Lining Up…
It’s been a heavy couple weeks for the various legal teams in the ongoing Crossroads DEIS review, with final “reply briefs” to the December 23 “final briefs” on the proposed Belleayre Resort now in, and the record finally closed on last year’s contentious SEQRA issues conference. There’s plenty new to read, and, like the lawyers sometimes do, you can download all these public documents from phoeniciatimes.com.
In a new twist, Watershed Attorney General James Tierney, the State’s highest-ranking official charged with protecting the downstate water supply, has waded deeper into the proposed project’s adjudication talent pool, filing a brief on January 21 seeking Amicus or friend of the court status in the project’s ongoing SEQRA review. Subsequent to the filing and a 7-way conference call with the judge & presumed parties, briefs from all sides are due February 4, with Tierney set to respond to them by the 11th. Sometime soon after, presiding Judge Wissler is expected to rule on the request to participate.

Tierney, jointly appointed by Governor Pataki and Attorney General Spitzer, has previously submitted extensive comments and scientific studies highly critical of the project. His current brief calls for full adjudication by DEC on the issues of stormwater, cumulative impact, pesticide and herbicide usage, and wetlands. Tierney’s brief notes special concern over areas in Big Indian “slated for excavation,” equivalent to157 football fields “with end zones,” “on exceedingly steep slopes over 35 degrees.”
Crossroads Ventures, in a January 26 press release, responded to some of the various briefs by “vehemently challenging the opponents’ arguments, technical claims, and ‘tortured interpretation’ of state regulations,” which the company characterizes as “improper and unwarranted interference in the proper functioning of the SEQRA process.”
Finally and also last week, nine additional NYS environmental organizations joined the 11 groups of the Catskill Preservation Coalition in asking Governor Pataki to require full adjudication of all issues now before DEC. New signatories to the request include the NY League of Conservation Voters, the NY Public Interest Research Group, the Regional Plan Association, Audubon New York, Environmental Advocates of NY, and Scenic Hudson. According to Natural Resources Defense Counsel attorney Eric Goldstein, the January 27 letter to Pataki suggests that “the largest single development project ever proposed in the Catskill Park is emerging as an issue of statewide environmental concern.”

Casino Talks…
The Seneca Nation recently announced that it is willing to pay a $500 million premium to the state to get a compact for a Catskills casino. But the tribe will not agree to collect taxes on cigarette sales on their reservations, a concession Gov. George Pataki has been trying to get in exchange for casino rights but which most tribes are opposing as an infringement on their sovereignty. The Seneca offer is one element vying for attention in the sweeping land claim/casino compact bill now being drafted in Albany that would allow at least four other tribes to open casinos in the Catskills.
The Seneca have also said that they would agree to build a casino in Buffalo — the third of three they’re allowed to create in western New York — to resolve a dispute in which the tribe had said it preferred the Buffalo suburbs, and would also agree to build its Catskills casino in either Sullivan County or Ulster County to ease concerns of having too many in one county.
Pataki is currently working on state and federal legislation to achieve the settlements.

Budget Time!
Gov. George Pataki’s proposed state budget identifies billions of dollars in new state obligations while conceding that New York has limited resources to pay for them.
The $105.5 billion spending plan, up $2.5 billion or 2.4 percent from the current fiscal year, now goes to the state Legislature for its review, including public hearings. The governor and Legislature have failed to pass a budget by the April 1 deadline for 20 straight years and word has it this one’s expected to be even later than usual.
Pataki’s budget has proposed two massive new five-year initiatives: $36.6 billion for improvements to highways, bridges and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority system and the phasing in of $8 billion a year in new spending on public schools, with much of the money going to the anticipated cost of complying with a court order to improve funding for New York City schools.. But the governor included only $1 billion in new revenues in his budget, in part through higher fees to register cars and perform vehicle title searches at the state Department of Motor Vehicles. The rest of the new funding comes from cutting state spending on Medicaid by nearly $2 billion.
Local school administrators are saying that steep rises in mandated costs, such as employee health care, may offset any expected increases in state aid. According to an October 2004 study by the Public Policy in Education Fund, Ulster County schools are currently underfunded by $16.7 million. Meanwhile, State University of New York tuition would go up by $500 a year, atop a $950 hike to $4,350 a year in 2003.
“This budget puts a major squeeze on low- and middle-income students,” said Miriam Kramer of the student-supported New York Public Interest Research Group.
According to a press release from the Governor’s office, funding for the $105 billion budget proposal comes 35 percent from Federal grants, 28 percent from personal income taxes, 13 percent from user taxes and fees, 6 percent from business taxes, 6 percent and 18 percent from all other sources. The basic breakdown of outgoing funds go 29 percent to Medicaid health care programs, 23 percent to Non-Medicaid local programs, 20 percent to School aid and STAR property tax reductions, 16 percent for state agency operations, 4 percent for fringe benefits/pensions, and 8 percent for debt service.

Cancelled Tests
Onteora high school students were unable to take state Regents exams on January 26 when every school district in Ulster County had to cancel classes for what turned out to be a relatively minor snowfall, the second time in as many years that January Regents were canceled because of bad weather. The tests missed included 11th-grade English, Earth science and foreign language Regents. The affected students must now wait until June or August to take them. January tests are generally taken by students who failed or missed previous Regents exams. A passing score on the English Regents is required for graduation, and the Earth science test is one of four exams that may be used to fulfill the science graduation requirement. The foreign language Regents counts toward an advanced Regents diploma.
Last year when most schools in New York City, Long Island and parts of upstate New York, including Kingston, canceled January Regents exams due to snow, the Education Department allowed students to use course grades for local diplomas. But a similar option will not be offered this year, state officials said this past week.

Broken Allies
The White House has scrapped its list of Iraq allies known as the 45-member “coalition of the willing,” which Washington used to back its argument that the 2003 invasion was a multilateral action. The White House has replaced the coalition list with a smaller roster of 28 countries with troops in Iraq sometime after the June transfer of power to an interim Iraqi government. The original coalition, unveiled on the eve of the invasion, consisted of 30 countries that publicly offered support for the United States and another 15 that did not want to be named as part of the group.

Bribed…
The public relations firm that arranged for pundit Armstrong Williams to promote the Bush administration’s No Child Left Behind education program admitted recently that the deal with Williams violated “the guidelines of our agency and our industry.” The statement by Ketchum Inc. came on the same day that Bush’s nominee for Education secretary, Margaret Spelling, promised to review the promotional tactics used by the Department of Education. Ketchum, as part of a $1 million contract with the Education Department, paid Williams $240,000 to “regularly comment” on No Child Left Behind during his syndicated TV talk show. The arrangement raises questions about whether the Education Department broke the law by using taxpayers’ money to pay for “propaganda,” and whether Williams and Ketchum should have disclosed the commentator’s deal to his viewers, readers of his syndicated newspaper column and listeners of his radio show.

Blizzard?
Snowfall in Ulster County for the January 22 blizzard, where a rare state of emergency was declared 5 p.m. Saturday, reached its deepest at 19 inches in Shandaken, according to the National Weather Service. Neighboring Phoenicia had 9 inches. A car rolled over in a single vehicle accident along Route 28 in Olive. Otherwise, things were returned to normal by the afternoon of January 23.

Disabled…
Social Security disability benefits may not be safe from the across-the-board cuts that are likely in President Bush’s proposal to allow personal investment accounts. Since retirement and disability benefits are calculated using the same formula, disability benefits also would be reduced - unless the program is somehow separated. This also raises big questions about how investment accounts would be structured for disabled people, especially if they get injured at a young age or are dependent on a parent. Disabled beneficiaries typically work less and need benefits sooner, so the accounts would not provide enough income to these people.
Nearly 25 percent of the population in rural Catskills towns tend to receive disability payments of some sort, according to U.S. Census figures.
Currently, disabled workers move seamlessly through the Social Security system, often unaware they draw their benefits from the disability program until they reach retirement age and shift to the retirement program. That would change with investment accounts, advocates claim, with people falling through holes in a new system.
About 16 percent of the 47 million people receiving Social Security benefits are disabled workers and their dependents. The impact of accounts on beneficiaries who aren’t retirees hasn’t been publicly discussed yet by the Bush administration.
Almost three in 10 of today’s 20-year-olds will become disabled before reaching age 67, according to the Social Security Administration. About 72 percent of the private sector work force has no long-term disability insurance.

Press Press
The tiny country of Qatar is being pressured by the Bush Administration to cease its sponsorship of Al Jazeera, the popular television station that is a big source of news in the Arab world. Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and other officials have complained to Qatari leaders that Al Jazeera’s broadcasts have been inflammatory, misleading and occasionally false, especially on Iraq. The pressure has been so intense, a senior Qatari official has said, that the government is accelerating plans to put Al Jazeera on the market, though Bush administration officials counter that a privately owned station in the region may be no better from their point of view. Estimates of Al Jazeera’s audience range from 30 million to 50 million, putting it well ahead of its competitors.
Administration officials have been nervous to talk about the station, being sensitive to charges that they are trying to suppress free expression. However, some administration officials acknowledged that the well-publicized American pressure on the station - highlighted when Qatar was not invited to a summit meeting on the future of democracy in the Middle East last summer in Georgia - has drawn charges of hypocrisy, especially in light of President Bush’s repeated calls for greater freedoms and democracy in the region.
“It’s completely two-faced for the United States to try to muzzle the one network with the most credibility in the Middle East, even if it does sometimes say things that are wrong,” said an Arab diplomat. “The administration should be working with Al Jazeera and putting people on the air.”
The U.S. kicked the station out of Iraq last summer when it disagreed with some of its broadcasts. Stay tuned…

DEP/DEC Talks
Departing New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) Commissioner Erin M. Crotty and New York City Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) Acting Commissioner David B. Tweedy recently announced implementation of a new spill reduction program of controlled releases from the City’s Pepacton Reservoir in Delaware County, a means for stemming flooding in the Delaware River watershed over coming years. Under the program, controlled releases will be made from Pepacton in order to maintain a void in the reservoir equal to one-half of the water equivalent of any existing snow pack, meaning that the void will vary as the snow pack increases or decreases. The program will continue until March 31. The new program is the result of an agreement reached after months of discussion by a committee seeking ways to help alleviate flooding concerns along the East Branch of the Delaware River . Members of the committee include DEP, DEC, Delaware County, the Town of Colchester , and the federal government. The terms of the agreement were approved by the four Delaware Basin states, as is required for any controlled releases from the City’s Delaware River reservoirs.

Getting Warmer
Global warming is approaching the point of no return, after which widespread drought, crop failure and rising sea levels will be irreversible, an international climate change task force has warned, while calling on the Group of 8 leading industrial nations to cut carbon emissions, double their research spending on technology and work with India and China to build on the Kyoto Protocol for cuttings emissions of carbon dioxide and other “greenhouse gases” blamed for global warming. The independent report was made by the Institute for Public Policy Research in Britain, the Center for American Progress in the United States and the Australia Institute.
“An ecological time bomb is ticking away,” said Stephen Byers, who was co-chairman of the task force with U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine. “World leaders need to recognize that climate change is the single most important long-term issue that the planet faces.”
British Prime Minister Tony Blair has since said that the United States must do more to address the concerns of the rest of the world if it expects support for its own policies, and cited global warming as a prime example.
“If America wants the rest of the world to be part of the agenda it has set, it must be part of their agenda, too,” he told the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum, a gathering of 2,500 world political and business leaders. Blair’s unusually sharp comments directed at the United States come at a time of growing public anger in Britain over his support for U.S. President George W. Bush in Iraq, and months before British general elections.
A new index of environmental sustainability around the globe, released in tiome for Davos, saw countries from Northern and Central Europe and South America dominating the top spots while the United States ranked 45th of the 146 countries studied, behind such countries as Japan, Botswana and the tiny Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, and most of Western Europe. The lowest-ranking country was North Korea. Among those near the bottom were Haiti, Taiwan, Iraq and Kuwait. The report is based on 75 measures, including the rate at which children die from respiratory diseases, fertility rates, water quality, overfishing, emission of heat-trapping gases and the export of sodium dioxide, a crucial component of acid rain.

Fidgety?
Researchers at the Mayo Clinic believe it’s not the trips to the gym, but the everyday pacing, fidgeting and restlessness that may play a bigger role in whether someone’s fat or thin, according to a small study of self-described couch potatoes.
The scientists found that the obese people they studied sat for about 150 minutes more a day on average than their lean subjects, and that meant they burned about 350 fewer calories a day.
The researchers looked at the role of routine activities such as sitting, standing, walking and talking. If the overweight subjects could match the behavior of their lean counterparts, that could work out to a weight loss of about 33 pounds a year, the study said. And it’s not necessary to go to the gym to do that. The activity deficit in the overweight subjects didn’t reflect a lack of motivation, the report said. Instead, it probably indicates a difference in brain chemistry because even when the obese volunteers lost weight, they didn’t sit still any less. Conversely, when the lean subjects gained weight, they didn’t sit around any more.
The researchers recruited 10 mildly obese and 10 lean people to wear special underwear, which used technology developed for fighter jet control panels. Sensors embedded in the undergarments recorded their postures and movements every half-second, 24 hours a day, for 10 days. The underpants look like bicycle shorts; the tops resemble undershirts for the men and sports bras for the women.

Anti-Bullying
Using a young readers’ novel called “The Misfits” as its centerpiece, middle schools nationwide recently participated in a “No Name-Calling Week” initiative. The program, now in its second year, has the backing of groups from the Girl Scouts to Amnesty International but has also drawn complaints that it overemphasizes harassment of gay youths. The initiative was developed by the New York-based Gay, Lesbian & Straight Education Network, which seeks to ensure that schools safely accommodate students of all sexual orientations.
“No Name-calling Week” takes aim at insults of all kinds - whether based on a child’s appearance, background or behavior. But a handful of conservative critics have zeroed in on the references to harassment based on sexual orientation.
“I hope schools will realize it’s less an exercise in tolerance than a platform for liberal groups to promote their pan-sexual agenda,” said Robert Knight, director of Concerned Women for America’s Culture and Family Institute, which also was involved with the recent flap about Spongebob being a tool for gaydom. “Schools should be steering kids away from identifying as gay.”
Meanwhile, a new survey has found that church-going Americans have grown increasingly intolerant in the past four years of politicians making compromises on such hot issues as abortion and gay rights. At the same time, those polled said they were growing bolder about pushing their beliefs on others — even at the risk of offending someone.
The trends could indicate that religion has become “more prominent in American discourse ... more salient,” according to Ruth Wooden, president of Public Agenda, a nonpartisan research organization which released the survey.
On the question of whether elected officials should set their convictions aside to get results in government, 84 percent agreed in 2000. However, four years later that had dropped to 74 percent. There was a sharper decline on the same question among weekly church-goers from 82 percent in the first survey to 63 percent in the second. In the survey, 32 percent of those who attended church once a week said they were willing to compromise on abortion issues — a 19-point drop in four years. Among the same group the question of compromising beliefs on gay rights was acceptable to only 39 percent, down 18 points from 2000. The poll also found that 37 percent overall felt that deeply religious people should be careful not to offend anyone when they “spread the word of God,” a decline from 46 percent four years earlier. The number of those who felt that committed faithful should spread the word “whenever they can” rose to 41 percent, up 6 points.
On another issue, the survey found little change in opinion on whether the U.S. political system can handle greater interaction between religion and politics. Asked if there was a threat if religious leaders and groups got a lot more involved in politics, 63 percent in 2000 and 61 percent in 2004 said the system could “easily handle” it. But the remainder continue to believe the system would be threatened.

Unhinged $$s
China has lost faith in the stability of the U.S. dollar and is tying its currency to a more flexible basket of currencies, fearful that the U.S. currency will continue to destablize in the coming years.
“The U.S. dollar is no longer a stable currency, and is devaluating all the time, and that’s putting troubles all the time,” the Chinese said in a press release on the subject.
The dollar hit a new low in December against the euro and has been falling against other major currencies on concerns about the ever-growing U.S. trade and budget deficits.
“The US cannot take support for the dollar for granted,” the Financial Times (FT) quoted Nick Carver, one of the authors of a study by Central Banking Publications that surveyed 65 central bankers. According to the study, 70 percent of those questioned said they had increased euro-denominated reserves, and the report sent Europe’s single currency higher against its US counterpart.
Shifting central bank reserves would increase pressure on the United States, which relies on foreign investment to fund a current account deficit that grew to 164.7 billion dollars in the third quarter of 2004, a new record. US officials would have to raise interest rates if foreign investment decreased significantly, dampening economic growth.

Drinking Gals
Women who enjoy a drink of beer or wine daily have sharper minds into old age than women who abstain, U.S. researchers have found. A new report, based on a study of nearly 12,500 nurses, adds to the apparent benefits of light to moderate drinking, which can also prevent heart disease and stroke. The study found that drinkers aged 70 to 81 were 20 percent less likely to experience a decline in their thinking skills over a two-year period than women who did not drink at all. On average, the women who quaffed a beer or a glass of wine each day tended to have the mental agility of someone a year and a half younger than abstainers. But drinking more than one glass of beer or wine didn’t produce a greater benefit, the researchers said.
Moderate alcohol consumption — about a 12-ounce beer or a six-ounce glass of wine — is already known to reduce the risk of heart disease and stroke.

Cheney Again
The legal fight over access to the records of Vice President Dick Cheney’s 2001 energy task force is back before a federal appeals court, seven months after the Supreme Court sidestepped the issue. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit has been hearing arguments in the nearly 4-year-old fight over whether a federal open government law can be used to compel the Bush administration to publicly release records from meetings of the task force. The Sierra Club and Judicial Watch are suing to get access to the records, claiming the public has a right to know what role energy company executives who met with task force officials played in crafting industry-friendly recommendations.
The Bush administration opposes producing any records, saying that privacy is important to ensure members of such panels can speak candidly. The administration also maintains that the formal makeup of the task force was limited to government officials. Federal law requires government panels to conduct their business in public, unless all members are government officials.
The groups that are suing allege that participants from industry effectively became members of the task force formulating the White House’s energy policy. They complain they were shut out of the meetings.
When the case was last considered by the appeals court in 2003, a three-judge panel rejected government arguments that the lawsuit would be an unconstitutional intrusion on the operations of the presidency.
The task force met for several months in 2001 and issued a report that favored opening more public lands to oil and gas drilling and proposed a range of other steps supported by industry. Most of the recommendations stalled in Congress.
Meanwhile, Cheney said in a recent interview that the proper power of the presidency has finally been restored after being diminished in the wake of the Vietnam War and Watergate, and that President Bush contributed to the process by not allowing his narrow victory in the 2000 election to inhibit him during his first term.

Recall!
Ford Motor Co. is recalling nearly 800,000 pickups and sport utility vehicles because the cruise control switch could short circuit and cause a fire under the hood. The recall affects approximately 792,000 Ford F-150 pickups, Ford Expeditions and Lincoln Navigators from the 2000 model year. Also affected are 2001 F-Series Supercrew trucks that were made at the same time. Ford will notify owners of the recall in February, and dealers will deactivate the cruise control switch for free. Once the company has an adequate supply of replacement switches, it will send another letter notifying owners that they can get their switches replaced. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration opened an investigation into the defect in November after receiving 36 reports of fires. All of the incidents occurred when the vehicle was parked and the ignition was turned off. No injuries were reported.

The Viagra Cure
The impotence drug Viagra may also help prevent the abnormal growth of the heart seen in some types of heart disease. The drug, originally tested but rejected as a heart drug, stopped the overgrowth of hearts in mice that were implanted with heart failure, researchers have found.
Viagra, known generically as sildenfil and made by Pfizer, was the first of the new impotence drugs, It works by affecting a molecule called nitric oxide, which expands blood vessels. It increases blood flow to the genitals, but was originally tested to see if it could help hearts function better. However, it had little effect on resting heart rates.
Viagra blocks an enzyme called phosphodiesterase-5A.
Often the hearts of heart failure patients grow to abnormal sizes as they struggle harder and harder to pump blood. About half of heart failure patients die within five years of being diagnosed.

Shifting Military
The Air Force and Navy have more people than they need and are trying to get thousands to leave without resorting to layoffs. Over the next year, the Air Force says it will shrink by 20,000, downsizing from 379,000 troops to 359,000. The Navy will trim more than 7,300 and fall from about 373,200 sailors to 365,900. In contrast, the Army will grow from 493,000 to 502,400 and the Marines from 175,000 to 178,000. Their growth reflects the demands of open-ended wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that are about to trigger second tours of duty for tens of thousands of ground troops.
The high-tech Air Force and Navy, which have few rifle-toting troops, believe they can absorb personnel cuts that might threaten to debilitate the Army or Marines. Part of the reason the two services can draw down: High tech weapons are changing warfare. A single Air Force B-1 or B-2 Stealth bomber flying with satellite-guided bombs can now destroy more targets than an entire squadron of Air Force or Navy planes dropping unguided bombs in the 1991 Gulf War.
In future years, the Navy and Air Force will sail fewer ships and fly fewer aircraft because of improvements in weapons. Whereas the 1980s-era Pentagon envisioned building up to a 600-ship fleet from 450 in 1982, the Navy now has a total of 289 ships and submarines.
Personnel is among the biggest expenses for the military. The cost of 10,000 additional troops is $1 billion or more a year when recruiting, training, salaries and benefits are included.
As part of their efforts to downsize, the Navy and Air Force last year began encouraging sailors and airmen to consider transferring to the Army. But since the “Blue to Green” program began, only 50 sailors and 89 airmen have switched to the Army, according to Navy and Air Force figures.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon is finally confronting, in its new budget, a reality that had been hidden in recent years: That there is not enough money to pay for the wars on terror and in Iraq, fund long-term defense strategy and the forces needed to carry it out, pay for military benefits, and buy future defense technology - all at the same time - especially with a growing federal deficit. The Air Force’s F-22 fighter plane program will be cut, destroyer programs and other Navy projects will slow down, and even the Army’s vaunted Future Combat System will be cut back.
Could Star Wars be next?

Bad Situation
Britain is urging America to announce a timetable for withdrawing coalition troops from Iraq over the next 18 months or more. With a new Iraqi government due to take power following this week’s elections, British officials believe the time is ripe for the coalition to announce an “indicative timetable” for its departure. British officials say that a timetable, however tentative, would signal an exit strategy, bolster the transitional government and undermine the insurgents’ claim that America intended to occupy Iraq indefinitely.
A series of new U.S. intelligence assessments on Iraq paints a grim picture of the road ahead and concludes that there’s little likelihood that President Bush’s goals can be attained in the near future. Instead of stabilizing the country, the national elections Jan. 30 are likely to be followed by more violence and could provoke a civil war between majority Shiite Muslims and minority Sunni Muslims, the CIA and other intelligence agencies predict.
A new public report by the National Intelligence Council concludes that instead of diminishing terrorism, U.S.-occupied Iraq has replaced prewar Afghanistan as a breeding and training ground for terrorists who may disperse to conduct attacks elsewhere.
The Bush administration claimed before invading Iraq that Saddam had strong ties to international terrorism, but most counterterrorism experts dispute that and no evidence has been found to support the claim.
Bush has given no sign that he plans to change approaches in Iraq and has declined to set his own timeline for American troops to withdraw. The president told The Washington Post in a recent interview that he believed that the 2004 election ratified his Iraq policies.

Vaguely Planned...
A vague promise of a meeting between New York City Department of Environmental Protection officials and the Coalition of Watershed Towns over the latter’s complaints about a number of minor details in the city’s handling of Upstate watershed matters has an actual date attached to it, according to reports this week.
But new developments and changes at the DEP, which was just appointed a new commissioner by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Tuesday, February 1, along with the resignation of the woman who had originally suggested the City/Coalition tete-a-tete, former state Department of Environmental Conservation commissioner Erin Crotty, has kept specifics about the meeting still vague.
The meeting was first suggested by the Coalition of Watershed Towns, the ad hoc organization of Upstate municipalities that achieved notoriety in the mid 1990’s by suing New York City and creating the Watershed deal that brought millions of NYC dollars to the region for conservation and development purposes. After eight years of partnership, the Coalition started suggesting last year that NYC hasn’t been playing fair, what with a growing number of instances where it felt the DEP had overstepped bounds.
But close watchers of the Coalition feel that what really prompted the Coalition’s ire was when New York sided against the proposed Belleayre resort golf development pegged for Shandaken and Middletown, a stance they have said could throttle future development of the region.
Last December, things came to a head when Crotty and then Acting DEP Commissioner David Tweedie both attended the annual meeting of The Watershed Protection and Partnership Council, along with significant representation from the Coalition of Watershed Towns, at a conference center in Hunter. Coalition Attorney Jeffrey Baker, who worked with Crotty, along with Belleayre Resort counsel Dan Ruzow, during the 1997 watershed agreement process, asked the DEC commissioner if she would intervene and call a meeting between Upstates and New York.
It was announced at the Coalition’s recent meeting that they had received an agenda for such a meeting from Crotty. But that was days before she announced her resignation… and a new DEP commissioner was announced by Bloomberg.
Now, everyone’s wondering whether any of the major players who had agreed to meet would be able to do so with any knowledge about the issues set to be discussed, as well as whether the situation at hand was in truth as dire as the Coalition had called it, or merely a smokescreen for other issues.
“We don’t know anything about any meeting. What’s it for?” asked Crotty’s receptionist on her last day of work. After a few minutes of discussion outlining the reason for the meeting, the receptionist gave up.
Finally, after a few moments,the DEC called back to say there was to be “a meeting of the New York City Watershed,” but it would be Bill Harding who was handling it. “On February 11th.. in Newburgh. Somewhere near an airport…”
Harding is the Director of the The Watershed Protection and Partnership Council. As of press time, his office had not yet confirmed the meeting.
Ian Michaels, spokesperson for the Department of Environmental Protection, said he was not sure if Lloyd would represent the agency at the purported February 11 session in Newburgh. “It is not known when she’ll start yet,” he said.
Lloyd, who was Commissioner of New York’s Sanitation Department from 1992 to 1994, and was the Executive Vice President for Government and Community Affairs and the Executive Vice President for Administration at Columbia University, was introduced at a brief press conference at City Hall Tuesday afternoon in Manhattan, where Bloomberg thanked both Ward and Tweedie and noted how he expects Lloyd to more than fill the bill.
“Emily, do a good job,” he said.
Lloyd took the podium and immediately vowed to protect the city’s precious drinking water, which she called “the most fundamental resource of this city.” But then, moving beyond the fact that the agency she is taking the reins of handles myriad issues and responsibilities, Lloyd added that she would be “moving ahead with the partnerships upstate” as one of her top priorities for the job.
An interesting remark, given the strained relationship the partners have had lately.
Could someone have told her about the vague meeting set for next Friday in Newburgh?