The Olive Press

Just Like Kensico?
City Puts Up Manned Booths, Claiming Protest Threats Led Them To It

By Paul Smart
What's fair for Westchester is fair for Ulster County too, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
Asked this week about the new presence of 24-hour manned booths at either end of the closed-to-traffic Monument Road spanning its Ashokan Reservoir dam, New York City Department of Environmental Protection spokesperson Ian Michaels said this week that the only two entities order by the Army Corps for such protection were the Kensico Dam just above White Plains, and our own Ashokan Reservoir.

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Not Enough Water?
Hard Science Less Than Clear As CPC Calls Resort’s Wells “Unsustainable”

By Brian Powers
With its scientific rebuttals reaching new levels of combativeness, the increasingly charged Belleayre Resort issues conference continued in Margaretville, dominated by water, its supply and measurement, and science good, bad and imperfect. New York City’s DEP had to acknowledge a major error in its critique of Crossroad’s pesticide data, and DEC staff struggled with the fact that the water supply permit they issued for Pine Hill in 2002 turned out to have been based on incorrect flow studies from Crossroads engineers and may now limit the hamlet’s future growth.

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ISSUES CONFERENCE TIMETABLE Firehouse, Margaretville, top floor 9AM -5 PM

August 24th - Community character, cumulative impacts

August 25th - Aquatic habitat

August 26th - Storm water

STATE YOUR BUSINESS... New York City DEP recently put up manned booths at either end of Monument Road, and have stopped allowing any parking on the Diving Weir side of the dam long popular with evening strollers. They’re holding an interpretive hike from Piney Point on August 7.

NEWSBRIEFS

The Eleventh Hour...
State OKs Higher Reservoir Value As OCS Moves August 17 Large Parcel Meeting

By Gary Alexander
"The fact that it's a reservoir and they changed the value on it, to me, is a landmark decision," said Olive town supervisor Brendt Leifeld. "I'm not sure if they know the ramifications of this throughout the whole state or even within the New York City watershed."
Leifeld was speaking of the New York State Office of Real Property Services (ORPS) upward adjustment, last week, of its assessment of the City's Ashokan Reservoir by $221 million. In doing so, they also responded to Olive's objections to its assigned equalization rate of 1.10% by resizing the figure at 0.77%.

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The Coach!
Ray Negron’s
Many Talents

By Eric Hersey
Many area residents probably know Ray Negron in his role as baseball coach. After all, in the thirty years he has coached he has passed on his expertise and immense knowledge of the game to hundreds of area players. After starting out coaching in an instructional league in 1981, he was a founding member of Onteora’s Babe Ruth League, a league that plays at Onteora High School.

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