Newsbriefs

8/28/2008

GOP Caucus...
As expected the Shandaken Republicans have endorsed Woodland Valley Resident Tina Rice to run for Town Council in November. On August 19th about 50 GOP members convened at Glenbrook Park for the parties caucus, where Rice met no challenge.
Rice is 40 years old and lives in Woodland Valley with her husband and two children. She is currently employed by the New York State Thruway Authority, working as a toll collector at the Kingston exit.
Rice, who revitalized the town’s ski program 10 years ago, said that she decided to run because she felt the current administration might be playing fast and loose with the taxpayers money, pointing out a recent revamp of the Route 28 sign showing the way to the Hamlet of Mount Tremper where Supervisor Peter DiSclafani operates a restaurant called the Catskill Rose and paid for the sign himself.
At the caucus she reportedly stated that she was originally opposed to the Belleayre Resort at Catskill Park, but now feels that if the developers obtain the proper permits that they should be allowed to build.
Rice will face incumbent Doris Bartlett, a Democrat who last month was endorsed by her party. The winner of the race will serve for one year on the Town Board.

Ah, Hamlets!
At a time when regional planning is coming back into play locally in the form of efforts to coordinate economic development projects along the Route 28 corridor, there’s another layer of planning that’s beginning to take shape thanks to the Coalition of Watershed Towns, planning which asks watershed communities to revisit some of the same questions that were asked back in the early 1990’s when the historic watershed deal was reached between upstate and the City of New York.
Those questions are being asked again because there is an opportunity looming that could provide benefits to all the Hamlets that dot the Catskills, but the Coalition’s Executive Committee announced this month that it needs feedback from the leaders in those Hamlets in order to know how to proceed.
In the early 1990’s there was a fear that the City and it’s enforcement arm the Department of Environmental Protection were poised to condemn all the private property in region as a way to protect its water supply. This fear led to a long battle between the City and the Coalition that resulted in an agreement that the City would not condemn land but would only solicit lands and buy only from willing sellers.
Recognizing that the strength of local economies lied within all the existing hamlets, the Coalition convinced the City to respect designated Hamlet zones as areas that were hands off to solicitation.
In other words, the City couldn’t even try to get land in those zones, the idea being that it was in those zones where growth would occur over time, and the Coalition wants the land in those zones to be filled with shops and restaurants and services, not wire fences, posted signs and DEP Police.
Those zones were set up in 1997, but now there is an opportunity to greatly expand those zones.
Dennis Lucas, the Chairman of the Coalition’s Executive Committee, said that the City is now armed with no less than an extra $300 million to buy land in the watershed over the next ten years. With about 90,000 acres under city control already, Lucas said his organization did not like it when the Federal Environmental Protection Agency gave the City the right to buy so much more last year. So much so that the Coalition has refused to support the deal. Such stubbornness has led the City back too the bargaining table, where Lucas says all are enjoying a spirit of cooperation.
“The City asked us what kind of land acquisition plan could we live with,” Lucas said.
The Coalition’s answer was, in part, larger hands off areas.
Now Lucas awaits input from the Coalition’s member communities, but so far the reaction has varied from some places that don’t want any Hamlet expansion to others where committees have been at work establishing the maximum size of hamlet expansion they feel they can get away with.
The good news, Lucas said, is that there is plenty of time for communities to think things over and learn as much as they need to know about the pros and cons of the plan.
“There is no time limit for communities to weigh in on this,” Lucas said.

Sunshine...
It’s a sunny summer for government in New York, where Gov. David Paterson has signed off on a bundle of updates to the state’s open records and meetings laws.
One new provision effective last week awards attorney’s fees to people who successfully sue over certain violations of the open meetings law. Another says agencies can’t deny public records requests just because they’re short-staffed or the request is too big; if an outside worker can prepare the records, and the requester is willing to pay for it, the agency has to arrange for that.
State officials are also now obliged to consider public access when they contract for building and storing records. They have to hand out public records in whatever form they’re requested, and extract portions of existing data to create new records, as long as it’s reasonable to do so.
According to the state’s Committee on Open Government, many of the updates build on long-standing case law. They came about thanks to a bipartisan Legislative effort, according to The (Lower Hudson Valley) Journal News, making records cheaper and more accessible in a computer-based society.
An editorial this week in The Journal News hailed the change: “It will be needed more than ever as, in the months and years ahead, the public and press look ever more closely at public records,” the editorial said, “and peek into what should be open public meetings to assess if what their government is doing truly is in the public’s interests.”
And in other news out of New York, a state senator is backing a bill that would add bloggers to the group of reporters currently covered under the shield law, according to the (Albany) Times Union.
The Open Meetings Law was first enacted in 1976 to ensure accountability and public debate on issues that affect communities. When an individual or community group believes a municipality or school board has violated the Open Meetings Law, their remedy is legal action. The expense of litigation often has a chilling effect on those who seek to hold their elected officials accountable. This bill expands the ability of the court to award costs and attorney’s fees to a petitioner when it is determined that a vote was taken or substantial deliberations relating to a vote were taken in violation of the Open Meetings Law.
Locally, the law has been used at several times against local governments, including Shandaken’s.

That Gas Thing…
The furor over drilling of Marcellus Shale Gas, a deep-layered natural gas deposit that stretches from the Appalachians to the Western and Northern fringes of the Catskills, although reportedly not under the Route 28 corridor or most of the New York City watershed (according to top regional geologists) is continuing to draw alarm… and political action, of a sort.
US Senator Hillary Clinton recently expressed her concerns about the potential environmental impacts of expanded natural gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale formation, including parts of Sullivan, Delaware, Otsego, Broome and Chenango Counties where some residents have been approached by companies seeking to buy drilling rights on their property. In a letter to state Environmental Conservation Commissioner Pete Grannis, Clinton said she recognized the benefits of drilling in New York, including economic development and an increase in domestic supply of the energy source. But she cautioned it may also present threats to local water supplies, air quality, and roads and other infrastructure in the absence of adequate regulatory protections.
Clinton said she supports the DEC’s decision to update the environmental impact statement for drilling in the Marcellus formation.
“With advancements in technology and experience from drilling in other states, there is no reason why we cannot be good stewards of the environment while also harvesting the benefits of these natural gas depositions,” she said.
A bit over 5,000 acres are already under natural gas drilling leases in Western Sullivan County, according to county Planning Commissioner Dr. William Pammer, who introduced a highly detailed forum on the topic earlier this month. About 400 people attended the more than three-hour session in Lake Huntington.
Petroleum geologist Don Zaengle, of Worcester, NY, explained in depth the various underground formations in the Marcellus Shale expanse, which extends into western Sullivan County. While it is theoretically possible for a productive well to generate over $1 million in royalties over its lifetime, that could be the rare exception.
“There’s no guarantee that every well that can be drilled is going to make you a millionaire”, cautioned Zaengle, who works for the same company as attorney Christopher Denton, of Elmira.
“A complex business transaction masquerading as a lottery”, was how Denton characterized a natural gas lease. “Don’t sign it unless you understand everything on it.”.
That point was made by every speaker, and reflects a recent missive from the state Attorney General’s office, which lists eight tips for minimizing the risk of signing a natural gas lease.
The full list: Consult an attorney before you sign a lease and review each term and condition with the attorney. Ask all necessary questions to ensure that you understand all terms and conditions. Obtain in writing all promises and conditions and make sure those written promises are part of the lease. Negotiate as you may get better terms than those initially offered to you. Search for and negotiate with more than one gas operator. There is strength in numbers so consider negotiating your lease together with a group of neighbors or interested parties. Obtain copies of the lease you sign and a copy of the lease signed by both you and the gas operator to make sure that the lease reflects the agreement reached with the landman. The right to cancel is yours for three (3) business days after signing the lease, but to cancel, you must comply strictly with all requirements (consult your attorney).

Looking Ahead
The public is invited to attend an outdoor meeting of the Central Catskill Collaborative at Davis Park in Olive on Thursday, September 4 at 6PM. This month’s guest speaker will be Dennis Doyle, Director of the Ulster County Planning Board and Transportation Council. Mr. Doyle will discuss the various plans, options, and supporting resources for the continued development of the Ulster and Delaware rail corridor.
The Town of Olive and the five communities to the west along the Route 28 corridor, Shandaken included, have created the Central Catskills Collaborative. This group is exploring the creation of scenic byway and promoting revitalization of the Ulster and Delaware rail corridor. The Collaborative’s advisory membership includes representatives from the Catskill Mountain Railroad, the Delaware &Ulster Railroad, and the regional trails community.
To get to Davis Park, take Route 28-A from Boiceville approximately 3 miles and turn right on Watson Hollow Road; the park is on the left. Refreshments will be served.
For more information please contact Peter Manning, Regional Planner, Catskill Center for Conservation and Development (845) 586-2611 or pmanning@catskillcenter.org

Martin Tragedy
Alexander Barsky, formerly of the Samsonville area in the Olive/Rochester area, admitted in Ulster County Court on August 12 that he was involved in the bludgeoning death 12 years ago of a boy he once called his friend. But Barsky, now 27, said it was then-17-year-old Daniel Malak who initiated the March 25, 1996, attack that ultimately killed 15-year-old Joseph Martin of Samsonville. Malak, who is in state prison on an unrelated murder conviction, has not been charged in Martin’s death.
Barsky, who was 15 at the time of Martin’s death, pleaded guilty before Ulster County Judge J. Michael Bruhn to one count of felony manslaughter. By pleading guilty to the manslaughter charge, Barsky admitted that he intended to cause Martin harm, but not to kill him. In exchange for his plea and the promise that he testify against Malak, Barsky will be sentenced to up to 3 1/3 to 10 years in state prison, the maximum sentence allowed under state law for a juvenile convicted of first-degree manslaughter.
Ulster County District Attorney Holley Carnright said Barsky must be treated as a juvenile because Barsky was three months shy of his 16th birthday at the time of Martin’s death.
Martin disappeared without a trace after leaving his Krumville Road home to meet Barsky and Malak for a night of comet-watching. For the past 12 years, Martin’s family had not known whether their boy was dead or alive.
On May 8, state police arrested Barsky and charged him with Martin’s killing.
Barsky has said that he and Malak formed a plan to “hurt Joseph,” and that the two lured Martin to a makeshift cabin in the woods. Barsky said Malak struck Martin twice, then Barsky said he took the pipe and hit the unconscious Martin twice more. Barsky said that he and Malak then put Martin’s body into a wheelbarrow and took him to a secluded area in the woods where they dumped his body.
“Then what did you do?” asked Carnright.
“We went to the quarry and had a beer,” whispered Barsky.
He said the two devised a scheme to cover up the crime, agreeing to say that Martin never showed up as planned. Then, Barsky said, “I went home feeling horrible and went to sleep.”
Barsky said he went back to the makeshift gravesite two months later, and then again, in 2002, when he took a taxi back to the place where he and Malak had dumped Martin’s body. He said that during the 2002 visit he collected Martin’s bones in small trash bags. He took them back to New York City and threw them in trash cans.
In response to questioning by Carnright, Barsky testified that although Martin’s body was clothed when he and Malak dumped it, there was no clothing or jewelry with the remains he collected. A Walkman Martin had was also missing, he said. He also said that in 2002 the bones were covered by a blanket that had not been there previously.
Under the terms of the sentencing deal, Barsky, who has been in Ulster County Jail since his May 8 arrest, will likely serve no more than 6 1/2 years in state prison.
Carnright said because there is a five-year statute of limitations on manslaughter prosecutions, the District Attorney’s Office would have had to drop the charges against Barsky if a grand jury had indicted him for manslaughter.
Barsky, who is represented by lawyer Neil Checkman, is expected to be sentenced on Oct. 6.
The investigation as to Malak’s involvement is continuing.

Guard Home?
State Senators Eric Adams of Brooklyn and William Perkins of Manhattan plan on sponsoring legislation calling for the denationalization of the New York National Guard. The proposal, backed by the groups Military Families Speak Out and Peace Action New York State, would keep all Army and Air National Guard members in New York and end their deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan.
Adams said New York only has 40 percent of the domestic equipment that it needs readily available, 72 percent of engineering equipment, 35 percent of trucks and other vehicles, and 19 percent of chemical detectors and alarms.
“We are not presently prepared to deal with the biological threat,” he said. “The National Guard plays a vital role in protecting our drinking water in the upstate regions as well as our waterways in the lower state.”
The New York Army National Guard has units in the Hudson Valley in Valhalla, Cortlandt Manor, Peekskill, Poughkeepsie, Newburgh, Kingston, and Yonkers. The Air National Guard has a base at Stewart Airport in Newburgh.

Housing Survey…
The Ulster County Housing Consortium wants a barometer of housing costs and their impact on the local economy. So the agency has launched an online survey that asks residents to register their opinion on the costs and availability of rental and owner-occupied housing.
The consortium, a group of 22 government and civic organizations, is seeking a better understanding of just how challenging the current issues associated with housing are seen by those who live in Ulster County and their thoughts about housing costs in the future.
“Our goal is for the survey to be circulated widely, beyond the employees and associates of our consortium members,” said Ulster County Planning Director Dennis Doyle, a member of the Consortium’s steering committee. “The greater the participation, the better the information will be, so we ask for your help. Take the survey, ask your neighbor to respond, give it to fellow workers and send it to family and friends.”
The survey can be accessed through the Ulster County government Web site at: www.co.ulster.ny.us.
The survey is the first step of an initiative to make sure that the workforce needed to maintain and grow the county’s economy can find safe and decent homes within the county that they can afford, consortium officials said.
The results may also become a barometer showing how Ulster County residents are coping with the fallout of the sub-prime mortgage crisis, high oil prices and the weakening economy.
“When completed, the survey will provide a first hand view of how well residents are managing housing costs today, and what they see in the future,” said Family of Woodstock Executive Director Michael Berg, chair of the Ulster County Housing Consortium. The findings will be used to help guide a major initiative to focus the attention of consumers and officials on meeting current and future housing needs.
“Studies show that in many parts of the country, housing costs make it too difficult for the workers essential to a local economy to live close to where they work,” Doyle added. “These are frequently office assistants and retail clerks, but as housing costs outstrip wages the impacts spread to critical employees, such as health and hospital workers. Housing costs also drive up business expenses, and influence location decisions by new companies.An increased awareness of housing costs is a necessary piece in the discussion of solutions. This survey will help us see the situation from the perspective of county residents and business owners. It will also help us understand what housing will be needed to support economic development in the future.”

Winter Watch!
Concerned about people being able to meet their heating, gasoline, rent and food costs this winter, Ulster County Winter Watch has been formed by the county. Family of Woodstock Executive Director Michael Berg chairs the food effort, including keeping the shelves full at each of the county’s 30 food pantries. That can be accomplished by having “major institutions” in each community conduct a food drive to keep a continuous flow of new donated food items flowing into the pantries all winter long, he said.
Berg also said he was reaching out to the county’s growers to see if they would be willing to donate a portion of their harvest to be shared with the food pantries. The group is studying the resources available to process the food so that it can either be frozen or kept in coolers, so the produce can be usable throughout the winter.
“They say that hard times bring out the best in us,” he said. “This is going to be a difficult winter. As a community we will only get through it, neighbor helping neighbor.”

Drive Yr Own
The committee of the Ulster County Legislature that provides oversight of county vehicles has decided to eliminate 11 vehicles that are now allowed to be taken home by those assigned to them, from those privileges. In June, the county removed take home privileges from five other county employees who were allowed to take their county vehicles home.
Before the modifications, the county had 44 vehicles with take home benefit.

Winchell’s Crash
Four people were injured Sunday, Aug 24, during a two car accident at the intersection of Route 28 and Reservoir Road in Shokan, according to NYC Department of Environmental Protection police. None of the injuries were life-threatening, police said.
The accident took place about 10:30AM. Police said that John Jaddis, 22, of Long Island was driving his vehicle east on RT 28 with his 13 year-old brother. Jaddis’ vehicle , they said, struck one driven by Richard Hilty, 44, of Olivebridge, which was making a right turn onto Route 28 from Reservoir Road.
Hilty was transported by helicopter to St. Francis Hospital in Poughkeepsie, His daughter whose name was unavailable, was transported to Albany Medical Center. Jaddis and his brother were brought to Kingston Hospital. Police said that investigation into the accident is continuing.

Greenway News…
The Town of Milan in Dutchess Counties, currently wrestling with a giant golf resort development proposal, is the first Greenway Compact Community to be represented by the Office of the Attorney General under the Greenway Indemnity provision. The Milan Town Board passed a resolution recently instructing the supervisor to submit a letter to the Office of the Attorney General requesting representation.
The town’s recent comprehensive plan and zoning ordinance updates were declared null and void in a March 27th decision by State Supreme Court Justice James Brands. In April, the Milan Town Board adopted a resolution invoking the provisions of the Hudson River Valley Greenway legislation that provides indemnity for Greenway Compact communities for legal actions brought against them relating to adoption or implementation of local land use controls. The Greenway submitted the town’s request and the Office of the Attorney General has determined that it would be appropriate to represent Milan in the appeal.
Hmmmm…

Wandered Off
A six-year-old New Jersey girl is safe after wandering away from her family’s seasonal home in the Town of Shandaken. Six hours later, Migumi Tamura was found by a search party about a mile from where she was last seen.
Migumi was located near a creek bed along Lower Birch Creek Road by the searchers under the direction of state forest rangers.
The child was in good health and suffered only from minor scrapes to her legs and arms. She was treated at the scene by members of the Shandaken Ambulance and returned to her mother, Misa Tamura of Ridgewood, NJ.
A number of agencies participated in the search for the little girl, including State Police, Ulster County Sheriff’s Office, Shandaken Police, EnCon Police, state forest rangers, Belleayre Mountain staff, Shandaken Ambulance, Ulster County Bureau of Fire, and fire departments from Pine Hill, Big Indian, Phoenicia, Arkville, Margaretville and Fleishmann’s.

Big Mistake
A voting system used in 34 states contains a critical programming error that can cause votes to be dropped while being electronically transferred from memory cards to a central tallying point, the manufacturer acknowledges. The problem was identified after complaints from Ohio elections officials following the March primary there, but the logic error that is the root of the problem has been part of the software for 10 years, said Chris Riggall, a spokesman for Premier Election Solutions, formerly known as Diebold. The flawed software is on both touch screen and optical scan voting machines made by Premier and the problem with vote counts is most likely to affect larger jurisdictions that feed many memory cards to a central counting database rapidly.
Riggall said he was “confident” that elections officials through the years would have realized votes had been dropped when they crosschecked their tallies to certify final elections results and would have reloaded cards so as not to lose votes. Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner has said no Ohio votes were lost because the nine Ohio counties that found the problem caught it before primary results were finalized.
This last election, at least…
Both Brunner and Premier said that remedies to the problem will be in place for the November presidential election. Approximately 1,750 jurisdictions use the flawed system, Riggall said. Both Maryland and Virginia use it, he said, although Virginia does not relay its votes to a central counting point, which is where the problem surfaces,
It’s a good time to pick up an electronic voting machine on the cheap - provided you’re not a stickler for things like “accuracy” or “security.” States are scrapping tens of thousands of pricey touchscreen systems in response to mounting concerns about the machines’ reliability.
After the butterfly ballot debacle of the 2000 presidential election, in which scores of elderly Floridians revealed a surprising fondness for Pat Buchanan, electronic voting was touted as the way to avoid any such fiasco in the future. Congress passed the Help America Vote Act of 2002, which allocated some $3 billion in federal grants to help states upgrade their voting equipment - $2 billion of which had been spent by the end of 2007.
Now, however, many of those states - including Alaska, California, Florida, Iowa, Maryland, Tennessee, and New Mexico - are ditching touchscreen kiosks with price tags as high as $5,000 each in favor of paper ballots. Ohio seems likely to follow suit once a legal battle with Premier Election Services, a voting machine manufacturer, is resolved. Though many of the transitions from touchscreen to paper are slated to take years to complete, already the proportion of voters served by touchscreens is expected to fall to 36 percent in November, down from a high of 44 percent in 2006. More voters are expected to use paper ballots in 2008 than did back in 2000.
Critics had long warned that electronic voting systems were not ready for prime time, citing concerns about their lack of transparency, vulnerability to tampering, and plain bugginess. Finally, states are increasingly coming to the same conclusion. Last year, Ohio produced a 1,000-page report cataloging a host of problems with the state’s voting machines. Since then, a glitch blamed on conflicts with anti-virus software initially caused hundred of votes to be dropped as they were uploaded to tallying servers. A “top-to-bottom” review of California’s voting systems last year found that hacker “red teams” were able to easily compromise machines made by Premier, Sequoia, Hart Intercivic, and Election Systems & Software - leading the state to decertify the machines.
In Florida, meanwhile, officials had hurried to upgrade voting technology after the embarrassment of 2000, spending tens of millions on new touchscreen kiosks - machines several counties are still paying off. Last year, in the wake of innumerable snafus, Gov. Charlie Crist announced the state would be scrapping more than 25,000 touchscreen machines. The bill for the transition back to paper could run as high as $35 million more.
Meanwhile, election officials in a handful of states appear to be ignoring the federal law dictating the way registered voters may be purged from voter rolls, civil rights attorneys say. National voting rights groups have contacted officials in Kansas, Michigan and Louisiana in recent weeks because those states appear to be purging registered voters after election officials found duplicate names and birthdays of people on their voter lists and in out-of-state databases, such as driver’s license records. The states are assuming that a more recent driver’s license or voter registration in another state indicates that the voter has relocated, meaning the voter registration tied to their prior address is no longer valid. While purging voters who move, die or are imprisoned is a routine part of managing elections, the federal law governing purges - the National Voter Registration Act - lays out a multiyear process of trying to contact voters to confirm a change of address before deleting them from voter rolls.
The election attorneys say the NVRA process seeks to err on the side of protecting voting rights and cannot be circumvented by what appears to be a duplicate voter registration.
The issue of whether states are heeding the National Voter Registration Act reveals how the implementation of the nation’s election laws often turns on a patchwork of local or state policies. In the absence of litigation, whether a state or election jurisdiction is following the NVRA often remains a question of local interpretation.
The purge issue is only going to rise in profile in the coming weeks. Several voting rights groups are studying the process in a number of swing states and hope to issue reports this fall. Among the issues being studied is the accuracy of the database matches used to purge voters. When California first implemented a data-matching program in 2006, some counties had error rates as high as 40 percent, meaning a registered voter who appeared to have moved would have been incorrectly purged without further efforts to confirm their residency and voter registration status.
Eeek.

Dead Zones
With more than 400 oxygen-starved dead zones in global coastal waters, scientists are calling for such dead zones to be recognized as one of the world’s great environmental problems
Man-made pollution is spreading a growing number of suffocating dead zones across the world’s seas with disastrous consequences for marine life, scientists have warned. The experts say the hundreds of regions of critically low oxygen now affect a combined area the size of New Zealand, and that they pose as great a threat to life in the world’s oceans as overfishing and habitat loss. The number of such seabed zones - caused when massive algal blooms feeding off pollutants such as fertilizer die and decay - has boomed in the last decade. There were some 405 recorded in coastal waters worldwide in 2007, up from 305 in 1995 and 162 in the 1980s.
Marine bacteria feed on the algae in the blooms after it has died and sunk to the bottom, and in doing so they use up all of the oxygen dissolved in the water. The resulting ‘hypoxic’ seabed zones can asphyxiate swathes of bottom dwelling organisms such as clams and worms, and disrupt fish populations. The number of dead zones reported has doubled each decade since the 1960s, but the scientists say they are often ignored until they provoke problems among populations of larger creatures such as fish or lobsters. By killing or stunting the growth of bottom-dwelling organisms, the lack of oxygen denies food to creatures higher up the food chain.
The Baltic Sea, site of the world’s largest dead zone, has lost about 30% of its available food energy, which has led to a significant decline in its fisheries. A massive dead zone, some 8,000 square miles across, forms each summer in the Gulf of Mexico as floodwater flushes nitrogen-rich fertilizer into the Mississippi River.
Climate change could be adding to the problem. Many regions are expected to experience more severe periods of heavy rain, which could wash more nutrients from farmland into rivers. In May, scientists reported that oxygen-depleted zones in tropical oceans are expanding. They analyzed oxygen levels in samples of seawater and found the effect was largest in the central and eastern tropical Atlantic and the equatorial Pacific. The increase could push oxygen-starved zones closer to the surface and give marine life such as fish less room to live and look for food.
Last year, a private company proposed “fertilizing” parts of the ocean with iron, in hopes of encouraging carbon-absorbing blooms of plankton. Meanwhile, researchers elsewhere are talking about injecting chemicals into the atmosphere, launching sun-reflecting mirrors into stationary orbit above the earth or taking other steps to reset the thermostat of a warming planet.
This technology might be useful, even life-saving. But it would inevitably produce environmental effects impossible to predict and impossible to undo. So a growing number of experts say it is time for broad discussion of how and by whom it should be used, or if it should be tried at all.
Similar questions are being raised about nanotechnology, robotics and other powerful emerging technologies. There are even those who suggest humanity should collectively decide to turn away from some new technologies as inherently dangerous.
Stay tuned on all this…

Watch Out…
Attorney General Michael Mukasey confirmed plans recently to loosen post-Watergate restrictions on the FBI’s national security and criminal investigations, saying the changes were necessary to improve the bureau’s ability to “detect terrorists.” Mukasey added that he expected criticism of the new rules because “they expressly authorize the FBI to engage in intelligence collection inside the United States.” However, he said the criticism would be misplaced because the bureau has long had authority to do so.
Mukasey said the new rules “remove unnecessary barriers” to cooperation between law enforcement agencies and “eliminate the artificial distinctions” in the way agents conduct surveillance in criminal and national security investigations.
Agents assigned to national security investigations will be given more latitude to conduct surveillance based on a tip. Also, agents will be permitted to search more databases than allowed previously in criminal cases, such as those containing information about state-issued driver’s licenses.
The Justice Department has kept the draft rules under wraps for at least a month and is expected to publicly release the final version within several more weeks… after the political conventions. Even then, portions are expected to remain classified for national security reasons.
Michael German, a former veteran FBI agent who is now policy counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, said if Mukasey moves ahead with the new rules as he describes them, he’ll be weakening restrictions originally put in place after the Watergate scandal to rein in the FBI’s domestic Counter Intelligence Program, or COINTELPRO. At the time, the FBI spied on American political leaders and organizations deemed to be subversive throughout the late 1950s and into the 1960s.
The Justice Department’s Inspector General has found that between 2003 and 2006 the FBI sought personal records of Americans by relying improperly on so-called “national security letters”, rather than seeking court approval. Last week, the FBI apologized to two newspapers for secretly obtaining reporters’ phone records without following proper bureau procedures.
Earlier, the Associated Press had reported that Mukasey was considering allowing agents to investigate someone based on a terrorism profile that could rely on race or ethnicity as a factor. Mukasey denied that the new rules would allow agents to investigate someone simply based on race, religion or exercise of First Amendment rights. However, he did not say whether the new guidelines would give the FBI more leeway to rely on race or ethnicity as a significant factor in determining whether an investigation should be launched.

Solar Freeze
Faced with a surge in the number of proposed solar power plants, the federal government has placed a moratorium on new solar projects on public land until it studies their environmental impact, which is expected to take about two years. The Bureau of Land Management says an extensive environmental study is needed to determine how large solar plants might affect millions of acres it oversees in six Western states - Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah.
The decision to freeze new solar proposals temporarily, reached earlier this summer, has caused widespread concern in the alternative-energy industry, as fledgling solar companies must wait to see if they can realize their hopes of harnessing power from swaths of sun-baked public land, just as the demand for viable alternative energy is accelerating.
“It doesn’t make any sense,” said Holly Gordon, vice president for legislative and regulatory affairs for Ausra, a solar thermal energy company in Palo Alto, Calif. “The Bureau of Land Management land has some of the best solar resources in the world. This could completely stunt the growth of the industry.”
Galvanized by the national demand for clean energy development, solar companies have filed more than 130 proposals with the Bureau of Land Management since 2005. They center on the companies’ desires to lease public land to build solar plants and then sell the energy to utilities.
According to the bureau, the applications, which cover more than one million acres, are for projects that have the potential to power more than 20 million homes. All involve two types of solar plants, concentrating and photovoltaic. Concentrating solar plants use mirrors to direct sunlight toward a synthetic fluid, which powers a steam turbine that produces electricity. Photovoltaic plants use solar panels to convert sunlight into electric energy.
Much progress has been made in the development of both types of solar technology in the last few years. Photovoltaic solar projects grew by 48 percent in 2007 compared with 2006. Eleven concentrating solar plants are operational in the United States, and 20 are in various stages of planning or permitting, according to the Solar Energy Industries Association.
The industry is already concerned over the fate of federal solar investment tax credits, which are set to expire at the end of the year unless Congress renews them. The moratorium, combined with an end to tax credits, would deal a double blow to an industry that, solar advocates say, has experienced significant growth without major environmental problems.
Officials recently announced that a second manufacturer will join with the Ulster County-based Solar Energy Consortium and set up an operation that could create hundreds of more jobs in the local area over a period of time, according to a press release from U.S. Rep. Maurice Hinchey’s office, which does not name the company although a spokesman said it is the second manufacturer to sign on with the Solar Energy Consortium.
“The new manufacturing partnership will further cement the Solar Energy Consortium as a unique leadership in solar research and development,” the press release says. “The manufacturing partner will work to provide a specialized type of solar panel that can be used much more widely on a variety of different commercial products.”
In February, the Solar Energy Consortium announced a partnership with Prism Solar Technologies Inc., a move officials said could bring 140 jobs to Ulster County within three years and more than 400 jobs within five years.
Prism Solar Technologies, a research, manufacturing and marketing enterprise formed in 2005, has said it has the ability to “manufacture and market a patented state-of-the-art photovoltaic technology.” Prism is currently using space at the Hudson Valley Center for Innovation on Grant Avenue, but said it hopes to relocate to TechCity, the former IBM-Kingston headquarters on Enterprise Drive in the town of Ulster, next year.
Its technology would be utilized in residential, industrial and commercial markets, company representatives have said.
Also on the Solar Watch, MIT researchers have overcome a major barrier to large-scale solar power: storing energy for use when the sun doesn’t shine. Until now, solar power has been a daytime-only energy source, because storing extra solar energy for later use is prohibitively expensive and grossly inefficient.
MIT researchers have hit upon a simple, inexpensive, highly efficient process for storing solar energy. Requiring nothing but abundant, non-toxic natural materials, this discovery could unlock the most potent, carbon-free energy source of all: the sun…. They have developed an unprecedented process that will allow the sun’s energy to be used to split water into hydrogen and oxygen gases. Later, the oxygen and hydrogen may be recombined inside a fuel cell, creating carbon-free electricity to power your house or your electric car, day or night.
The key component in Nocera and Kanan’s new process is a new catalyst that produces oxygen gas from water; another catalyst produces valuable hydrogen gas. The new catalyst consists of cobalt metal, phosphate and an electrode, placed in water. When electricity - whether from a photovoltaic cell, a wind turbine or any other source - runs through the electrode, the cobalt and phosphate form a thin film on the electrode, and oxygen gas is produced.
Combined with another catalyst, such as platinum, that can produce hydrogen gas from water, the system can duplicate the water splitting reaction that occurs during photosynthesis.
The new catalyst works at room temperature, in neutral pH water, and it’s easy to set up, the scientists have said. MIT hopes that within 10 years, homeowners will be able to power their homes in daylight through photovoltaic cells, while using excess solar energy to produce hydrogen and oxygen to power their own household fuel cell. Electricity-by-wire from a central source could be a thing of the past.

Measles Again?
Measles cases in the U.S. are at the highest level in more than a decade, with nearly half of those involving children whose parents rejected vaccination, health officials have reported. Worried doctors are troubled by the trend fueled by unfounded fears that vaccines may cause autism. The number of cases is still small, just 131, but that’s only for the first seven months of the year. There were only 42 cases for all of last year.
“We’re seeing a lot more spread. That is concerning to us,” said Dr. Jane Seward, of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The CDC’s review found that a number of cases involved home-schooled children not required to get the vaccines. Others can avoid vaccination by seeking exemptions, such as for religious reasons.
Measles, best known for a red skin rash, is a potentially deadly, highly infectious virus that spreads through contact with a sneezing, coughing, infected person. It is no longer endemic to the United States, but every year cases enter the country through foreign visitors or Americans returning from abroad. Measles epidemics have exploded in Israel, Switzerland and some other countries. But high U.S. childhood vaccination rates have prevented major outbreaks here.
In a typical year, only one outbreak occurs in the United States, infecting perhaps 10 to 20 people. So far this year through July 30 the country has seen seven outbreaks, including one in Illinois with 30 cases, said Seward, of the CDC’s Division of Viral Diseases.
None of the 131 patients died, but 15 were hospitalized.
There was one reported case of measles, later undiagnosed, in the Woodstock area earlier this year.
Childhood measles vaccination rates have stayed above 92 percent, according to 2006 data. However, the recent outbreaks suggest potential pockets of unvaccinated children are forming. Health officials worry that vaccination rates have begun to fall — something that won’t show up in the data for a couple of years.
The vaccine is considered highly effective but not perfect; 11 of this year’s cases had at least one dose of the vaccine. Of this year’s total, 122 were unvaccinated or had unknown vaccination status. Some were unvaccinated because the children were under age 1 — too young to get their first measles shot. In 63 of those cases — almost all of them 19 or under — the patient or their parents refused the shots for philosophical or religious reasons, the CDC reported.

Medical Belief
When it comes to saving lives, God trumps doctors for many Americans. A new survey reveals widespread belief that divine intervention can revive dying patients. And, researchers said, doctors “need to be prepared to deal with families who are waiting for a miracle.”
More than half of randomly surveyed adults - 57 percent - said God’s intervention could save a family member even if physicians declared treatment would be futile. And nearly three-quarters said patients have a right to demand such treatment.
When asked to imagine their own relatives being gravely ill or injured, nearly 20 percent of doctors and other medical workers said God could reverse a hopeless outcome.
“Sensitivity to this belief will promote development of a trusting relationship” with patients and their families, according to researchers. That trust, they said, is needed to help doctors explain objective, overwhelming scientific evidence showing that continued treatment would be worthless.
The survey was published in the Archives of Surgery. It involved 1,000 U.S. adults randomly selected to answer questions by telephone about their views on end-of-life medical care. They were surveyed in 2005, along with 774 doctors, nurses and other medical workers who responded to mailed questions.
Survey questions mostly dealt with untimely deaths from trauma such as accidents and violence. These deaths are often particularly tough on relatives because they are more unexpected than deaths from lingering illnesses such as cancer, and the patients tend to be younger.

Grants Ready
The Ulster County Community Foundation is now accepting applications from tax-exempt organizations serving residents of Ulster County for Fall 2008 Community Response Grants. The current focus of these grants is to build the capacity of organizations and the community, including but not limited to: equipment to improve office operations, professional development for staff and/or board members and programmatic areas. Application deadline is October 15, 2008.
The Ulster County Community Foundation seeks to be a responsive and proactive community partner that works strategically to address existing and emerging community issues. The Community Foundation, which was launched in 2007, and is administered and supported by the Community Foundation of Dutchess County is initiating its first grant cycle. These grants are made possible through a Dyson Foundation challenge grant which leveraged the contributions of many donors to the Ulster County Community Foundation. Organizations recognized under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code and/or a qualified tax-exempt entity located in or providing services to residents in Ulster County are eligible to receive grants.
The Foundation’s grant program is accessed through an online application process. Application information and grant guidelines are available on the Community Foundation’s Web site at www.uccfny.org. All applications must be received at the Foundation by October 15, 2008. If you have any questions regarding our grant program, application guidelines or the application process, please contact Cynthia Lowe, Director at clowe@uccfny.org or by phone at 845-338-2535.

Obituary...
Richard E. Odenwald, 72 of Rt. 28A in West Shokan, died Thursday August 14, 2008. He was born in Midwood Brooklyn on May 30, 1936 son of the late Elmer and Agnes Odenwald. He attended Brooklyn Tech. He visited Mt. Tremper every summer as a youth and enjoyed hunting and fishing. He met the love of his life, Dorothy, at a high school dance and they married September 22, 1956. He attended the College of Insurance where he earned his CPCU designation. He moved to Mt. Tremper as a full time resident in 1970 and subsequently to West Shokan in 1972. He opened his own insurance agency, Reservoir Insurance and operated the business out of his home for several years. He loved participating in Olive Softball, was a great pitcher, and sponsored his winning softball team for many years. He volunteered on the Town of Olive Recreation Committee and was an instrumental participant in getting the lights for the Grant Avery Park softball fields in Shokan.
Surviving are his wife of 52 years Dorothy Shew Odenwald, four daughters: Mary Ann Adels of Tucson, Peggy Maldonado of Krumville, Marian Odenwald of Lake Katrine, and Maureen Odenwald of Tucson. One grandson: Joshua Adels, three granddaughters: Bethanie Constant, Gretchen Rosa, and Alexa Maldonado; a great grandson: Gavin Rosa; three son-in-laws: Ed Maldonado, Christopher Constant, and Sal Rosa; and his beloved Boston Terrier: Mickey. He was predeceased by his sister Barbara North. Buriall will be in the Hudler Cemetery. Arrangements were by Gormley Funeral Home.