Follow Up on the News
Tsunami Relief
A number of public health experts watching the aftermath of the tsunami disaster fear the outpouring of emergency relief supplies and the rush to head off outbreaks of disease will prove misguided or wasteful in some respects. Many useless donations of food and clothing may pile up, and public health authorities may devote too much time right now to vaccination drives, overestimate the danger of diseases like malaria, and underestimate more desperate needs, such as counseling for those suffering from mental anguish, they say.
“Not uncommonly, do-good countries will send in all kinds of supplies that have no value, like tons and tons of clothing, food that people can’t eat because it’s not their custom, even hospital-style equipment that they can’t possibly use,” said Dr. Philip Brachman, at Emory University, in Atlanta. He used to oversee mass disease fighting at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
In one of the worst natural disasters in history, the recent earthquake and tsunami killed more than an estimated 150,000 people and forced up to 5 million from their homes. The disaster has also made conditions rife for outbreaks of disease. Human sewage, rotting animals, trash and other contaminants washed into drinking wells and reservoirs. Toilets and places to clean up were ruined. Crops, cooking equipment and refrigeration were lost, making safe food scarcer. Survivors are weakened by cuts and broken bones and huddled together in shelters where germs can easily spread in the heat.
The World Health Organization has predicted that deaths from disease could eventually reach those caused by the quake and the floods themselves.
“You have to be very efficient. You have to think like a rifleman, not somebody who comes in with a shotgun,” says Dr. William Schaffner, the head of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University School of Medicine in Nashville, Tenn.
The worst immediate threats probably stem from a range of diarrheal diseases like cholera and dysentery, especially where pure water fails to reach survivors quickly, the specialists say. Other big worries include respiratory diseases, like measles and pneumonia, within about a week of the disaster. In a month or so, outbreaks are likely from food- or water-carried ailments, like salmonella and hepatitis.
The experts say clean water - along with water-purifying tablets and equipment - are urgent priorities. Several health specialists also appealed for more attention to mental health counseling, which tends to be overlooked in undeveloped areas.
Though many survivors in such places have known misery, storms and natural horrors before, this catastrophe struck with extraordinary suddenness and intensity and took many children. Depression will probably prevent some survivors from joining in the rebuilding, some specialists say.
For those seeking to help, we suggest attending the special benefit set to take place at The Joyous Lake in Woodstock on Sunday, January 9, featuring Robbie Dupree, Marc Black, John Sebastian and others. The Phoenicia Business Association is taking up donations for Doctors Without Borders. Those who want to mail a check can do so via the Phoenicia Business Association, P.O. Box 391, Phoenicia, NY 12464. Also, Julian and Wendy Lines, who run the Aurobindo Center in Mt. Tremper and own Pondicherry, a shop in Woodstock, are collecting funds from the cans they have put out over the next few weeks. The Lines have gone to India to help out and are expected back in March. For those who want to donate, send a check payable to “AVIUSA” and mail it to PO Box 676, Woodstock NY 12498. There is also a link from the Pondicherry website at www.pondi.biz for online credit card donations.
Or contact one of the following organizations…
ACTION AGAINST HUNGER, 247 West 37th Street, Suite 1201, New York, N.Y. 10018. 212-967-7800 x108 or www.actionagainsthunger.org.
AMERICAN JEWISH WORLD SERVICE, 45 West 36th Street, 10th Floor, New York, N.Y. 10018. 800-889-7146 or www.ajws.org.
AMERICAN FRIENDS SERVICE COMMITTEE, AFSC Crisis Fund, 1501 Cherry Street, Philadelphia, Pa. 19102. 215-241-7000 or www.afsc.org.
AMERICAN RED CROSS, International Response Fund, P.O. Box 37243, Washington, D.C. 20013. 800-HELP NOW or www.redcross.org.
CATHOLIC RELIEF SERVICES, Tsunami Emergency, P.O. Box 17090, Baltimore, Md. 21203-7090. 800-736-3467 or www.catholicrelief.org.
DIRECT RELIEF INTERNATIONAL, 27 South La Patera Lane, Santa Barbara, Calif. 93117. 805-964-4767 or www.directrelief.org.
DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS, P.O. Box 1856, Merrifield, Va. 22116-8056. 888-392-0392 or www.doctorswithoutborders.org.
INTERNATIONAL MEDICAL CORPS, Earthquake/Tsunami Relief, 1919 Santa Monica Boulevard, Suite 300, Santa Monica, Calif. 90404. 800-481-4462 or www.imcworldwide.org.
AMERICAN JEWISH JOINT DISTRIBUTION COMMITTEE, South Asia Tsunami Relief, Box 321, 847A Second Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10017. 212-687-6200 ext. 851 or www.jdc.org.
MERCY CORPS, Southeast Asia Earthquake Response, Dept. W, P.O. Box 2669, Portland, Ore. 97208. 800-852-2100 or www.mercycorps.org.
SAVE THE CHILDREN, Asia Earthquake/Tidal Wave Relief Fund, 54 Wilton Road, Westport, Conn. 06880. 800-728-3843 or www.savethechildren.org.
ISLAMIC RELIEF USA, Southeast Asia Earthquake Emergency, P.O. Box 6098, Burbank, Calif. 91510. 888-479-4968 or www.irw.org/asiaquak.
Unanswered QuestionsJust prior to the session the board held a swift and professional public hearing about a large logging operation on Rose Mountain Road in Pine Hill. Moving into the regular session, Supervisor Robert Cross Jr. stunned the crowd with news that one of Chichester's true locals, Robert Ostrander, had died suddenly that day and Cross called for two minutes of silence.
Most notable was the matter of a proposed traffic circle in Mount Tremper. The board passed a resolution, the 47th of the evening, supporting the project, with Supervisor Robert Cross Jr. insisting that the measure was necessary to allow the Department of Transportation to begin engineering designs.
State officials came to town two months ago with surprise plans for a roundabout, or traffic circle, at the intersection of Wittenburgh road, old Route 28, and Route 212 in Mount Tremper. The plans were very general, and officials said they were looking for guidance from the town as to whether or not to proceed. If the town didn’t want it, they said, they wouldn’t do it.
Mt. Tremper resident Kathy Nolan asked the board to delay voting on the resolution until the town held a community briefing, geared toward letting neighbors know exactly what is planned, and also giving neighbors a chance to let the department of transportation know in advance of the design phase what they think of the idea and offer suggestions for how to make it successful.
Councilman Paul VanBlarcum thought it made sense to have such a session, but ultimately agreed to pass the resolution after Cross convinced him that just such a session would occur. Cross, who works as a surveyor, said the Department doesn’t have enough data to begin to draft any real plans, and that Monday’s resolution gives the department the green light to get some.
“There has been no proper engineering done at this time,” Cross added.
Several audience members considered the project a waste of money. While a specific dollar amount has not been stated, many believe that better signage at the existing intersection is all that would be needed to make the location safer. Others thought that only a blinking traffic light would be needed but Cross, who appears to strongly favor the roundabout, said that could be a nuisance to adjacent property owners to have a traffic light blinking all night long.
Chichester resident Ed Bolsetzian called the project “a boondoggle.”
The 46 resolutions prior went smoothly, with rules of procedure adopted, lawyers appointed, and the Ulster County Townsman being named as official town newspaper. Last year, Supervisor Cross’s first, such resolutions were fretted over by the audience that demanded explanations for some clauses, and who disagreed with the Townsman being the choice for paper of record. When attorney Jack Darwak was appointed last year some wondered why, but not this year, because Darwak quit at the last minute Monday, saying he lost business as a result of working for Shandaken.
With all resolutions complete, the Supervisor made liaison appointments. Still no problem.
With Councilman Joe Munster ready to adjourn the meeting, Chuck Perez asked to give a brief update on the town’s comprehensive plan committee. Arriving late for the meeting, Perez complained that he missed the opportunity for public input to the board. With all going well, Cross allowed Perez a few minutes before adjournment.
That’s when things started to go downhill for Cross and company.
With no agenda in mind, Perez matter of factly complained about recent public battles over summer recreation in town and what the board should do about it. He told the board “I don’t want the recreation program to become a political football.” Perez then asked for updates on several unresolved town matters and found out that they were still unresolved. While giving weak responses to questions about not yet having safeguards against casino gambling and adult entertainment, and the lack of a cell tower law, board members found themselves challenged on the rules of procedure they passed earlier as the first resolution of the meeting.
Former Supervisor Peter DiModica said that those rules actually call for closing discussion, so it was appropriate for these issues to be talked over at the end of the meeting. Cross disagreed, saying his interpretation of the rules were that closing discussion meant only discussion among the board and not the public.
In the end it was agreed that the town would get help from a lawyer to try and draft some form of defense against gambling and local porn. Councilwoman Jane Todd also said the cell tower committee, after one year of work, now actually has a draft plan that she said they would review over the next couple months.
Those last tense minutes were a grim reminder of recent clashes between board members in local media over this administration’s accomplishments or lack thereof, with Republican Cross and Democrats on the board using the letters forum as a boxing ring.
Last month Democrats Paul VanBlarcum and Edna Hoyt issued a statement saying more needs to be done by the Cross Administration and they assured voters they were watching their tax dollars. Cross fired back in an angry letter to the Townsman, calling one Democrat “a political mouthpiece” and claimed that the previous Democratic administration lacked accomplishment.
He wrote that the Democrats should be ashamed of how they have neglected the community and called for an end to nitpicking and grandstanding.
“Friends, is OUR intent,” Cross wrote.
More updates on unresolved town issues are expected in the months ahead.
The documents which both encapsulate and seek to rebut some 4,000 pages of testimony and over 300 recent exhibits and submissions, were received by presiding DEC administrative law judge Richard A. Wissler on Dec 23.
At issue is the future consideration of the lion’s share of the most contentious issues surrounding the proposed resort, with the judge now preparing to decide whether they’ve been adequately addressed, or not, by the developer. Those issues include impacts on traffic, water supply, storm water, community character, secondary and induced growth, visual & noise impacts, impacts on the forest preserve, wildlife and aquatic habitat, and alternatives to the project as proposed as well as its cumulative impacts, including those connected with the Belleayre Mountain Ski Center.
Arguing that all these factors have been inadequately addressed due to “substantial and fatal deficiencies” in the project’s Draft Environmental Impact Statement are the eleven local, regional and national groups of the Catskill Preservation Coalition. CPC’s 157-page brief filed by its counsel Marc Gerstman and Cheryl Roberts argues that it has met its legal burden of proof mandating formal adjudication for these issues.
Countering CPC’s assertions, developer Crossroads Ventures’ 179-page brief filed by its counsel Dan Ruzow and Teresa Bakner argues that “no trial-type issues exist,” assertions they do “are meritless,” and that “while many interesting facts and perspectives have been advanced…no substantive and significant issues” have been raised “that warrant adjudication.”
Substantive and Significant are clearly the magic words; under SEQRA law, an issue is “substantive” if there is sufficient doubt about an applicant’s ability to meet regulatory requirements that “a reasonable person would require further inquiry.” An issue is “significant” if it could potentially result in a major modification to a project, a denial of its permit altogether, or the imposition of significant conditions to any permits eventually granted. Both definitions in the judge’s view, must apply for an issue to be ruled adjudicable.
“The purpose of adjudication,” according to a 1999 decision by DEC’s Commissioner, “is to aid in decision-making” and to “provide a basis upon which…concerns can be judged.” Should adjudicatory hearings be ruled appropriate, they would constitute in effect a formal trial with sworn testimony and cross-examination for those issues in the 6,700 page DEIS identified as requiring it.
Also submitting final briefs although on far fewer topics than Crossroads and CPC were New York City’s Corporation Counsel on behalf on its Department of Environmental Protection, state DEC staff, and attorneys representing the Coalition of Watershed Towns, Delaware County and the towns of Shandaken and Middletown.
The City’s brief, which essentially mirrored CPC’s positions arguing for the adjudication of stormwater and alternatives, was limited in scope but scathing in its assertions concerning the developer’s hydrological and stormwater analysis. “The applicant,” it says, “has supplied DEC with grossly inaccurate depictions of the stormwater impacts” and “overstated its ability to control or mitigate” them. DEC it says, “cannot issue” the project’s required SPEDES or other permits based on the plans as currently proposed.” DEP which played only a minor role in the actual Issues Conference, also retains direct regulatory authority over the issuance of several other permits and has publicly expressed its unwillingness to issue them based on plans provided to date.
To the surprise of some observers, the short brief submitted by DEC staff also backs the City’s and CPC’s position in favor of adjudicating stormwater issues. It takes no position however on cumulative impact, an issue on which conflict-of-interest charges against the agency have often dominated discussion.
On the other side of the stormwater question, and mirroring Crossroads position opposing its adjudication, was a brief filed by attorneys Jeff Baker and Kevin Young representing the CWT, Delaware County, Shandaken and Middletown. Baker and Young’s brief did not address the merits either of the stormwater question or the other issues they objected to considering for adjudication, alternatives and community character. Instead it requested rulings on those issues in favor of Crossroads position as a matter of principle, contesting the city’s right to participate in reviewing those subjects as a violation of its1997 Memorandum of Agreement with the watershed towns. The city for its part, asserts it has both the statutory authority and the legal obligation to do that. Baker and Young however, assert in their filing that DEP “is not an objective, independent regulatory agency but rather… an interested party opposed to the project with the intent of stopping the project to protect and enhance the value of its resource, ie., the water supply.”
Apart from helping pay for Baker and Young’s philosophical arguments on the city’s regulatory authority, Shandaken’s current town government has taken no role at all in the project’s review, except for testimony by Supervisor Cross last summer that he “can’t see as how the project would have any negative effects.” Previously Cross had hired the consulting group Ferrandino and Associates which identified 55 pages worth of potential problems, though their report was not presented in evidence at the Issues Conference and its content, consequently, is not on the table for potential adjudication. Although not a participant in the proceedings, the attorney for Shandaken’s planning board, Drayton Grant, continues to receive courtesy copies of legal submissions on the project’s review.
But with the record now closed, Baker & Young’s brief opposing adjudication for community character, alternatives, and stormwater represents the only issues Shandaken as a municipality has taken positions on, or raised as questions.
Off-the-record consensus amongst some of the attorneys involved and others familiar with the precedents and testimony suggests that at least some of the issues under contention are likely to be ruled adjudicable. Topping most speculative lists in that regard are stormwater, ground and surface water, alternatives, community character, and traffic. Also deemed potentially likely are impacts on the forest preserve, cumulative impacts, and aquatic habitat, while those viewed least likely to go forward to adjudication include wildlife habitat, visual and noise impacts, and secondary growth.
While no time-frame for rulings on the matter have been set, most observers are expecting decisions from Judge Wissler by late winter or early spring. All rulings are subject to appeal by all parties directly to DEC Commissioner Crotty. The judge’s ruling is widely expected to include formal confirmation of the legal status in the proceedings of the participating parties.
The five closing briefs, all now public documents, are available in their entirety and in downloadable form at www.phoeniciatimes.com.
In early December, Pataki suddenly announced a deal with five Indian nations settling land claims in New York State in return for the right to build and operate casinos in the Catskill Mountain counties of Sullivan and Ulster. The governor’s proposal would fast-track state and federal approvals, with the help of U.S. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, who has already introduced federal legislation to make Pataki’s vision a reality. Five casino operators have teamed with tribes and are seeking casinos, largely clustered along the Route 17 corridor in Sullivan County. They hope to start construction soon.
The deal would replace a 2001 state law that authorized construction of three casinos in the Catskills, an arrangement that informally broke down into two Sullivan and one Ulster county gambling palace. But those original three casinos were to be opened using laws connected with land-in-trust arrangements - essentially, creating new Indian reservations for native nations centered on casinos that are not geographically located either on their current reservations or on traditional tribal lands. That is a lengthy and complex process, and ultimately the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs could say no to the plan.
But according to Chet Mirsky, a retired law professor in Ulster County providing pro-bono legal services to groups opposed to casinos, Pataki’s new land claim deal and arrangements essentially cut the federal government out of the equation, by taking decisive powers to approve such deals away from the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs.
“You have to emphasize the role Hillary Clinton is playing. She is the one who put the first [federal] bill through, and that bill says the secretary of the interior is directed to accept this,” said Mirsky. That bill was introduced Nov. 17, after Pataki attended the opening of the Clinton presidential library in Arkansas, but it was not acted on in the last Congress. But Clinton has said she expected to re-introduce the bill early in 2005.
Neither Pataki’s nor senator Clinton’s office returned calls seeking comment or clarification of the matters related to casino gambling in New York.
Although discussion of casinos in the Catskills is decades old, the sudden land-claim deal came after orders this fall by courts in New York requiring the state to come up with billions of additional dollars to improve schools in New York City, an order which could lead to similar challenges to improve schools statewide. Mirsky and others say the issue forced the governor’s hand. “He’s in need of money desperately to pay a huge sum for the New York City school system,” said Mirsky.
State Sen. John Bonacic was asked if the governor’s plan was allowing state legislators to avoid the hard decisions needed to reform the state’s education funding system, especially regarding fixing the property tax system that funds school districts outside of New York City.
“They’ve been talking for 30 years to reform the property tax structure in regards to education so that’s very difficult to do,” said Bonacic. “This is a New York City judge who dumped the problem in the lap of the governor and the upstate taxpayers. We’re going to have to pay this, and raise either sales, income tax and/or property tax to pay for this; that’s what we are going to have to do. Casinos seem to be a convenient way to help raise money in a more painless effort.”
While casino opponents concede that millions of dollars would be paid by casino operators, they say the money is nowhere near enough to meet the new needs casinos will bring to the region.
Lee Karr, a resident of Sullivan County who has studied and opposed casinos for years, said that the county legislature there initially accepted the premise that a $15 million payment from each casino would be an acceptable figure, without doing any studies. He said when opponents began compiling data to show $15 million would not even fund the new demands that would be placed on local school systems, county legislative leaders who supported gambling hired consultants with ties to the gaming industry to examine the figures.
“You have to understand all of these Indian organizations are really fronts for gambling businesses,” said Mirsky. “So they may call this the St. Regis Mohawk casino, but that’s only because they are using the tribal name. You can think of it more clearly as the Caesar’s casino.”
Karr, Mirsky and others argue that studies of existing casinos show that the regions around them do not benefit from growth in business, because the casinos are self-contained entities with restaurants and bars, but lacking clocks and windows.
But if the financial inducements explain the attraction, no one knows how exactly casinos will come to New York State. There is a lawsuit still pending against the original plan for three casinos, since gambling is outlawed in the New York State Constitution.
“All of this is pure conjecture. We plan on winning the damned lawsuit and that will throw this all into a cocked hat,” said Karr, who is a plantiff in a suit that is currently before New York’s Court of Appeals, the highest state court.
But Bonacic, noting that the two lower courts have ruled that gambling can proceed, said “These casino people have pros, legal pros and they kind of think the state is going to win this issue.”
But Karr said: “This will go to the United States Supreme Court,” and said that once the issue is removed from “what is in effect, a packed court” that had been influenced by Pataki, the legal issues would hold sway and New York’s constitutional prohibition on casino gambling would be upheld.
If that happens, Bonacic said, “Then what you have to do is put a constitutional amendment statewide; that is the only way it could be done.”
But even more prosaic questions remain. “We have no bill,” said Bonacic, alluding to a written proposal from Pataki to turn his idea and plans into actual state law and policy. “The governor just sprang this on everybody. He didn’t talk to me, or congressman Hinchey [whose district includes Sullivan County], the Assembly or the county legislature. And I told him ‘you were horrible’ [in failing to consult] and he said ‘I know.’ But in fairness to him I still think there is time for everyone to catch up.”
Bonacic said he expects the governor’s office to send bills on the matter to the state legislature in January and said under the aggressive timetable being pushed by casino supporters, the state and Congress need to act on that legislation in February or March to allow casino construction to start in spring.
Assuming that the casino supporters run the table on the legal aspect of getting the process started, it is widely expected that the environmental review of the projects would be short-circuited.
Ulster County is on record as having a signed contract with a tribe ostensibly from Oklahoma who call them selves the Modoc tribe, although the address on their documents gives a post office box in Illinois. The Modoc group have stated plans to build a casino on land about a mile south of the village of Ellenville, just north of Route 17 and the Sullivan County border.
But there is no application from the Modoc group to the BIA, according to Mirsky, who said that casino is essentially stalled in the process. Since the Modoc have no legitimate connection to New York State their case for a casino is weak and probably doomed. But he said the group backing the tribe could seek to partner with a New York-based native nation and reinvigorate their bid.
That deal was negotiated by Ulster County officials and signed by, among others, former Ulster County Legislature chairman Ward Todd and current county attorney Frank Murray, after a series of closed-door meetings with gambling interests that apparently violated the state’s open meetings law.
The Modoc are represented by attorney David Lenefsky, personal lawyer for U.S. Rep. Maurice Hinchey, D-Hurley. The contract with Ulster County is still on the books.
Bonacic said the Modoc bid is bogus.
Into History
He was born February 2, 1905 in the Bronx, the son of Ivar and Anna Lukas Evers. At 14, his family moved to a farm inn Tillson, outside New Paltz. He was a graduate of Hamilton College in Central New York, where he studied with the noted behavorial scientist B.F. Skinner, of Walden II fame. He later attended the Art Students League in New York, worked as a salesman for the Fuller Brush Co. and an insurance investigator, and wrote greeting cards before settling, for several years, in Trunball CT. Eventually, he came back to his beloved Catskills and Hudson Valley, moving first to Lewis Hollow Road in Woodstock and then, for decades, to his small house on Hutchin Hill Road in Shady.
Evers’ wife Helen Baker died in 1978. His daughter, Jane Evers Braik, passed away in the 1990s, as did his three sisters, Barbara, Elisabeth and Jeanne. His longtime companion, Barbara Moncure, predeceased him by several years.
He is survived by a son, Christopher (Kit) Evers, who after several years in Woodland Valley, has also lived much of his life in Shady, in addition to running a fine bookstore in Saugerties. He has a daughter, Barbara Evers, in Saugerties. There are 9 grandchildren and 13 great grandchildren.
Evers was known for having written a definitive history of the Catskills, and another for the town of Woodstock. In recent years he has been working on a new 700-page history of Kingston, which he had just finished before passing on a few weeks shy of his 100th birthday. He was looking forward to starting a new project, a memoir of his friendship with Hervey White, the founder of the Maverick concert hall and summer chamber music series, in the coming months.
Evers is less known for the bread-and-butter work that afforded him to raise a family, and pursue his interests in history… a cxareer writing children’s books that saw he and his wife pen at least 50 over the years.
There will be a tribute to the life and work of Alf Evers at 2 p.m. Jan. 9 at the Bearsville Theater on state Route 212 in Bearsville.
But that’s just the facts.
Just as important, in the long run, were the illuminating details that made up the man’s life, and in the end made art of all his pursuits.
He had a labyrinth behind his home where he would sit on the edge of the forest, thrilled with its sights, sounds and smells. He kept a vast library throughout his home and treasured the quieter classics of our literary heritage, from Henry Adams to Henry James (and far beyond) in hard-backed early editions. He chopped his firewood into his 90s. He had a gentle sense of humor. He loved the simple life he gave up city luxuries for many moons ago.
Moreover, Alf loved the complexity of life. He shied away from politicizing the information he uncovered, and yet was not afraid to search out the power connections that move history over the long run. He hated it when he was recently pulled into discussions about returning the region into a past heyday of giant hotels, saying his words were being bent against him. He treasured the natural over anything man-made. Always.
“You can’t understand a town without understanding the surrounding towns, and as you go more and more deeply into it, it takes you farther and farther from your base,” he said in a late interview. “You start accumulating books about your town’s history, and then you begin to buy books on the surrounding towns, and then on the county and surrounding counties, and then the state and the surrounding states. The process can go on until you reach the limits of the planet, and by that time, possibly, there will have been discovered that, somewhere out in space, there are planets surrounding suns that we know nothing about, in which there are other towns, which have their local histories. And, so, eventually, there will be space travelers that may bring back local histories to people like me, who are so green on the subject.”
Alf Evers loved to walk. He treasured history not as a tool for preaching the progression of our every thought and action, but as a lesson from which the errors of human ways can be learned. Our past, his works seem to say, is like a great novel that’s never-ending, and without any morals excepting those we apply along the way.
The Catskills, he felt, were a treasured place. And given both hard work, via vigilance, and good luck, they can be kept a treasure.
The man will be missed. He was a giant.