary legal paperwork within the coming two weeks.

Planning Board
“There’s a lot of information out there about what planning boards do but not a lot of information about how they do it,” reflected Drew Boggus, a member of the Olive Planning Board since January. “So, we’re learning. We have a full board of seven members who all seem interested in being on the board and participating in the decisions.”
David Jones, who also came “on board” in January when the entire planning board of that time resigned in protest to the town board’s failure to reappoint one of their members, sees his service on the new board as a way to “give something back to the community” in which he lives. Jones, an excavator, sees the primary objective of planning board business as the promotion of “progress in the community in terms of development.”
“They’ve got a way to go but, so far, they’re doing fine, participating in their (educational) courses and really getting into it,” observes Olive Supervisor Brendt Leifeld, both pleased and relieved that the sudden turnover hasn’t collided with problems. “They’re calling the county boys all the time and the chairman is one who likes to research everything, so that’s good.”
“We’re meshing together well,” said new board member Helene Grant, an insurance agent with a Master’s degree in education. “To address things we’ve never done before is, of course, a challenge but the people chosen (to be on the board) all have a sincere interest in what we’re doing. Our first responsibility, I think, is to measure all potential impacts for the town- environmental, economic and human.”
No major issues have arisen in the five or six meetings they’ve had thus far, she noted, and as each situation is confronted, exposure to different kinds of issues will be gained that will aid in balancing their collective judgment in the future. It’s a bit like riding a bike, Grant thought, seemingly to suggest that the momentum of ‘doing it’will help provide a certain dynamic stability to the process.
“We’re going cautiously because we’re new,” she said. “But I have a much greater appreciation of the necessity for a board of this type.”
Planning board members are required to undergo a minimum of four state-supervised hours of training a year and most of the board members attended a State Environmental Quality Review presentation at the Ulster County Office Building in March. The training manual they’re using, prepared by Pace University, is designed to prepare them for their certification by New York State.
“The training is ongoing,” said Boggus. “As you get into it, you realize that it goes deeper and deeper into what our job function is. There’s nothing I see coming up right now that looks like it’ll be a serious problem for us although there may be some zoning laws that may need closer attention. I wouldn’t say there’s anything big but there are some inconsistencies or things that aren’t dealt with in the zoning laws and subdivision laws that, as we get to where we think we know enough, we’ll probably approach the town board at some point about the possibility of making an amendment.”
One of the examples offered by Boggus as a possible area of future interest, given with a caution that he has yet to delve into the history of how the issue may have been handled in the past in the course of general operations, is the question of apartment dwellings.
“When you read the zoning laws, one of the things that stands out immediately is that there’s no mention of apartments whatsoever,” Boggus pointed out. “Within the town, there’s a number of what I’ll call ‘houses cut up into apartments’ but if somebody comes before us now with a site plan to take a building and turn it into apartments, there’s nothing to work with to actually make that happen.”
Boggus conjectured that when such a situation occurred in the past, it was up to the Zoning Board of Appeals to get involved.
“I’m guessing that someone probably went before the ZBA to get a variance of the zoning laws,” he mulled. “I believe the underlying guidelines have been ‘one household per acre’ as an absolute minimum. So, if you wanted to put four apartments into a house and you had four or more acres, it’s likely that the ZBA would approve it. But there’s nothing in the zoning law to describe what’s acceptable or not in terms of apartments. That may be intentional, I don’t know. It could be that they wanted individual considerations for each site instead of establishing an across-the-board guideline or rule.”
Venturing that the planning board, ZBA and town board should go over some of the questionable spots together at some future point to decide whether or not they wanted to address them as issues, Boggus thinks that a Master Plan is something that will eventually have to be accomplished. Olive had begun to make some progress in that direction around the 1988 to 1990 period but firm opposition to some of the provisions being debated and a changing town board had shifted the enterprise not only to a back burner but, apparently, to an unlit burner in another room.
“There is what I would call a ‘poor man’s comprehensive plan’ at the beginning of the zoning regulations that kind of gives an overall idea of what the purpose of the zoning regulation is,” Boggus said. “But there’s a lot of pressure from other sources for towns to have a comprehensive plan. The state seriously encourages it and the county. You see a number of towns working on it. Woodstock is working on one. I think Gardiner is working on some kind of comprehensive plan. A number of them are doing it and I’m sure we’re going to have to do it eventually.”
“I haven’t heard reference to that in years,” Leifeld said of the Master Plan. “It’s probably sitting on a shelf here somewhere. A comprehensive plan has its advantages but it creates a lot of problems. We probably shouldn’t forget about it, though.”

Tax Shifts…
Ulster County lawmakers are voting this week to impose a county mortgage tax and to hike the hotel/motel tax from two percent to four percent. County Legislature Ways and Means Committee Chairman Alan Lomita said both taxes are seen as viable alternatives to hiking the property tax.
“The sales and hotel/motel tax should bring in some $4 million per year” he said. “The biggest issue on the minds of our residents is the high property tax. The mortgage tax increase, the hotel/motel tax increase, will lighten that load on the residents of Ulster County.”
Right now, Ulster County receives nothing from mortgage tax filings. Towns and the state receive a tax. The new plan would give the county 25 cents on each $100 of a mortgage.
Meanwhile, County Treasurer Lewis C. Kirschner recently announced that the 2006 Annual Financial Report for the County of Ulster has been completed and filed with the State Comptroller on April 30, 2007. He noted that in 2006, the Unreserved/Unappropriated General Fund Balance is $17.8 million. In 2005, the Unreserved/Unappropriated General Fund Balance was $11.9 million. This represents an increase in the County’s Unreserved/Unappropriated General Fund Balance of $5.9 million compared with 2005.
“The factors that have influenced this increase are cost containment initiatives, cost cutting measures and an increase in tax revenues,” Kirschner said. “As a result, the County was able to continue to work towards stabilizing its financial position.”
It is recommended by the State Comptroller’s Office that municipalities should maintain an unreserved/unappropriated fund balance of between 5% and 10% of their total general fund budget. The $17.8 million represents approximately 6.9% of the County’s general fund budget.

The CWC Board…
At its annual meeting on April 24, the Catskill Watershed Corporation Board of Directors said farewell to Ward Todd, a long time colleague, as it welcomed newcomer Michael Shultis, town supervisor of Hurley, to its ranks. Georgianna Lepke of Sullivan County and Michael Flaherty of Greene County were returned to five-year seats without opposition.
Todd, of Shandaken, had been one of two Ulster County representatives on the 15-member CWC Board since 1997, shortly after the establishment of the non-profit organization. As a member of the Ulster County Legislature, he was eligible for service on the CWC Board, which requires its members to be locally elected officials. Mr. Todd subsequently relinquished his elected post to become Executive Director of the Ulster County Chamber of Commerce, and so stepped down from the CWC Board when his term expired.
Todd, who was first vice-president of the board, chaired the Education Committee. He also served on the Finance, Septic and Economic Development Committees, as well as the Temporary Committee on Tourism and Regional Marketing.
Shultis was elected Hurley’s Supervisor in 2005. He serves full-time in that capacity. Born in Kingston, he has lived most of his life in Hurley, where he served for 15 years on the town’s Zoning Board of Appeals. The owner of Shultis Forest Products, he has been a timber harvester since 1976. He and his wife Marie, our advertising director, have five children ranging in age from 11 to 26 and one grandchild.
Officers of the CWC Board who were named at the Annual Meeting April 24 include President Perry Shelton, First Vice President Michael Flaherty, Second Vice President Berndt Leifeld, Secretary Charles Buck, and Treasurer Georgianna Lepke.
The CWC’s Tenth Annual Report was also issued at the CWC’s Annual Meeting of Member Towns, touting the organization’s history and accomplishments, including the replacement of 2,380 failed residential septic systems in the region, the building of 39 sand and salt storage sheds, reimbural of $2.3 million for 41 stormwater control projects associated with new construction, the awarding of nearly $10 million in grants for some 70 municipal projects to correct or improve existing stormwater controls, assess infrastructure networks and plan repairs and upgrades, the completion of Community Septic Systems and Community Wastewater Management Projects in five more hamlets, for a total capital commitment of approximately $26 million, the awarding of grants totaling $392,000 to ten municipalities for community planning initiatives under the Local Technical Assistance Program, the distribution of 132 low-interest loans valued at more than $27 million to start-up businesses and to firms planning building or inventory expansions, facility improvements or other projects resulting in the creation or retention of more than 1,000 jobs, the provision of 122 grants to non-profit organizations and others planning community improvement, cultural enhancement and business development projects, support for a number of tourism promotion efforts, and the current development of a regional tourism and marketing web site with mapping capabilities, the awarding of more than $1.2 million in Watershed Education grants to schools and non-profit organizations serving thousands of students in New York City and in the Catskill-Delaware Watershed, the coordination of five Watershed Stream Clean-ups involving hundreds of volunteers, sponsorship of Catskills Local Government Days, and more.
For more information on CWC programs and activities, and to read the 2006 Annual Report, go to www.cwconline.org. Hard copies of the report can be obtained by calling Diane Galusha at 845-586-1400, ext. 29; galusha@cwconline.org.

Dam Safety
US Senator Charles Schumer and Congressman John Hall have announced their support for legislation that would seek to protect old dams by requiring the FEMA director to establish a program to provide grants to states to rehabilitate publicly-owned dams that fail to meet minimum safety standards and pose an unacceptable risk to the public. The other measure would require the Secretary of the Army to maintain and update information on a dam inventory.
“In many cases, these dams are literally falling apart. If we don’t act fast we could have a real mess on our hands that could involve a loss of live or a loss of property,” Schumer said. Hall, who is a major supporter of renewable energy, added that the government should look into the possibility of establishing low-head hydro-electric plants on dams as well.
“You can harvest greater than 1,200 megawatts of power just by putting turbine generators where the water is already falling,” he said. “You are not importing anything, you are not paying for the fuel and there’s no pollution caused by it.”
Schumer said there are 384 dams in the state classified as “high hazard” and there are over 5,000 in New York with only eight full-time employees assigned to the dam safety program as of 2005.
The state DEC said the “high hazard” classification does not mean they are unsafe.

Uninsured?
U.S. hospitals are charging uninsured patients about two-and-a-half times more than those with health insurance, a mark-up that has been steadily rising despite pressure to level prices, a new study has found. In 2004, the most recent year for which data was available, hospital patients without health insurance and others who pay for medical care out of their own pockets were charged an average 2.57 times more than those with health insurance, according to the study published in the May-June issue of the journal Health Affairs. That number has been rising steadily since 1984, but has jumped more quickly since 2000, the analysis of government data said.
The American Hospital Association (AHA), which represents most of the nation’s 5,000 or so hospitals, said the report was out-of-date and methodologically flawed. The group said it is misleading because the study predates U.S. Centers for Medicare and Medicaid guidance, which hospitals say they needed before they could give discounts to uninsured patients.
Hospitals set rates based on a list called the chargemaster, which is generally believed to inflate prices substantially, in the belief that prices will come down during a negotiation process. For-profit hospitals had the highest discrepancy between costs estimated by Medicare and prices charged, the study found.
But patients without health insurance, about 45 million people in the U.S., lack the ability to negotiate. As it stands, hospitals only collect about 10 cents on the dollar charged to uninsured patients.
More than 60 class-action lawsuits have been filed against U.S. hospitals over the issue.
Locally, the American Cancer Society has issued a release stating that too many of the uninsured and underinsured are unable to access services vital to surviving cancer, and urged that health services be made available to all.
Cancer Society officials met in Kingston with representatives of state lawmakers as well as Ulster County and City of Kingston officials to probe the topic of the future of healthcare.

County Changes
Ulster County lawmakers were set to decide the day we were going to press, May 9,. whether to endorse an agreement with the county’s top level managers that will hike their pay but eliminate a special benefit package. Legislator Donald Gregorius, chairman of the county’s Labor Relations and Negotiation Committee, said the agreement represents a completely new look at resolving old issues, particularly the issue of “salary compression,” where growth in managers’ salaries was being outpaced by that of rank-and-file union employees.
“We balanced it out to give new managers something and help in the middle range, so we can retain people,” Gregorius said. “It was an attempt to stop the compression issue. There were longtime CSEA and other union people making as much or more than managers because of the high pay in different steps.”
Highlights of the agreement include a 3.25 percent salary increase for 2006 and 2007, complete elimination of the flexible spending plan by 2008 and a 10 percent contribution to health insurance instead of the flat amount (roughly $28) that had been paid by managers in the past. The agreement also caps the number of vacation days that managers can accumulate at 30 (managers who currently receive more than 30 days will be held harmless); reduces sick and vacation time buybacks from 30 to 15 days as of 2008; and alters the contribution scale for retiree health insurance.
The agreement, which covers the years 2006 and 2007, will cost the county $593,664. It covers county department heads, non-union managers, legislative employees and the Board of Elections.

Trash Talk?
A recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling, it seems, may put control of trash flow back into local hands… if anyone wants it. The Supreme Court ruled this month that local governments can compel private trash haulers to use municipal facilities, even if it would cost more to keep garbage at home than to dispose of it elsewhere. The ruling upholding local ordinances in upstate New York protects a stream of money that allows counties, like other governments that have built recycling centers and landfills, to help pay off millions of dollars in debt they incurred to establish such facilities. County leaders say this can lead to new laws for flow control, which would be used to direct waste generated in a specific geographic area to a designated landfill or recycling facility through laws, regulations or economic incentives.
Stephen J. Wing, counsel to the Ulster County Resource Recovery Agency, said the ruling may provide the means for the county to establish a recycling program. In the past, he said, it was not economically feasible because the program had to compete with private operations. Now, with the county’s ability to direct waste to the program, it might be plausible, he said.
The trash hauling companies had argued that the counties violated constitutional protections for interstate commerce. The companies argued that they would pay much less to send the garbage to out-of-state transfer stations where it is sorted and baled before being shipped off for permanent disposal. But the court, in a 6-3 decision, said the Oneida-Herkimer Solid Waste Management Authority treats “in-state private business interests exactly the same as out-of-state ones,” avoiding any constitutional problems.
“It bears mentioning that the most palpable harm imposed by the ordinances - more expensive trash removal - is likely to fall upon the very people who voted for the law,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court.

Polluted Buses?
Day in and day out, children across the U.S. are riding to school on aging buses, breathing what some activists say is a dangerous brew of pollutants up to five times dirtier than the air outside. It is a situation that Congress and many states have sought to fix in recent years. In fact, in 2005 federal lawmakers passed a measure to replace or retrofit the dirtiest diesel engines across the nation… But little has been done.
Around the country, state officials are struggling to find the money to carry out clean school bus initiatives. And Congress has yet to deliver on the $1 billion it promised over five years to help states clean up diesel fleets, including school buses.
Breathing high concentrations of diesel emissions - known as particulates - can cause minor ailments such as headaches, wheezing and dizziness. But studies have also found the contaminants can do more serious damage. Recent studies by the Environmental Protection Agency and other groups link the emissions to asthma and lung cancer.
Two types of filters are available to reduce the most dangerous emissions on older buses. Diesel particulate filters - which are installed in place of mufflers at an estimated cost of $700 each - can reduce tailpipe emissions by at least 85 percent. Closed crankcase filtration systems, which go under the hood and cost $7,500, can reduce engine soot by about 90 percent. A bus can be fitted with one or both filters.
An estimated 390,000 diesel school buses are on the road in the U.S., according to the EPA. Most newer buses were manufactured to meet stricter emissions guidelines and do not need filters. But about one-third of the nation’s diesel school-bus fleet, or more than 100,000 buses, were manufactured before 1990 and are big polluters, according to EPA.
Researchers say older buses also let lots of emissions enter through doors and windows. The longer the ride, the more harmful to children, they say, putting students in rural areas in particularly unhealthy circumstances.
Experts say children are particularly vulnerable because soot particles can disrupt development of their respiratory systems. Also, children breathe more quickly than adults and take in more air per pound.

Pet Food…
On the tail of the recent pet food debacle, federal officials have placed a hold on 20 million chickens raised for market in several states because their feed was mixed with pet food they are saying contained an “industrial chemical.” Three government agencies - the Agriculture Department, the Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency - are overseeing a risk assessment to determine whether the chickens would pose a threat to human health if eaten. They add that the 20 million chickens represent a tiny fraction of the 9 billion chickens raised each year in the United States.
Which states have chicken producers affected by the hold will be announced later, the government said. State agriculture officials as well as chicken manufacturers were being contacted as the agencies determine the extent of the problem, adding that many farms in several states probably were involved.
Investigators found last week that about 5 percent of feed used at some smaller chicken production operations came from pet food tainted with the chemical melamine. Larger manufacturers, because they usually use special feed for the chickens they raise or contract for raising, are unlikely to have exposed their animals to large amounts of the tainted pet products.
Since March 16, more than 100 brands of pet food have been recalled because they were “contaminated with melamine.” An unknown number of dogs and cats have been sickened or died after eating pet food tainted with the chemical.
Federal investigators have been trying to determine how much of the tainted pet food had been used in feed for hogs and chickens. Hog farms in at least six states may have received tainted pet food for use in feed. Those animals also have been barred from market.

Water Buyouts!
The Bush administration is helping multinationals buy US municipal water systems, according to new reports, “putting our most important resource in the hands of corporations with no public accountability.”
Documentary filmmakers Alan Snitow and Deborah Kaufman recently teamed up with author Michael Fox to write “Thirst: Fighting the Corporate Theft of Our Water” (Wiley, 2007). The three followed water privatization battles across the United States - from California to Massachusetts and from Georgia to Wisconsin, documenting the rise of public opposition to corporate control of water resources. They found that the issue of privatization ran deep.
“We came to see that the conflicts over water are really about fundamental questions of democracy itself: Who will make the decisions that affect our future, and who will be excluded?” they wrote in the book’s preface. “And if citizens no longer control their most basic resource, their water, do they really control anything at all?”
Currently, water systems are controlled publicly in 90 percent of communities across the world and 85 percent in the United States, but that number is changing rapidly. In 1990, 50 million people worldwide got their water services from private companies, but by 2002 it was 300 million and growing.
“Globally, corporations are promoting water privatization under the guise of efficiency, but the fact is that they are not paying the full cost of public infrastructure, environmental damage, or healthcare for those they hurt,” said Ashley Schaeffer of Corporate Accountability International. “Water is a human right and not a privilege.”
It turns out the United States is an attractive place for multinationals looking to make inroads in the water business. The three main players are the French companies Suez and Veolia (formerly Vivendi), and the German group RWE. The companies first pushed water privatization in developing nations. The companies that already controlled the small percentage of U.S. water held privately were bought by the big three: Veolia picked up U.S Filter, Suez got United Water and RWE took over American Water Works.
In Felton, CA, for instance, a small regional utility ran the water system until it was purchased in 2001 by California American Water, a subsidiary of American Water, which is a subsidiary of Thames Water in London, which has also become a subsidiary of German giant RWE. Residents have since seen their rates skyrocket.
Stay tuned…

Death To All?
The bulk of Americans and a slim majority in Mexico want Osama bin Laden executed if caught, but most people in seven other countries would rather he spend life or many years in prison, a recent AP-Ipsos poll has found. In all nine nations surveyed, markedly more people would choose the death penalty for the al-Qaida leader than for run-of-the-mill murderers, even in nations with little taste for capital punishment. But Americans also still prefer execution over prison for murderers by greater margins than people in the other countries. Of the nine countries polled, only the U.S. and South Korea have the death penalty.
The poll underscores stark differences between the U.S. and many of its allies over the death penalty at a time when U.S. treatment of terror-war detainees - some of whom may face execution - has been a major irritant in their relations.
Given a choice of capital punishment for bin Laden or imprisonment, 62 percent in the U.S. supported executing him, while 36 percent chose prison. More than one-third of those preferring life imprisonment for convicted murderers said they would support bin Laden’s execution. Only in Mexico, where people chose the death penalty over prison for bin Laden by 54 percent to 35 percent, did sentiment run close to that in the United States. Opinion ran strongly toward prison in Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, South Korea and Spain - in some cases by more than two-to-one margins.
Women were likelier than men to favor life imprisonment over the death penalty for murderers in all countries surveyed except Canada, Mexico and Germany, where the genders were about even. Support for capital punishment also ran lower for people who are better educated, have higher incomes, are young or - in the U.S. - are Democrats.
Despite broad support for executions, nearly six in 10 in the U.S. said abolishing the death penalty would probably not change the number of murders. Analysts say support for execution goes beyond a belief in deterrence to peoples’ feelings about justice, revenge and keeping criminals off the streets.

Stronger Pot
The marijuana being sold across the United States is stronger than ever, which could explain a growing number of medical emergencies that involve the drug, government drug experts are saying. Analysis of seized samples of marijuana and hashish showed that more of the cannabis on the market is of the strongest grade, the White House and National Institute for Drug Abuse said. They cited data from the University of Mississippi’s Marijuana Potency Project showing the average levels of THC, the active ingredient in marijuana , in the products rose from 7 percent in 2003 to 8.5 percent in 2006. The level had risen steadily from 3.5 percent in 1988.
National Institute on Drug Abuse Director Dr. Nora Volkow fears the problem is not being taken seriously because many adults remember the marijuana of their youth as harmless.
According to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health 4.1 million Americans, or 1.7 percent of the population, report they use marijuana .