Follow Up on the News
Many noted how Onteora’s string players placed number six in the nation two years ago at a Lincoln Center competition. Students who spoke also said that none of it could have happened had they not been taught in their earlier years.
High School Student Brendan Dibbel explained that he began strings in third grade.
“People who don’t start early don’t start at all,” he said.
Before people had the opportunity to speak, Superintendent Leslie Ford wanted to clear up the district’s intent.
“There has been no discussion about cutting a program, or cutting a program like the whole strings program,” she said, explaining that there is a process the district is using in these difficult financial times, “in how we can sustain things over time.”
She added that the administration is reviewing whole departments and are currently looking at the needs of children in the music department. She noted that orchestra teacher Winnie Paetow is retiring.
“Now that we have a retirement we can actually begin to work on those things,” Ford said in a letter she posted on the district’s website. “I can see through my phone calls and emails alone that rumor and misinformation has leaped ahead of fact, so I thought you might be interested.”
She went on, at the meeting, to explain the Consumer Price Index, and how it is a template for the contingent budget and provided a table showing that it is at a 20 year low, thus affecting the school budget.
During public be heard, however, Paetow argued with the details of Ford’s statement on cutting the strings program.
“In answer to a statement made by our superintendent yesterday-to two of our department members,” Paetow said, “She noted that she would be looking into the feasibility of cutting back our strings program at the Elementary level.”
Additionally, Pateow noted that the budget for 2010 approved by voters already had her salary included. Paetow said that even if they did hire a new strings teacher for the elementary schools, that the district would save approximately $50,000.
“Instead of cutting our school’s program infrastructure, how about focusing on facilities efficiency… or calling a moratorium on the hiring of additional central administration staff” she added, listing the fact that the district has two assistant superintendents and an increase in legal costs.
Parents also spoke in protest of the district’s plan to combine two grade five classes at Phoenicia elementary into one. The classroom size is projected to have 27 or more students.
Later, Ford spoke about classroom size.
“We’re always looking at how we are using our district resources, and which are using our people and our programs in the best way,” she said.
Some ideas Ford suggested were the possibility of opening up a district variance in the affected grade to alleviate crowding issues, or the use of an additional teaching assistant in the class.
Trustee Anne MacGillicuddy said that administrative regulations indicated that 27 students in a classroom was very high. Trustee Laurie Osmond mentioned that the night was late and everyone had gone home.
“In interest of fairness and transparency, this board can continue the class size discussion,” she said. “And as Dr. Ford indicated, this is not a process that they are done talking about either.”
Plaques of appreciation were given to district retirees and school board president Maxanne Resnick, whose last meeting it was.
Reading from a statement Resnick said, “It has been an interesting experience, a challenging one, with its accomplishments and its frustrations.”
Most of the classes, I began by explaining: “In order to participate in this workshop, we each require a ‘secret name.’ And here’s how we’ll get one. Choose a book in this room, then close your eyes, open it at random, and place your finger down. Whatever word or phrase you land on becomes your secret name. We’ll use these names for the course of our class.”
The students were receptive — I was surprised that no one cheated — and they came up with wonderful words. “Ukraine” was one, and another was “Kill Zone.” Sometimes a hapless boy would end up with “And.” (The first one I chose was “Babysitter.”)
One of my exercises was entitled “Silent Writing, Noisy Writing.” We began by descending into deep silence, then writing poems. Afterwards, I asked students to stand before the class and recite them as softly as possible. In the third period, one boy stood up and said nothing.
“I’m thinking my poem,” he explained.
“All right,” I agreed. Then I instructed him to try again, and told the class: “See if you can hear his thoughts.”
After the second trial, one boy explained: “I couldn’t hear them, because Leslie was thinking too loud!” He pointed to a girl across the aisle.
Here was one of my exercises:
1) Write your middle name.
2) Choose one of its letters.
3) Use that letter to write a word.
4) Think of an article of clothing.
5) Write down a color.
6) Use those three words in a sentence.
7) Choose a title.
Following these directions, Breanna Jacob wrote:
The boy in his hot pink dress
The boy was sewing his
hot pink dress when he
sewed over his fat stubby
finger.
For the fifth workshop, I attempted one of the most daring projects of my life — teaching sonnets to eighth graders. We read Keats’ “Last Sonnet,” which begins:
Bright Star, would I were steadfast as thou art —
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night...
I wanted them to perceive the shape of a sonnet, its rhythm and interior stresses.
“How many syllables are in a line?” I asked.
“10,” one boy immediately responded.
“How did you know that?” I wondered.
“I could just tell,” he replied. Rarely does one meet a youth with a Poet’s Mind, but here was one.
I set the goal: to write a sonnet together, in the next 40 minutes. First, we must choose a topic. Being a believer in democracy, I asked for nominations, and everyone voted. The winner was “Paige,” one of the members of the class — a merry, athletic and freckled girl. She beat out “chicken wings” and four other topics.
Line by line, the students wrote a first stanza. I found myself in the role of editor, choosing among the suggestions. (One of my major goals was to prevent Paige from being ridiculed.) Paige’s last name is Green, which led to numerous puns. Instinctively, the kids used the same strategy as Shakespeare.
The need for 10 syllables to a line struck the student as reasonable, like the rules of blackjack. I didn’t emphasize meter, but English is basically iambic, so the lines had a nice shape.
At the 11th line, we began to get stuck. How would we finish this poem? Our project became like a basketball game where the home team must “beat the clock.” We only had six minutes! But in a sudden burst of literary power, we produced the last three lines. Now only one decision remained. What should the title be? “Paige Unseen,” one boy suggested. Then a girl offered, “Paige Green Unseen.” Perfect! We even had time to read the entire work off the blackboard together. (“Choral speaking,” which was taught when I was a boy, has nearly vanished in the modern world — which is unfortunate, to my sometimes-conservative mind.) Here is our completed sonnet:
Paige Green Unseen
Page can eat a lot of food during l
unchtime.
Owen always flirts with Paige at dinner.
Page video-chats with friends while she dines;
She does not think about getting thinner.
After eating, Paige begins secreting
Tears from her eyelids — there is no more food!
Paige’s freckles can be so deceiving.
She watches Juno in her green bedroom.
Paige always leaves her homework
incomplete.
Inside her room she flies on her green broom.
She then takes a seat and looks at her feet.
She goes to sleep in her black-covered bed,
Her Hello Kitty alarm by her head.
DiSclafani began by telling the board he’d learned that the City had denied a funding request by New England Wastewater Systems, which had recently asked for $13,800 to provide more detailed performance data on a vegetative reed bed system first proposed for consideration last year by Rennia Engineering. But he then told the board that “we now have the opportunity to look at another kind of plant.”
That plant, called an “MBR” or a Membrane Bio Reactor system, is essentially a small, self-contained processing unit that would purify all of the hamlet’s liquid waste while shifting the far smaller amount of solids for separate processing, either with conventional technology or via a scaled-down redbeed system.
“We are supportive of this technology,” said Jeffrey Graff, DEP’s head of Community Planning for the city’s West of Hudson Watershed. “And we’re cautiously optimistic. It has a number of operational and cost benefits that make it easier and cheaper to operate in the long run.”
The MBR system would still require a separate disinfection unit, which according to Graff would likely involve the installation of an Ultra-Violet system in lieu of chlorine, which has potentially negative effects on aquatic life.
“On the whole,” added Graff, “it’s cheaper than traditional systems.”
In terms of cost allocation, the City has currently budgeted about $6 million of a $17 million project total for construction of a processing facility; a figure which represents the approximate cost of a traditional wastewater plant. The baseline cost for an MBR plant sized for Phoenicia’s requirements, however, appears to be only about $2 million according to DiSclafani. Adding to that number both Ultra-Violet disinfection and a solid waste component, including a settling tank, would probably add another $1.5 million for a total of about $3.5 million.
What’s significant about this cost-saving is that it appears, according to both DiSclafanni and Graff, that it’s likely the City might permit the savings of $2 million or more to be applied toward other project costs, such as the cost of installing lateral lines to individual homes. Removing some or all of those costs from the table would likely go far in eventually gaining approval of a new plan from the sewer district’s property owners.
As for the earlier proposed reedbed system, it appears that that’s “now off the table,” according to DiSclafani. A smaller version, however, might still end up being selected for use as part of a MBR system.
“Our view,” said Graff, “is that this technology would probably obviate the need for vegetative reedbeds.”
On Monday, June 15, DiSclafani told the Shandaken Town Board that at their July meeting, he’d move to ask that the town solicit bids from engineering firms to prepare an RFP for the various options available in constructing an MBR-based project.
On Tuesday, Graff confirmed that was the correct process, and that funding for the RFP would be available from allocated City funds, but that they’d first have to authorize the town to hire an engineer.
“They (DEP) wanted us to show that we were moving forward with a plan by July 31,” said DiSclafani. “I believe doing this will demonstrate that we’ve met that requirement, and that they’ll continue to work with us to move this forward.”
Meanwhile, the executive director of the watershed’s chief regional institution, Alan Rosa of the the Catskill Watershed Corporation, has said that the chief challenge now facing the area is similarly global: That of climate change and its possible effects on local communities and natural resources.
As for the world’s attention... A TV crew from "La Semaine Verte," ("The Green Week" in French) a national weekly environmental program based out of Quebec City, toured the Catskill/Delaware Watershed the last week of May. Reporter France Beaudoin of CBC Radio-Canada coordinated the week-long tour with representatives from the Watershed Agricultural Council (WAC) and New York City Department of Environmental Protection (NYC DEP).
"Multiple interviews with key participants in the clean water chain will provide us with program content," noted Beaudoin. "Our segment will focus on how regional New York State landowners partner with the City to provide clean drinking water for metropolitan residents downstream."
The crew interviewed local farmers, forestry professionals and agency spokespeople, pulling together the region's clean water story. Along the way, the crew filmed many hours of "beauty shots," capturing the essence of working farm and forest landscapes. Photo opportunities included filming on the bridge spanning the Pepacton Reservoir.
The Canadian documentary segment, which follows water from the Catskills to City tap, will air in September in the French language. Last year, the Watershed Agricultural Council provided similar tours for a documentary crew from TV Globo-Brazil and a contingent of Vietnamese scientists.
According to Diane Galusha, spokesperson or the Catskill Watershed Corporation, this is not the first time other nations have looked at the historic program.
“I went to Winnipeg, Mannitoba, Canada in May 2008 to speak about the NYC Watershed Agreement and partnership at a conference of regional leaders working to restore the health of Lake Winnipeg, the 10th largest freshwater lake in the world, bigger than Lake Erie, whose watershed includes parts of four Canadian provinces and four US states,” she said. “Over the years we have also given presentations and tours to water and planning professionals from many countries, including South Korea, Nepal, Vietnam, and, next month, Mexico.”
While the rest of the world seems to be looking to this region for watershed advice, the situation here is not perfect. Lawsuits are still pretty common, with the region’s advocacy group, the Coalition of Watershed Towns, doing most of the suing.
They felt the region was shortchanged during 10th anniversary negotiations two years back, and tried to get the courts to halt some of the plans made between New York City and the Federal Environmental Protection Agency, most notably EPA’s granting the City a ten year waiver from filtering its water supply and at the same time authorizing the City to spend up to $350 million to buy and sterilize private land within the watershed borders.
Coalition members expected the waiver to be only for 5 years. They also believe that $350 million is way too much to spend and may be the beginning of a City takeover of the region.
All parties were expected to have disagreements as time passed, said Rosa, CWC’s Executive Director, when asked how things are going in the watershed these days, but no one saw the single largest challenge facing both the region and water quality today coming.
“That’s global warming,” said Rosa. noting he’d said as much in all the recent interviews.
Rosa, who was a principal player in the creation of historic Memorandum of Agreement back in the mid 1990’s, said that climate change was never discussed back then as myriad groups of elected officials and environmental groups hashed out plans to protect the water supply... and local communities. He admits that it wasn’t even a topic two years ago when those same parties gathered together in 2007 to update the Agreement.
“But now, I think the biggest issue we face is climate change,” he said. “Definitely.”
Rosa, a lifelong resident of the Margaretville area, said that weather events around the region come more frequently and with more severity, causing pollution-causing storm water to swell the streams and reservoirs and wreak havoc on the watershed communities along the way.
“I just see storms as more violent,” he said, adding that while many stormwater mitigation mechanisms have been put in place to date, more are now definitely needed.
Dennis Lucas, Chairman of the Coalition of Watershed Towns, said Tuesday that the CWT continues to view the City’s land buying efforts as the largest threat to the region, noting that discussions continue about expanding the size of the “hand’s off” areas in each community.
The City agreed to not try and purchase land in areas around hamlets because upstaters see such land as crucial to the economic future of the region, he noted. But while the expansion of these areas is still uncertain, Lucas said talks have laid the groundwork for how the Coalition would fight in the next battle with New York City, one coming up sooner than later.
“The City’s Land Acquisition permit ends in 2012,” he said. “They need a new one.”
Lucas said that talks would begin later this year as stakeholders discuss the pros and cons of the current permit and try and ensure the new one is better.
“The revised program should be more sensitive to our concerns,” he said.
He didn’t want to bring up any thoughts of climate change in such a discussion, though.
Big changes ahead, on all fronts, it seems...
With the world’s eyes all now on us, as never before.
Talk about a hot seat!
When discussed last Spring, the bans on burn barrels and brush burning, predicated by fears of climate change’s effects on firefighting, as well as shifts in the state DEC’s ability to keep an eye on its burn permit process, drew opponents worrying about the costs of compliance and supporters noting abuses in their neighborhoods and the Upstate’s growing shift from being largely rural to more and more exurban and even suburban in nature.
In an effort to reduce the impacts of pollutants such as dioxins, particulate matter and carbon monoxide and to limit the risks of wildfires, DEC announced its plans in early 2008 to extend a ban on open burning statewide beyond the current ban for any municipality with a population of 20,000, a law in effect since 1972.
“This is a public health and safety issue,” said DEC Commissioner Pete Grannis. “The trash we are burning has become more complicated and damaging to air quality over the decades. From dioxins to furans to arsenic, numerous toxic chemicals can be released by open burning - worries we didn’t have several decades ago. Moreover, wildfires occur regularly from badly tended open fires. This proposal will reduce the chances of that happening.”
Critics of the plan said that such a ban would also prevent current lot clearing practices where contractors burn brush as they cut away the property, forcing contractors to pay to remove the brush. It would also prevent the typical clean ups done after winter weather wreaks it’s usual havoc on property. Often felled branches and blow downs are collected and burned on site.
The DEC countered that wood chippers could be used to help fuel a new energy source. But opponents cried foul, noting the cost of such equipment.
Now, the proposal has changed… although not hugely
“The only change is that the the proposed rule has been revised to allow some brush burning,” said DEC Media Relations Officer Lori Severino of the recent shift in an e-mail this past week. “Specifically, the change allows for on-site burning in any town with a total population less than 20,000 of downed limbs and branches (including branches with attached leaves or needles) less than six inches in diameter and eight feet in length between May 15th and the following March 15th.
Severino added that there is currently a comment period open on the revised version of the rule, with written comments to be accepted through 5 pm on Friday, June 26.
Under the proposed regulations, all outdoor burning would be banned on residential property in smaller municipalities under 20,000 in population between March 16 and May 14.
Once considered harmless, DEC has reported that open burning has been found to release more dangerous chemicals into the air than thought generations ago. They cite a recent study by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, undertaken in conjunction with DEC and the State Department of Health, that found that emissions of dioxins and furans from backyard burning alone were greater than all other sources combined for the years 2002-04. The study also found that burning trash emits arsenic, carbon monoxide, benzene, styrene, formaldehyde, lead, hydrogen cyanide and other harmful chemicals. Trash containing plastics, polystyrene, pressure-treated and painted wood and bleached or colored papers can produce harmful chemicals when burned.
In addition to releasing pollutants, it was found that open burning is the largest single cause of wildfires in New York State such as that which destroyed a large chunk of the Minnewaska area last year. Data from DEC’s Forest Protection Division show that debris burning accounted for about 40 percent of wildfires between 1986 and 2006 - more than twice the next most-cited source.
The proposed rule does allow for a number of exceptions, including 3 foot radius camp fires, celebratory bonfires (where allowed), fire training exercises, specialized burning to protect crops from frostbite and burning of agricultural wastes (though not agricultural plastics).
“The DEC believes that the private sector will solve the technical problems,” DEC Region Three Director Willie Janeway said last year when told of difficulties people were having with the DEC’s suggestion that local landfills incinerate local woods trash. “They will in time produce outdoor boilers that pass clean air standards. The old polluting units will age out over a predetermined time period. They will not be grandfathered forever.”
In the laws themselves, the state has proposed that eventual benefits will outweigh immediate expenses.
“Due to the potential increase in the amount of household waste, brush, and land clearing debris, communities may need to upgrade their transfer facilities. Upgrades would primarily consist of large trash compactors for household refuse, and wood chippers or tub grinders for brush and land clearing debris,” the proposed law states. “Societal savings of health related costs in affected rural areas should more than make up for the increased costs of solid waste disposal. A single hospitalization for asthma outside of New York City costs over $8,900 and the total cost for asthma hospitalizations amounted to over $284 million in 2002.”
“Hopefully, this is being responsive to a lot of the comments that we received,” Severino said of the changes her department’s made.
For more information on the proposal check DEC’s website or call DEC at 518-402-8545.
Comments can be sent to the New York state Department of Environmental Conservation, Division of Air Resources, 625 Broadway - 2nd Floor, Albany, NY 12233-3254.