The Eleventh Hour...

The full value percentage change of the Town of Olive rose with the move by 43.2% from $593,494,091 to $850,000,000.
The announcement came at a July 29 Olive meeting on the Large Parcel issue and other tax matters that was attended by the supervisors of neighboring towns, as well as three Onteora School Board members and new OCS superintendent Justine Winters.
The OCS board recently announced that it would be shifting the setting for the next Onteora School Board meeting set for 7 PM on Tuesday, August 17 from the Woodstock School to the Onteora Junior/Senior High School auditorium because of anticipated audience size for discussion and voting on the long awaited decision to pass the Large Parcel Resolution switching the formula by which local towns are levied for school taxes.
When Leifeld announced the ORPS valuation jump at the Thursday night meeting, some were surprised, particularly those who have felt ORPS was firmly under the sway of the City's influence. Others contend that the hike doesn't nearly go far enough.
Patrick Seely, representing the Hacker & Murphy law firm which helped Olive negotiate the change, explained its projected effects at a July 29 meeting.
"Last year, the tax rate in Olive per thousand was $1200," Seely said. "With this change, it will be about $1600."
"At least we're dragging the City along with us," said Leifeld. "They're going to be paying their portion, too."
But, this time, their portion will be an assessed at $340 million instead of $119 million. And this, Leifeld points out, opens an opportunity to reassess the City's holdings with more realistic numbers.
With Shandaken Supervisor Robert Cross in the audience, Leifeld took the
opportunity to propose a meeting between supervisors from the towns of Olive, Shandaken and Woodstock and their assessors, as well as Ulster County Real Property Services Director Dorothy Martin, to discuss how the changes should relate to the Large Parcel Law.
That meeting has since been set for August 16, to be held in Martin’s offices.
Much of the subsequent meeting, before the principals retired into executive
session, was given to a running discussion of the law, still the hottest topic in town, with frequent audience exchanges. The law, which mandates that the local school district decide on whether or not to distribute tax revenues from the Ashokan Reservoir in Olive and Hurley to other towns in
the district, is scheduled for a vote by August 17.
Onteora School Board President Marino D'Orazio his displeasure at the position into which school boards are forced by the law. He accused the political representatives responsible for the Large Parcel Law of ignoring the school board's entreaties for help.
"Short of going with a gun, there's very little you can do when people don't respond to phone calls, letters, invitations..." said D'Orazio.
"You don't vote for the same people who supported this bill and are not answering your phone calls," said an audience member. "You turn them out of office and you get these bills amended. That's what we need to work for- getting these people out of office."
"I've talked to all three of them; they've gotten back to me," said another member of the audience. "I've gotten letters from them and everything. But, yet, a school board that is enacting legislation that will effect (us) can not get in touch with these people?"
"I've had conversations with them off the record," said someone else. "But that doesn't help me when I go to the school board because they won't come in and say it in public. The reality is, if you want to get re-elected, you have to have a majority in the area you represent agree with what you're doing. So, they're playing politics...and to have it passed and not to have read it is sickening."
The last part of her comment referred to Senator Larkin's claim that he did
not realize that the law he sponsored passed without the provisions of the Sponsor's Memorandum in it which would, in effect, have exempted Olive from the law. She also suggested driving a Tastee Freeze truck with a bullhorn around the capital and reading the law in full within earshot of the legislators ala Michael Moore's stunt in the movie Fahrenheit 911.
"I went to Albany, myself, and spoke to the person who had the legislative packet in his possession because the NY Library did not have it," said D' Orazio. "Normally, they do but they said 'it hasn't found its way here yet.' In that packet, there are conflicting letters and opinions. In some of them, they have language (saying) 'we want to prevent large fluctuations in evaluations of large parcels,' etc. In some of them, the word 'reservoir' is especially spelled out... 'we want to tax differently those towns which have within them large parcels such as hydroelectric plants and reservoirs. Now, by definition, reservoirs are not bought and sold. So, that sort of goes against the argument...
"It's a poorly thought-out piece of legislation that has the unintended effect of dividing towns and school districts who are faced with it... Onteora is very unique. On a yearly basis, unless the law changes or unless these efforts cause it to become a moot point, this school board is faced with dividing its towns. It says you have to do it every year!"
In answer to a question, Leifeld explained: "Senator Larkin sent us a letter, through our lobbyist, stating that the intent was for power plants in his district, about 2 or 3 of them... It was also for large entities that have a fluctuation in their assessment that went up and down year to year. That never happened here. That makes it unacceptable."
Someone in the audience called out that the Larkin letter also specified that all towns involved had to agree on the option and Leifeld acknowledged the provision.
"All of that," said Leifeld before closing the subject with a terse "but somebody walked down the halls and did something..."
The unspoken "something" was a last minute blockage of an amendment to the law favored by Olive which would remove municipal reservoirs from consideration under the law.
In the week following the meeting, new Onteora Superintendent Winters said that she had found the discussion of ORPS’ move to be “very encouraging” and said she was working to get a meeting of the local town supervisors, plus representation from her own board, sometime in the coming week.
“I think we all need to sit down and talk about what this means,” Winters said. “I think it’s very important that we get an idea of what exactly the tax impacts will be from this, on each town. Each municipality has been approaching the figures different. It’s time we all get around the same table and work this out before we have to make a decision August 17.”
She said the amount of work Olive has been doing will raise the amount of tax income coming from the city, effecting all district taxes. She also cited the news about major progress with a new reval in Olive as “also strong.”
However, Winters did add that her board is “still cautious” about any eleventh hour news, and pointed out that the state’s inability to determine a budget for the coming year has been a real hindrance.
“I have this feeling,” she said, “that all of this may move nicely all at once. Just a hunch.”

Not Enough Water? 

            But the most incendiary issue of recent weeks turned out to be groundwater, surface water, and their relationship.  Crossroads’ consultants disagree, but it may be impossible to pump the water needed for the proposed Belleayre Resort without drying up wells, springs, and streams from Big Indian to Fleishmanns and possibly beyond. That’s the conclusion of Catskill Preservation Coalition Hydro-Geologist Dr. Andrew Michalski and Hydrologist Paul Rubin, who contend that the 576,000 gallons per day proposed to be pumped from four wells on and near the project site amounts to “mining” the groundwater and “cannot be sustained” even for a period of months, to say nothing of years.
            They also took issue with the adequacy of Crossroads’ hydrological testing, the interpretation of its results, and the assumptions and conceptual modeling of the site’s bedrock geology. Michalski also challenged Crossroads assertion that 25% of the annual rainfall is available to recharge the aquifer, calling it “a gross overestimation” in the range of 1,000 to 2,000 percent, based on the impermeability of the bedrock and his work in 13 other watersheds in the region.   Moreover, Michalski and Rubin argued that the water involved is the same water that’s also needed for an expansion of the Belleayre Ski Area and the hamlet of Pine Hill, and to supply existing wells in the region and maintain minimum low-water flows in its streams.
            “It’s a classic case of over-pumping and the system cannot deliver,” said Michalski. “There just isn’t that much groundwater available.” Michalski explained that there is no underground reservoir to draw from, and that the bedrock geology is not a single homogenous aquifer as Crossroads claims but a series of stratified shale and sandstone in tilting horizontal layers. Citing Crossroads drilling records as evidence, water flow, said Michalski is concentrated in hydrologically connected “bedding planes” or fractures with transmissive but little storage capacity. “Once you draw (water) down below a certain point,” he said, you draw air into the fracture and the whole hydrology would just collapse. The primary water-bearing fracture would surely be devastated within a few months.”
            “I see no evidence of this” responded Dr. Sam Gowan, president of Alpha Geoscience, Crossroad’s hydrology consultants. Asked if additional testing including borehole cameras recommended by Michaelski would be useful, Gowan said “No. Very few people use downhole geophysics in water supply,” although “we are seeing considerable promotion of it by the U.S. Geological Survey. It’s an unnecessary added expense”. Pressed whether additional studies might be helpful, Gowan said “I think we have a pretty good understanding of what’s going on.”
            Also seeking good understanding elsewhere, the issues conference itself had earlier moved its venue briefly for a field trip to Windham arranged at Crossroads request. With Dan Ruzow and Windham town board member Stephan Walker serving as guides, a caravan of counsel & consultants, staff, judge and press made the rounds.  Apparently intended to show how well a highly developed resort town can work, whether the judge and participants actually left with that impression was anyone’s guess.  Windham’s signature main street lined with its massive maple trees was there but the maples weren’t, lost in the process of burying new sewer lines while simultaneously not managing to bury the power lines which now dominate the view.
            Drive-bys of two of the town’s three golf courses were made, along with visits to two exclusive private neighborhoods of slopeside homes, each valued according to Walker as “in the millions.” Asked whether the road’s hairpin turns and 14 to18 degree grades created a high accident rate, Walker said “No, that hasn’t been a problem for us. If you can afford to own one of these homes then you can afford a Hummer or whatever. These people have really good cars. And anyway they’re not here very much.”
            But the most salient comparison between the sites may turn out to be water resources, with Michalski citing Windham’s as “vastly greater”, with the Crossroads groundwater sources by comparison “extremely small.”
            Michaelski spoke at length of the geologic similarities between the two, citing a major 2002 study by the United States Geological Survey of the “fractured- rock aquifer” of Windham’s Batavia Kill Valley, whose comparison both Micalski and Gowan accept as valid for the Crossroads site.  According to that study by Paul M Heisig, “reported yields of bedrock wells that tap the same fracture zone(s) are probably not realistic”, “the bedrock aquifer has very little storage”, and, perhaps the greatest concern, wells at depth below the primary water yielding fractures can act as “short circuits” for the induction of saline water which can pollute the entire interconnected aquifer. According to Michalski, there are now wells in the Windham valley pumping “at a salinity close to seawater.”   
            Meanwhile back above ground on the Windham site visit, Gerstman, a former DEC lead counsel and Ruzow, a prime mover behind the state’s SEQRA law, together took a quiet moment to speak generally but frankly about the issues conference in process;
            “It’s fundamentally different than any other issues conference I’ve ever been to,” said Ruzow, “in that we’re hearing what every witness is proposing to say in advance.”
            “It’s essentially a trial without cross-examination” added Gerstman, a point on which Ruzow readily concurred, just as both agreed the approach was time-consuming and expensive, as well as, on the other hand, thorough and inclusive.
            As Gerstman veered off into another conversation, Crossroads’ Ruzow, smiling broadly from under his BMW baseball cap, quietly ventured a positive report as to how things were going from his perspective.
            Whether that ultimately proves a good read or not, Ruzow’s take did seem to mirror the tone of a July 26 press release from Crossroads titled “Belleayre Resort’s Impacts Are Trifling.”  Highlighted in that release were the project’s nominal potential impact on phosphorus levels in the Ashokan and Pepactin reservoirs, which the company’s expert witness Dr. Keith Porter of Cornell University characterized as  “de minimis or trifling.” Also highlighted was an admission by NYC Department of Environmental Protection counsel Dan Green that “we misplaced a decimal point”, resulting in a large and widely reported calculation error in its negative assessment of Crossroads pesticide dispersal studies. 
            “It’s never been our position that phosphorus loading was potentially a major problem,” responded DEP spokesman Ian Michaels. “It has been our position that the developer needs to accurately evaluate what the phosphorus load would be, and that’s something they still haven’t done.”
            “On that math question,” Michaels continued, “yes we did make a mistake, which lead us to think the developer was exaggerating the amount of natural filtration available, and we’re pleased to find that’s not the case. But that question only bears on one of our concerns about pesticides. And regardless, it doesn’t affect at all the larger problem of the developer’s inadequate stormwater modeling”.
            Errors and omissions notwithstanding, the timetable for the current Issues Conference has again been extended and is now slated to run through the end of August. It appears to be, as of now, the longest running conference of its type in DEC’s history. Subjects currently scheduled for the presumably final round are Community Character and Cumulative Impacts on August 24, Aquatic habitat on August 25, and a final session on Stormwater, if needed, on August 26. Experience has shown dates are subject to change; all sessions are at the Margaretville firehouse and begin at 9:00 AM.
            Wjile not venturing a progress assessment, CPC counsel Gerstman did offer a summary of events to date from his perspective:
            “On every issue” said Gerstman, “Crossroads has been met with substantive response. We’ve had some of the foremost experts in the world providing essential information on the project’s impacts to the ALJ and the Commissioner.  The opinions of those experts have not gone unnoticed by Crossroads, which has fought desperately to rebut some of the clear findings by our experts. There are certain fundamental truths about this project that just can’t be minimized. We think we’ve more than made the case that there are many issues here which need to be adjudicated.”
            A first round of referrals on that from presiding Judge Wissler to DEC Commissioner Crotty is expected sometime this year. 

Just Like Kensico?

            Michaels officially noted that the decision to put in the manned booths and prevent anyone from parking in the vicinity of the Dividing Weir's old entrance to Monument Road, as well as another popular closed-road walkway heading to the east and south along the reservoir road, was "an internal DEP decision." He added that he didn't think it was in response to any specific threats, but may have had ties to a decision by Westchester County Executive Andy Spano to open the road that spans Kensico Road by county decree in time for the new school year.
 
"Generally, what goes for Kensico has to go for the Ashokan, because of the Army Corps of Engineers determination that the two dams are similarly vulnerable," said Michaels.
            He added that the booths are the same ones that first appeared at either end of the Dividing Weir and Monument Road after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, only then they were manned by New York State correctional officers.
            "People can still walk on Monument Road," Michaels said, noting they can either park down on the West Shokan side entrance to the closed "Lemon Squeeze," in the area known as "Five Pines;" down in "The Frying Pan" where the fountain-like aerators are; or across the Dividing Weir where the rock wall is where many like to fish.
            As to reports from Olive residents of frequent sightings of helicopters in recent weeks, Michaels said that yes, the DEP had started undertaking such surveillance flights.
            "We have an aviation unit," Michaels explained.
            He then shifted gears to talk about the series of public hearings recently announced for a series of changes to recreation regulations for the reservoirs, to start in September.
            "The revisions address hiking, hunting, fishing and other recreational opportunities on New York City water supply property throughout the Catskills and in Dutchess, Putnam and Westchester Counties," reads the press release Michaels wrote on the new hearings process. "As part of the revision process, DEP sought comments from user groups throughout the watershed, including the regional Sporting Advisory Committees (SACs). The two SACs - one for the East and one for the West of Hudson watershed - are composed of representatives from local sporting organizations and recreational groups, as well as the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), environmental groups and county representatives. Suggestions from the general public, which were collected through surveys, letters and comments were also considered and many were included in the draft."
            Among changes that have been proposed are the lowering of the age for recreational access and adult supervision from 16 to 14 years; the creation of a "Public Area" designation to allow access without a Public Access Permit to areas that have historically been open to the public, and an allowance for handgun hunting within reservoir lands.
            "People asked for that change," Michaels said of the handgun provision.
            He added that he, and others at the DEP, did not think the new regulations would meet any protests, having come out of a long workshop process, and basically beiong little more than "codifying what already exists" per changes made after the adoption of the Memorandum of Agreement between the city and Upstate communities in 1997.
            Copies of the new regulations the city is proposing can be found on the DEP Web site at www.nyc.gov/watershedrecreation or by writing to the Department of Environmental Protection, Bureau of Legal Affairs, 19th Floor, 59-17 Junction Boulevard, Flushing, NY 11373.
            The five public hearings the DEP are planning on the regulations are set for 1 to 3 PM on Wednesday, September 1 at DEP headquarters; 7 to 9 PM on Thursday, September 2 at Carmel Town Hall, 60 McAlpin Avenue, Mahopac; 7 to 9 PM on Wednesday, September 8 at Walton Middle/High School Auditorium, 47-49 Stockton Avenue, Walton, NY (in Delaware County); 7 to 9 PM on Tuesday, September 14 at Shandaken Town Hall, 7209 Route 28, Shandaken; and from 7 to 9 PM on Thursday, September 23 in  Neversink Town Hall, 273 Main Street, Grahamsville (Sullivan County.) The earliest the new rules could go into effect, according to Michaels, would be within 30 days of the final public hearing.
            People interested in the August 7 Interpretive Hike wityhin the 389-acre Piney Point Recreation Unit, near the other guard booth, should call 657-2663 to register.

Coach

           What many people might not know are the details of Negron’s profession and craft. Working out of a small workshop in Boiceville, he makes custom piano hammers for piano rebuilders across the country. Piano hammers are the parts which strike the wires of the piano to produce different tones. Negron makes the hammers by hand.  Each make of piano has different hammers. Piano technicians order the parts for specific pianos, sending specifications and “guide hammers” to Negron so he can match the piano’s original hammers. His business, Ronsen Piano Hammer Company, was started in 1958 by his father Marty Negron and Bill Johansen ( the company name came from the last syllable of each of their names: negRON and johanSEN). The company was started in NYC, then moved to Long Island, and finally moved to Boiceville in 1971.
            Making the hammers is a precise, delicate task and the tone produced by the piano hinges on the quality of these parts. Most  hammers today are made with a hydraulic press. These hammers produce what experts refer to as a different ∏color∑, and do not offer a full palette of tones. Negron∂s hand crafted hammers are coveted by piano technicians because they reproduce the original sound of a piano whereas hammers produced by a hydraulic press would not. 
            Negron says he gets a lot of his business through the Piano Technicians Guild, a network of piano rebuilders. His business advertises in the Guild’s journal, and he recently attended their annual convention. Lately Negron has been very busy. “I haven’t taken a day off since the convention in July,” he says. He attributes the increase in business to two separate factors. The first reason is the availability of a special German hammer felt from his workshop. According to lore, the feltmakers originally made their felt from a special herd of sheep, which then died out, stopping the production. This is in fact erroneous. “Actually they were forced to abandon their factory during World War II,” says Negron. “When the Berlin Wall fell, they were able to reclaim the factory. Now they make felt with what are called recipes, to match the felt used in the 1920’s, which was the heyday of the American Piano.”
            The second reason for Negron’s busy schedule as of late has to do with the internet. Communication among the piano repair community in internet chatrooms has helped to point business towards Ronsen Piano by word of mouth.  Ronsen Piano also sells a variety of hard woods, a side venture which began out of necessity when the American Piano industry collapsed in the 1980’s.
            It was as a player in the Onteora Babe Ruth league that I came to know Ray Negron in his capacity as baseball coach. I played for his All-Star team for two summers, and have turned to him informally for coaching help ever since. A professional prospect in his youth, Negron’s soft spoken manner and firm authority are perfectly suited to the role of baseball instructor and coach. As a coach, he encouraged a depth of thinking and understanding of game in his players--traits necessary for success in the intricate game of baseball. He approaches the game with the same patience and attention to detail he applies in carefully fashioning piano parts. Though he is no longer involved with Onteora Babe Ruth, Negron has been a community fixture as a coach, teaching successive waves of local youth the game of baseball.