Lining Up Against

 That meeting was ended at 12:48 AM on the 22nd  by DEC Administrative Law Judge Richard Wissler after nearly 6 hours of comment by some 47 speakers, with a large additional number yet to be heard. The hearing will resume at 4 PM on Feb 3 and will end at midnight, irrespective of whether all may or may not have been heard- and with no break.
Cross said this week that he would have someone record both meetings, and possibly air each on public access television at a future date.
" Right now, all we have to look at is the 3,500 pages of document," Cross said. "I haven't had time to sit down and give it my full attention for a couple of days."
He said he expected to be able to go through it in three to four days, given that "most of it I'll be able to leaf right over," but was looking forward to the coming presentations because, "We all have questions."
" At least we'll hear one side of it," he explained of the format he's set up which will allow the public to attend, but not be heard from. "The advantage of this format is that it will give us the questions to get answers to."
Cross refused to comment on the two hearings he attended in Margaretville and Boiceville over the last two weeks, with over 850 others in attendance, 10 speaking in favor of the project and 82 in opposition to it.
" I'm an interested spectator," is all he would say. "You know I can't make a comment."
On January 14, one count had seven speaking in favor of the project, and 39 opposed. After introductory remarks by Gitter, who spoke of how his project was developed out of a sense of caring for the employment needs of the Catskills, several Delaware County governmental officials and businessmen, including the owner of the Margaretville area's largest real estate company, spoke enthusiastically about the region needing a large shot of development money.
Eric Wedemeyer, the owner and founder of Timberland Realty, went so far as to plead with project opponents to "let the rest of us have a piece of the pie."
Others derided the gathering of  "bogus environmentalists," who had held a press conference about the possibility of the project setting a bad precedent for Catskill Park development on the eve of its centennial.
Representatives of the National Resources Defense Council, the Sierra Club, Trout Unlimited, the New York Public Interest Group (NYPIRG), the Adirondack Mountain Club, Riverkeeper, state Attorney General Elliot Spitzer‚s office, the Catskill Center for Conservation and Development, and several smaller groups that have popped up to fight the proposed project spent the rest of the evening outlining their concerns. All noted that more than just a skirmish over a development, the battle over the Belleayre Resort was at the forefront of a statewide and national war to maintain environmental concerns in the face of unrelenting attacks over the last three years.

A letter was read from U.S. Congressman John Sweeney, a close friend and former aide to Governor Pataki, expressing his support for the project, "a winner," because of its job production promises. Several local businessmen and real estate agents said the area had been waiting for an opportunity like that being offered by Gitter and his deep-pocketed investors.                       

But then the roster of project opponents started in, raising questions about the environmental safety of what was being proposed, the economic hazards of doubling the local population, and most effectively, the fashion in which the DEIS was accepted without question and apparently fast-tracked into the current hearings without proper dissemination.                                               "I think this all comes down to a question of precedent," said James Tierney, Watershed Inspector General for the state Attorney General's office. He got applause from half of the room.                           "Promises of jobs and money are not worth two cents. I lived in New Jersey and saw what those casino resorts did," said an older woman, her voice rising with anger. "This is a nice quiet place. What they‚re offering the locals here is a joke. Don't ruin the land; it's good enough as it is."  Her comments got a standing ovation, and resounding clapping from two thirds of the 250 or so gathered in the gymnasium.                                                                    The presence of a reporter/photographer team from the New York Times  indicated the deeper waters into which the review had sailed by the second, January 21 hearing at which Gitter's introductory remarks were summarily booed, forcing him off script as his press agent, Fred Winters, tried retrieving press releases he'd handed out before the hearing's official start.
According to the Times' Anthony DePalma, who came up from New York with photographer Stewart Cairn, much of his publication's growing interest in what's been happening locally has been fed by growing interest in the review on the part of the New York City Department of Environmental Protection, which will be required to grant or deny permits to the project farther along in the process.
The city made a brief statement at the January 14 hearing, later released to the press in the form of a letter addressed to Wissler.
" The proposal by Crossroads Ventures is the largest development proposed in the Catskills in decades -possibly ever - and as proposed has many different potential impacts on the quality of the water flowing into the reservoirs," reads the statement written and delivered by Kurt Rieke, First Deputy Director of the DEP‚s Bureau of Water Supply. "DEP is an involved agency under the State Environmental Quality Review Act, because certain components of the project require DEP permits but more importantly due to our responsibility for protection of this extraordinary water supply under state law, which is shared by all Parties to the MOA.  We are devoting both in-house and consultant resources to a thorough evaluation of the draft EIS that is the subject of this hearing.  We will be providing comments in detail, in writing, before the close of the comment period."
            While declining to list specific elements of its written review comments, currently bring worked on with half a million dollars of review funding at DEP headquarters in Queens, Rieke did outline generic problems with, "the sufficiency of pollutant removal by the proposed wastewater treatment plant design and performance; the baseline data employed for design, and the efficacy of the proposed stormwater management controls in achieving required levels of pollutant control; the nature and severity of wetlands impacts from the modifications that will be made to topography throughout the development; the accuracy, sufficiency and reliability of hydrologic analyses and water balance calculations used in the design of the project; inaccurate depiction of baseline conditions, optimistic projections of economic benefits, insufficient identification and analysis of regional socio-economic and growth-inducing effects; and economic, environmental and regional impacts during construction."
          DEP Spokesperson Ian Michaels added on Wednesday that no further comments on the Belleayre Resort review would be made by the city until release of their review documents in late February, which he noted would be "very specific and very pointed."
At the Onteora High School auditorium DePalma was covering, filled to its 600-seat capacity, those few speakers who expressed support for the development drew boos and hisses throughout the hearing‚s six hour length, while many of its critics were greeted by swells of applause and cheering, with an occasional standing ovation.
Many speakers had done extensive homework, either by reading meticulously through sections of the 3,500-page Draft Environmental Impact Study (DEIS) supplied by Gitter‚s organization, Crossroads Ventures, or by researching potential effects of such features as application of chemicals to the two proposed golf courses and deforestation of 500 acres of mountainside. Numerous local officials spoke or had statements read in opposition to the project, including county legislator Brian Shapiro, Congressman Maurice Hinchey, State Assemblyman Kevin Cahill, Town of Woodstock councilman Steve Knight, Town of Olive councilwomen Helen Chase and Linda Burkhardt, and Richard Hochman of the Olive Planning Board.
Gitter, as the evening‚s first speaker, referred to a sign carried by a high school student with the legend "Save Our Catskills." "Save it from what?" he asked, provoking loud jeers from the audience. "I want to save it from economic decline and loss of jobs. We‚re all interested in saving the Catskills, but we all have different points of view about how we‚ll do this. I know you are passionately committed. So are we."
Many opponents of the project spoke on familiar themes such as danger to the purity of water resources, the impact of a predicted traffic increase of 500 cars per hour, the prospect that the resorts would compete with, rather than encourage, local businesses, the possible infiltration of casino gambling, the difficulty of access of the DEIS, demands that the DEC extend the period of public comment, complaints that the project is on too large a scale for the region.
Further details came from speakers such as Steven Dawes, who described his experiences working at three golf courses, where he observed application of chemicals to greens and fairways. He quoted the DEIS as claiming that pesticide use will be limited through a "curative rather than preventive approach." Dawes questioned the meaning of this statement, saying that resort owners can hardly be expected to wait for the appearance of brown patches before applying pesticides when customers are "paying top dollar" to play golf on immaculate lawns. In his experience, the first appearance of any pest on a single green resulted in the prompt spraying of all greens, and it was common for chemicals to be used in higher than legal concentrations. He also reported that unexpected storms occurring soon after chemical applications resulted in the death of fish in lakes on the golf courses.
Environmental reporter Karen Charman read off negative health effects documented for some of the pesticides, herbicides and fungicides to be used, effects ranging from nervous system damage to cancer. "It's true these are legal," she said. "That does not make them safe." She also cited a New York Times article of November 1998 about Vail, Colorado, which was suffering from a labor shortage due to elevated housing prices that prevented workers from living in the town. She said that when Gitter first announced his proposal, he stated that his vision was to make Shandaken resemble Vail.
Bruce Duffy of the Catskill-Delaware Water Alliance said that the cutting of thousands of trees could "severely impact the normal discharge curve" of rainwater runoff, altering the course of the Esopus Creek and possibly causing floods, as well as endangering the $900,000 stream stabilization project recently completed outside Phoenicia. Several members of Trout Unlimited stated that a more direct impact would manifest on the smaller and more fragile Birch Creek, which would be affected by the higher temperatures of runoff and higher silt content without the benefit of restraining vegetation, possible pesticide and fertilizer contamination and resultant danger to trout populations.
Sherret Chase, a founding member of the Catskill Center for Conservation and Development, called Crossroads "a high-risk venture" and the project a resort "built for sale, perhaps a young Monte Carlo or Las Vegas, with the potential to pollute both the Delaware and the Esopus Rivers. We do not need more speculative ventures that take away more from the region than they give. Contrary to project hype, we are not a poor, downtrodden people, needing a knight in silver armor. We do not need to strike a Faustian bargain. We do not need a shining, gated city on our ridge." He recommended that New York City "buy out Crossroads' land at a price that enables the developer to recoup his costs. If he won't sell, they should condemn the property and incorporate it into the forest preserve." The audience gave Chase a standing ovation.
      Officials with a number of key national, state and regional environmental organizations, who have all spoken against the proposed project and are submitting their own detailed reviews of Gitter‚s DEIS, have repeatedely stated their beliefs that the final battleground for the Belleayre Resort plan will be between city and state entities, possibly coming down to a power struggle between the governor and mayor. They've further noted that the DEC is paying close attention to the numbers lining up pro and con the result, as well as the issues being raised.
Simultaneous to its current review of the Belleayre Resort proposal, which Gitter has described as being a means of fulfilling long-proposed goals to make the state-run Belleayre Mountain Ski Center a year-round destination, the state Department of Environmental Conservation has also been putting the finishing touches on its own multi-million dollar expansion plans. On Wednesday, Belleayre‚s DEC Superintendent, Tony Lanza, said that a final state proposal should be out in the next 60 days.
The new Executive Budget proposal put out by Governor Pataki on the same day as the Gitter review at Onteora lists an increase of $30.6 million for 2004 DEC capital improvement projects amongst a litany of cuts in most other areas.
It is expected that the current review will be discussed as part of the expected budget battles set to start waging between Albany and New York City over the coming six months.

            Growing up with such emphases on the frailty and specialness of sight, Spark says she was "allowed to draw and paint as much as I wanted." As her eyes developed cataracts, and then glaucoma, she reached a point where her college studies were diverted into an English Literature major for a while. But then cataract surgery brought her back to her first love.
            Spark holds both a Masters of Fine Art in painting and an M.A. in Art Therapy.
            "Do you know Claude Monet's Water Lilies and their blurriness?" she asks. It turns out Monet had cataracts during those influential final years of his long career. And that's how Spark saw the world for years, and still sees much of it to this day.
            "No hard edges," she explains. "All glistening in an almost psychedelic manner∑
            Now, she adds, things have been worsening again. But such things don't seem to daunt Spark, who says she's learned to work with whatever small field of vision she's given to translate through her art.
            "I'm trying to find ways to express what I see and how I see it. I feel this has given my work a purer, direct means of expression."
            Since moving upstate, she's found herself drawn to working with nature, a process that forced her through a more classical form of depiction as she found her way with such a vast, always re-creating subject matter. Which is why she's so excited about her most recent works: the fragment paintings.
            "I'm just trying to draw attention to the way reality is a juxtaposition of things that co-exist, and not necessarily in a linear way," she says of the new work.
            Spark has shown throughout the Catskills part of our readership area, with regularity at Phoenicia's Upstate Art, Hunter's Catskill Mountain Foundation Gallery and Margaretville's Erpf Gallery. But she's also been collected by years, with her works in major hospitals as well as private homes.
            To fuel herself, Spark has spent years regularly seeing as much art as she can. When we speak she's excited about an afternoon to be spent at The Whitney.
            She also brings out some important lessons she's learned over the years.
            First off, Spark taught art therapy for years, but also worked in hospitals with handicapped clients who taught her "this startling thing: that art can be a direct link between image making and what's going on inside a person."
            Secondly, the move Upstate, and the establishment of a strong connection with Mt. Tremper's noted Zen Mountain Monastery, provided Spark with "a big opening" that has allowed her to explore new ways of looking and seeing via the world of nature's that has opened up to her up hear. Which, among other things, has shifted her direction, seasons-wise, to a new respect for the winter season we are in the midst of.
            "I, like many artists I know, do a lot more work in winter," Spark says. "You see the structure of everything now that the leaves are gone. All that green in the summer is like a carpet, and somewhat stifling. But the current season brings out the uninterrupted rawness of the landscape we inhabit here."
            Finally, Spark says that her way of seeing, for all its faults, is starting to match the landscape she's moved into. She talks about being able to capture something in these mountains and valleys, these ancient hills, that is rare.
            This past summer she and her husband spent several weeks in an artist's retreat - author Heinrich Boll's cabin by the sea - and were deeply impressed by the sparseness of a landscape that had once held forest as green as ours, until "men and women made some mistakes and left things bare for the last 5,000 years."
            "We have an opportunity to see what a landscape can look like that's been revived, and avoid its second destruction," she says in her matter-of-fact way.
            Furthermore, Michelle Spark sees her art, with its new focus on her skewed but precious vision of our landscape, as important because, "It still helps us see something beyond our own constructed realities. Nature is still the one place we can still learn new things from.
            For further information on Michelle Spark's work, including whatever new exhibits she may be having, visit her website at www.michellespark.com