(News Briefs November 9, 2006)

County Budget
The county legislature has been discussing the impacts a proposed $300 million 2007 Ulster County budget would have on staff and services, with possible cuts to libraries and tourism getting much public scrutiny. The county has been pushing a shift from old-style print marketing to a more Internet-based approached. County Administrator Michael Hein has said nothing he heard during recent public hearings has swayed him from what he outlined in his budget presentation last month.
“We firmly believe that the old model simply wasn’t working, and this new model, which is going to be more of an Internet-based model, is the wave of the future, and what we need to ultimately hit our target market.”
Hein sees no reason to change anything in his budget.
The legislature is working to keep the tax levy hike for county expenses to somewhere between 7 and 8 percent, versus the 39 percent rise forced by a GOP-written budget last year. To get there, Hein’s budget calls for 59 position eliminations, 27 through layoffs.
Meanwhile, it was revealed last week that sales tax revenues grew an average of 9.2 percent annually in the Mid-Hudson Valley from 1999 to 2005, the highest in the state, according to a report issued by the state comptroller’s office. The report said that despite increases in state aid, more school aid and a cap on local Medicaid costs, fiscal stress among New York’s local governments is mounting and shows no signs of lessening any time soon.

Campus Sale?
Campus Auxiliary Services, which owns the Ashokan Field Campus affiliated with SUNY New Paltz, is nearly finished negotiating with the Open Space Institute over the sale of the 372-acre site near the Ashokan Reservoir. Steven Deutsch, chief executive officer of Campus Auxiliary Services, said this week that the Open Space Institute, a conservancy group that has been protecting portions of the Hudson Valley for 35 years, has offered $2.1 million for the property - the appraised value. He added that the conservancy is working as a bridge purchaser for the Ashokan Foundation, Jay Ungar and Molly Mason’s newly formed non-profit organization that hopes to incorporate the campus’ outdoor education heritage with a greater appreciation for arts and music.
Deutsch said the new owner will have to work with the New York City Department of Environmental Protection, which has entered into past agreements with the campus to allow New York City to drain water from the reservoir through a dormant waste channel on the campus. The channel eases spring runoff, and has been used to help accommodate an overflow from the Schoharie Reservoir during repair work. He said the campus’ current employees and outdoor educational programs for fifth- and sixth-graders will all remain the same under the new ownership. Campus Auxiliary Services will continue to provide dining, bookstore, laundry and other services to SUNY New Paltz according to its contract with the college.
Ungar, president of the Ashokan Foundation, helped facilitate the sale in hopes of combining the campus’ educational and environmental heritage with music and art. He has held summer camps at the Ashokan Field Campus since 1980.

Lowered Water?
Many residents in the Delaware River basin portion of the New York City watershed are expressing relief about the NYC Department of Environmental Protection’s recent decision to lower the levels of the Neversink, Cannonsville and Pepacton reservoirs to alleviate flooding. The program will monitor the water levels of the three reservoirs by making sure they do not exceed a level of 80 percent during periods of wet weather.
Because of several recent severe floods, New York City wanted to find a way to mitigate flooding upstate while still ensuring that the city had adequate water, said Paul Rush, deputy commissioner of the Department of Environmental Protection. The temporary program will monitor reservoir water levels by releasing water when needed. After that, the DEP will come up with a permanent flood mitigation program.
Although the program was proposed by the city DEP, all parties in the Delaware River Basin Commission had to vote unanimously in order for it to go through. The five areas that represent the commission are New York City, New York state, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Delaware.
Similar efforts in the Ashokan basin are currently dependent on the finishing of repair work on the Gilboa Dam that serves the Schoharie Reservoir, expected to be completed in the coming months.

Mass Changes
St. Francis de Sales Church has announced a temporary change in its weekend Mass schedule effective November 11. Due to furnace problems and
the approaching cold weather, Masses at the Allaben and Boiceville mission churches are being moved to the main church in Phoenicia until further notice. According to Rev. Phil Tran, Parish Administrator, donors have come forth to replace the furnaces and provide fuel for one year for each of the mission churches. The parish cannot proceed with the replacements until the NY Archdiocese makes a decision on the status of the mission churches, however.
“We regret any inconvenience for our parishioners and weekend visitors and are grateful to those who are willing to replace these furnaces,” said Rev. Tran. “We continue to pray for a positive outcome.”

Sales Drops…
Sales of existing single family homes in the Hudson Valley and Catskills regions dropped significantly in September compared to the same month in 2005. But selling prices have remained consistent with those from the previous year despite the drop off in sales. According to recent figures, sales in Ulster County are down 23.9 percent, with a median house price of $245,000. Dutchess County sales are down 22 percent with a median house price of $370,000; Greene is down 5.6 percent, with a median price of $162,500; Delaware County is up 4.8 Percent, with a median of $87,000; Sullivan County is down 33.9 percent with a median price of $173,000; Columbia County is down 34.3 percent, with a median of $121,500; Rockland County is down 18.2 percent, with a median of $500,000; Orange County is down 22 percent, with a median price of $310,000; Putnam County id down 35.9 percent, with a median of $401,250, and Westchester County’s sales amounts are down 22.4 percent, with a median home cost at $617,500. Statewide, the market is down 15.7 percent from last year with a median house price of $238.000.

Spitzer Vs. Gitter?
The state’s highest ranking official in charge of protecting the City’s water supply has concluded that Crossroads Ventures’ “large scale mountaintop and mountainside development” proposed for 1,250 acres east of the Belleayre Mountain Ski area could imperil the quality of the Ashokan Reservoir and cost City taxpayers billions of dollars by significantly undercutting “federal, state, and city efforts to avoid the need to construct a…water filtration plant.”
That determination, expressed in an October 25 letter to US Environmental Protection Agency Regional Administrator Alan Steinberg by Watershed Inspector General James Tierney and his Chief Scientist Charles Silver, is widely understood as expressing the position of the incoming Spitzer administration.
“We write to make clear that we agree with your staff and further to indicate that the development proposed for the eastern portion of the Belleayre Resort at Catskill Park poses an unacceptable risk to the quality of the Ashokan Reservoir,” said Tierney. “On the other hand,” he said, “we believe that a properly designed and appropriately sized development project on the western portion of the site…is technologically feasible.” The letter also appears to recommend that the acreage comprising the eastern portion of Crossroads’ proposed project site be acquired by DEP.
Tierney, an Assistant Attorney General jointly appointed by Spitzer and outgoing Governor Pataki, told The Phoenicia Times the position reflects his office’s detailed scientific and technical review previously submitted to all parties in the project’s now 6 1⁄2 year old environmental review. It comes on the heels of EPA’s recent determination to refer the entire project, including a 20% downsizing option proposed by Crossroads in recent months, back to its ongoing SEQRA process for full trial-like adjudication. The developer’s appeal of that decision by state Administrative Law Judge Richard Wissler is still pending.
The critical issue, according to Tierney and Silver, is the danger posed by the project to the waters of the Ashokan Reservoir which they call “the most serious threat to (the city’s) overall water quality.” That reservoir is currently classified as “impaired” by DEC, because of its high level of suspended sediments or turbidity, which Tierney and Silver believe could be significantly impacted by the level of construction proposed for the resort.
According to Tierney and Silver, “turbidity interferes with the effectiveness of drinking water disinfection and assists in the transport of pathogens,” posing a significant public health threat. To keep the Ashokan’s water drinkable, DEP has had to add to it some 24 tons of aluminum sulfate or alum every day, for much of the past two years. This, explained Tierney, is a “last resort” measure to keep the Ashokan’s water usable, and is both complicated and expensive. According to some estimates, he says, every day the City has to add alum to the Ashokan’s water also costs them $65,000 in dredging expenses, just to remove it from Westchester’s Kensico Reservoir, where it settles as sludge now 6 feet deep in many places, and that has to be removed by divers with giant vacuum pumps. “Without this extended alum use,” say Tierney and Silver, “ New York City would have violated regulations that would, in turn, trigger filtration.”
Thus far, the City has managed to forestall filtering the Ashokan’s water, at an estimated $8 billion for the plant and $100+ million annually to operate it. That “Filtration Avoidance Waiver,” or approval from the federal government to continue using the water unfiltered, is expected to be renewed for another five years by EPA early in 2007. But that approval is based on the city’s compliance with, among other things, EPA mandated mitigation measures to reduce turbidity which the proposed resort construction would jeopardize.
Developer Dean Gitter declined opportunity to comment for this story, providing instead a November 1 response letter from Crossroads Ventures counsel Dan Ruzow to EPA’s Steinberg. Ruzow pointed out that the principal source of turbidity in the Ashokan Reservoir is “the operation of the Shandaken Tunnel by DEP itself.”
“We are at a loss,” said Ruzow, “to understand why Mr. Tierney and Dr. Silver decided to share at this time their largely outdated comments... which have been largely superceded by the scaled back concept in design presently being explored with regulatory agencies...We continue to believe that the Belleayre Resort poses no threat to the water quality of the Ashokan Reservoir.”

Sex Offenders
The Ulster County Legislature was set to consider a pair of resolutions Wednesday as part of what has become an ongoing process of trying to regulate sex offenders in the county. One requests state lawmakers pass a law requiring uniform methods for sex offender notification statewide. Currently, each municipality has its own method for notifying residents about the sex offenders in their community, a system that can cause confusion and fear – as occurred in Olive in recent months. The other resolution requests state lawmakers make failure to register under the Sexual Offender Registration Act a felony. It is currently a misdemeanor punishable with a maximum one year in jail. A felony could be punished by several years in prison.
The one sex offender resolution the county was not voting on this month was a residency restriction law proposed in September that would prohibit level 2 and 3 sex offenders - those with a high risk of repeat offense - from living within 1,000 feet of schools or child-care facilities. Some critics from both parties had questioned the bill’s effectiveness and it was sent back to committee.
Additionally, a proposal is being pushed to force the state to implement tracking of level 3 sex offenders, those with the highest risk of repeating a violent offense, with satellites through the Global Positioning System. Ulster County is preparing to serve as the pilot program for such a project with a $250,000 grant from the federal government.

Electronic Trash
The Town of Saugerties is setting up a permanent electronics collection container on site at the Route 212 Transfer Station in Saugerties servicing Saugerties, Woodstock, and Shandaken residents beginning November 1. Hours of operation are Tuesday through Saturday from 7 AM to 3 PM. Accepted are electronics including computer components, vcr’s/dvd players, keyboards, printers, monitors/tv’s, etc.
Discarded electronic waste represents a growing portion of the solid waste stream in New York State and Ulster County. Electronics contain potentially hazardous materials including lead, cadmium, mercury, silver and phosphorus. The recovery, refurbishing, dismantling, and/or recycling of valuable materials found in electronic waste is viewed favorably by regulatory agencies. Collection of this material will benefit the Town and County by source separating and diverting electronic waste from other landfill bound municipal solid waste while increasing recycling rates and reducing landfill use.
Advanced Recovery Industries (ARI), the vendor providing service for the electronics collection days held by the Ulster County Resource Recovery Agency, will provide the Town with a collection container. Once filled, ARI will transport the electronics to its warehouse in Port Jervis, PA for dismantling and recycling. Countywide over eighty (80) tons of electronics have been collected this year, including the City of Kingston which also has an ongoing electronics collection program.
Call (845) 679-0514 for more information. Residents only, no businesses.

Wrong Number
A toll-free number provided to Medicare customers by a listing in the June 2006 Verizon Yellow Pages book for Ulster, Dutchess, Greene and Orange counties lists the number for Medicare beneficiary inquiries as (800) 442-8430. But rather than an automated menu, callers who dial that number are greeted with an offer to “jump into fun exciting live talk now” by calling another 800 number. Callers to the second number are greeted with: “Hey there sexy guy. Welcome to an exciting new way to go live, one on one, with hot, horny girls waiting right now to talk to you.”
Jeff Hall, director of communications for Medicare and Medicaid Services Region II, said he didn’t know how the wrong number wound up being listed in the local phone books. He said the number for inquiries has been 1-800-MEDICARE (633-4227) “for years.” The number that leads to the phone sex service is a former Medicare number.
Hall guessed that there haven’t been many complaints about the mixup because most people who make Medicare inquiries don’t look the number up in the phone book. Rather, they use numbers in a handbook that’s provided to them each year or get information and phone numbers online at www.medicare.gov.
Andy Shame, a spokesman for Verizon information services, said the number must not have been updated the last several times that his company printed its local phone books.

Delaware Art?
On Saturday, November 11th, Delaware County fine art galleries will be holding the first Delaware County Gallery Tour. Self-guided, participants can hop on board at will and travel the gallery circuit. Festivities will culminate, however, at The Gallery, Stamford, 8 p.m., with a concert by singer/songwriter Andrew Calhoun.
In Andes, the Chace-Randall Gallery, 49 Main Street, is presenting Bar and Cafe, with new works by Leslie Bender and Laura Di Nello. The Catskill Center Erpf Gallery located on Route 28, Arkville, presents “Handmade in the Catskills,” works by glass artists Mary Certoma and Alan Barbier, potter Robin Bruck-Tanner, folk artist Richard Connell and metal sculptor John Jackson. 110 Main Street, in Delhi, celebrates its grand opening housing three major art centers: Delhi Art & Antiques, Delaware County Fine Arts Center (DCFAC) & The Main Street Gallery with shows featuring prints, photography and sculpture by established Delaware County artists plus a new exhibit, Abstract is Back. Art 28/30, a new co-op gallery scheduled to open its Margaretville doors next season, previews work by its participating artists at the M-ARK Project, 773 Main Street. Ken Orton Gallery, 746 Main Street, presents the work of the figurative painter whose work includes portraiture and landscape. Enderlin Gallery, Main Street, Roxbury, presents “Abstract Tendencies,” with works by Jeanette Fintz, Roshan Houshmand and Rebecca Welz. The Walt Meade Gallery, Roxbury Arts Group, Vega Mountain Road (right off Main Street), presents Karen Kucharski, “The Art of the Tango,” acrylic, charcoal and monotype works all portraying the Tango. Finaly, the Mural Gallery, Mount Utsayantha Regional Arts League, Frank W Cyr Center on West Main Street in Stamford presents “A Walk Through The Seasons,” still life and landscapes in watercolor by Karen Graves and Celia Clark and The Gallery, 128 Main Street, presents new work by gallery founder and director Timothy Touhey, and an 8 pm closing concert featuring Andrew Calhoun singing Scottish ballads and original works.
The Delaware County Artist Tour is organized by The Gallery, Stamford, and Chace-Randall Gallery, Andes. It is free and open to the public.
For more information, contact touhey@dmcom.net or zoe@chacerandallgallery.com.

Expanded Hours
The Ulster County Department of Motor Vehicle expanded its hours last week to an 8:00 AM start time Monday through Friday at the Ulster County Office Building. The new hours of service will be 8:00 AM to 4:45 PM Monday through Friday. In addition, a County Motor Vehicle Bus will continue to travel to local town halls throughout Ulster County Monday through Friday. Hours of operation for the Mobile Unit are 10:00 AM to 1:00 PM and 2:00 PM to 3:30 PM. The location schedule includes Fridays at the Shandaken Town Hall, Rt. 28, Shandaken, NY.

Bad News?
The US defense department has set up a new unit to better promote its message across 24-hour rolling news outlets, and particularly on the internet. The Pentagon said the move would boost its ability to counter “inaccurate” news stories and exploit new media.
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, whose resignation was asked for by a group of military publications this past week, said earlier this year the US was losing the propaganda war to its enemies.
The Bush administration does not believe the true picture of events in Iraq has been made public and has said that it is particularly concerned that insurgents in areas such as Iraq have been able to use the web to disseminate their message and give the impression they are more powerful than the US, our correspondent says. The newly-established unit would use “new media” channels to push its message and “set the record straight”, Pentagon press secretary Eric Ruff said.
“We’re looking at being quicker to respond to breaking news,” he said. “Being quicker to respond, frankly, to inaccurate statements.”
A Pentagon memo seen by the Associated Press news agency said the new unit would “develop messages” for the 24-hour news cycle and aim to “correct the record”. The unit would also monitor media such as weblogs and would also employ “surrogates”, or top politicians or lobbyists who could be interviewed on TV and radio shows. Ruff said the move to set up the unit had not been prompted either by the eroding public support in the US for the Iraq war or the US mid-term elections.
Rumsfeld said earlier this year that he was concerned by the success of US enemies in “manipulating the media”.
“That’s the thing that keeps me up at night,” Rumsfeld said.

Belleayre Opens?
Belleayre Mountain is scheduled to kick off its 57th season on Saturday, November 11th, weather and conditions permitting. With temperatures below freezing, Belleayre was able to start up the snow guns on Thursday night, November 2nd.
On November 12th will be the Harvest Brunch Buffet & Auction in the center’s Discovery Lodge, hosted by the Open Eye Theater of Margaretville, NY. A buffet will highlight auction items, with all proceeds benefitting the theater group. Call the Open Eye Theater at 845-586-1660 to purchase tickets.
Due to last year’s response to the Thanksgiving Rail Jam, Belleayre Mountain will be offering its first Rail Jam on Saturday, November 25th. The Rail Park will be set up on the lower half of the Wanatuska trail, and the jam will begin at 5 pm. Cash prizes for the top skier and snowboarder will get the kids out for a great night, with a performance in the Overlook Lodge by live band “Call It A Night”.
Belleayre Mountain will be closed on Thanksgiving Day, but open the weekend following… weather permitting.
This past weekend, on November 4, Belleayre held a “Tap Into Winter” Party at its Overlook Lodge bar as a way of saying “welcome back”.
It was rcently announced at a campaign-style press conference with State Senator John Bonacic that Belleayre Mountain Ski center will receive another $750,000 to improve the state owned facility.
Announcing the $750,000 award to Belleayre, Bonacic said that any state investment into the facility was an economic boost to the region, particularly to nearby private sector ski establishments in the Catskills region.
“When you help Belleayre you help Windham, you help Hunter, you help Plattekill,” he said.
For more information about all the upcoming events at Belleayre, visit www.belleayre.com or give us a call at 800-942-6904.

Fly Stewart!
Discount carrier JetBlue Airways will begin flying between Stewart International Airport and Florida, U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer announced recently. The news comes less than a month after AirTran Airways announced it would start offering service between Stewart and four Southern cities.
JetBlue will begin its Stewart service on Dec. 19 with one round trip per day between New Windsor and Orlando, then expand the service on Jan. 5 to include two round trips per day between Stewart and Orlando, two round trips per day between Stewart and Fort Lauderdale and one round trip per day between Stewart and West Palm Beach. JetBlue’s introductory one-way fare between Stewart and the three Florida destinations will be $79.. Those fares eventually will rise, ranging from $99 to $299 per one-way ticket.
The JetBlue announcement comes just three weeks after AirTran Airways, another low-cost carrier, announced it would begin five daily flights to and from Stewart beginning Jan. 11. AirTran will fly twice per day between Stewart and the airline’s hub in Atlanta and once daily between Stewart and Orlando, Fort Lauderdale and Tampa, Fla. AirTran’s introductory one-way fares will be in the $79-to-$89 range.

Climate Control?
Two federal agencies are investigating whether the Bush administration tried to block government scientists from speaking freely about global warming and censor their research. The inspectors general for the Commerce Department and NASA have begun “coordinated, sweeping investigations of the Bush administration’s censorship and suppression” of federal research into global warming, according to documents.
“These investigations are critical because the Republicans in Congress have ignored this serious problem,” Lautenberg said.
Kristen Hellmer, a spokeswoman for the White House Council for Environmental Quality, said Wednesday night that the administration has supported the scientific process in its approach to studying climate change.
A report last month in the scientific journal Nature claimed administrators at the Commerce Department’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration blocked the release of a report that linked hurricane strength and frequency to global warming.
NOAA has denied the allegations, saying its work is not politically motivated.
Ignoring climate change could lead to economic upheaval on the scale of the 1930s Depression, underlining the need for urgent action to combat global warming , a British report on the costs of climate change said.
Meanwhile, a report by chief British government economist Nicholas Stern is saying that the benefits of determined worldwide steps to tackle climate change would greatly outweigh the costs. His 700-page report adds that no matter what we do now the chance “is already almost out of reach” to keep greenhouse gases at a level which scientists say should avoid the worst effects of climate change. It said the world does not have to choose between tackling climate change and economic growth, contradicting President Bush, who pulled out of the Kyoto Protocol against global warming in part because he said it would cost jobs.
“The evidence gathered by the review leads to a simple conclusion: the benefits of strong, early action considerably outweigh the costs,” said the report, prepared for British Prime Minister Tony Blair and finance minister Gordon Brown. “Our actions over the coming few decades could create risks of major disruption to economic and social activity, later in this century and in the next, on a scale similar to those associated with the great wars and the economic depression of the first half of the 20th century,” it said.
The report was being released prior to the start of U.N. climate talks in Nairobi on November 6, focusing on finding a successor to Kyoto which ends in 2012.
The report estimates stabilising greenhouse gases in the atmosphere will cost about 1 percent of annual global output by 2050. But if the world does nothing, it could cut global consumption per person by between five and 20 percent.
Stern called for a coordinated international approach to combat climate change, saying the effort must be shared fairly by rich and poor. He suggested rich nations take responsibility for emissions cuts of 60-80 percent from 1990 levels by 2050. Countering global warming would bring new opportunities to industry, he said, estimating the market for low-carbon energy products could be worth at least $500 billion a year by 2050.
He advocated a doubling of worldwide public spending on research and development into low-carbon technologies and a sharp increase in incentives to encourage people to use them. Stern said a global carbon price was needed, affixing a clear cost to pollution, and this could be created through tax, trading or regulation.

Bush To Move?
A land grab project by US President George W. Bush in Chaco, Paraguay, has generated considerable discomfort both politically and environmentally, according to South American newspapers that have been following stories circulating the continent about plans to buy 98,840 acres of land in Chaco, Paraguay, near the Triple Frontier (Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay), known as the last refuge of Nazism, a center for Al Qaeda, and one of the world’s last undeveloped oil reserves… as well as leading water resources for the arid region.
Paraguay Governor Erasmo Rodriguez Acosta revealed he heard that part of the land purchase consists of an ecological reserve with which Bush is affiliated. Then concern increased in recent weeks with the arrival of Bush daughter Jenna, and a source from the Physical Planning Department saying that most of the Chaco region now belongs to private companies.
Luis D”Elia, Argentina´s undersecretary for Land for Social Habitat, says the matter raises regional concern because it threatens local natural resources. He termed it “surprising” that the Bush family is trying to settle a few short miles from the US Mariscal Estigarribia Military Base.
Argentinean Adolfo Perez Esquivel, a 1980 Nobel Peace Prizewinner, warned that the real war will be fought not for oil, but for water, and recalled that Acuifero Guaraní is one of the largest underground water reserves in South America, running beneath Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay (larger than Texas and California together).

No More Fish?
If current trends of overfishing and pollution continue, the populations of just about all seafood face collapse by 2048, a team of ecologists and economists warns in a report in the new issue of the journal Science. While the study focused on the oceans, concerns have been expressed by ecologists about threats to fish in the Great Lakes and other lakes, rivers and freshwaters, too.
An international team spent four years analyzing 32 controlled experiments, other studies from 48 marine protected areas and global catch data from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization’s database of all fish and invertebrates worldwide from 1950 to 2003.The scientists also looked at a 1,000-year time series for 12 coastal regions, drawing on data from archives, fishery records, sediment cores and archaeological data.
“At this point 29 percent of fish and seafood species have collapsed - that is, their catch has declined by 90 percent. It is a very clear trend, and it is accelerating,” the report said. “If the long-term trend continues, all fish and seafood species are projected to collapse within my lifetime - by 2048. It looks grim and the projection of the trend into the future looks even grimmer… But it’s not too late to turn this around. It can be done, but it must be done soon. We need a shift from single species management to ecosystem management. It just requires a big chunk of political will to do it.”
The researchers called for new marine reserves, better management to prevent overfishing and tighter controls on pollution.
In the 48 areas worldwide that have been protected to improve marine biodiversity, they found, “diversity of species recovered dramatically, and with it the ecosystem’s productivity and stability.”
The National Fisheries Institute, a trade association for the seafood industry, does not share the researchers alarm.
“Fish stocks naturally fluctuate in population,” the institute said in a statement. “By developing new technologies that capture target species more efficiently and result in less impact on other species or the environment, we are helping to ensure our industry does not adversely affect surrounding ecosystems or damage native species.
Seafood has become a growing part of Americans’ diet in recent years. Consumption totaled 16.6 pounds per person in 2004, the most recent data available, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. That compares with 15.2 pounds in 2000.
Joshua Reichert, head of the private Pew Charitable Trusts’ environment program, pointed out that worldwide fishing provides $80 billion in revenue and 200 million people depend on it for their livelihoods. For more than 1 billion people, many of whom are poor, fish is their main source of protein, he said.
The research was funded by the National Science Foundation’s National Center for Ecological Synthesis and Analysis.

Cell Ready?
Nextel Communications, the outfit planning to put a cell tower on South Mountain after much controversy, is supposedly nearing completion of its construction phase, with new outfits clamoring for space on the behometh. We’ll let you know when the signal’s ready...