Submitted by Master Admin on Thu, 11/06/2008 - 2:35pm.
Hudson Valley/Catskills Fishing
This page contains links with information on places to fish in the Hudson Valley and Catskills area of New York. There is also information on each fishing spot such as physical features, species stocked, species occurring naturally, special regulations, and public access.
PUBLIC MEETINGS SET FOR DEVELOPING SCOPE OF ENVIRONMENTAL REVIEW FOR
HORIZONTAL DRILLING IN THE MARCELLUS SHALE
Sessions in the Catskills and Southern Tier in November and December
Submitted by Master Admin on Wed, 06/18/2008 - 3:21pm.
Jun 27 2008 - 7:00pm
Jun 27 2008 - 9:30pm
Catskill Mountainkeeper and Sullivan County Planning Department
Co-Sponsor Educational Forum on Natural Gas Drilling in the Catskills
Friday, June 27, 2008
7:00 pm
CVI Building, Liberty, NY
Submitted by Master Admin on Wed, 06/18/2008 - 3:20pm.
Jun 26 2008 - 7:00pm
Catskill Mountainkeeper Sponsors Educational Forum on Natural Gas Drilling in the Catskills
Thursday, June 26, 2008
7:00 pm
Walton Theatre, Walton, NY
Catskill Mountainkeeper will host a public educational forum on gas drilling in the Catskills on Thursday, June 26th. The forum will bring together regional and national experts to address the impacts of drilling on the environment, how gas leases should be written to protect the interests of property owners, and what regulations and land use approaches are either in place already, or are possible, in New York. This in-depth panel will be available to answer the questions arising over gas drilling, for land owners, municipals, and concerned community citizens alike. The forum will be held on Thursday, June 26th at 7:00 pm at the Walton Theatre in Walton, NY. For more information and directions contact Catskill Mountainkeeper at 845-482-5400 or visit www.catskillmountainkeeper.org.
A short bit of information from rancher Tweety Blancett about how the oil and gas industry and how it's affecting wildlife and recreation in the area. From Source: jjkloberdanz (You Tube)
Submitted by Master Admin on Wed, 04/30/2008 - 10:21am.
An important public information forum on the impacts of Gas Drilling in PA and the Catskill will take place on Saturday, May 3 at the Delaware Youth Center, 8 Creamery Rd., Callicoon, NY at 7:00 p.m. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. Call 845-887-5155 for driving directions. PUBLIC INFORMATION FORUM • SATURDAY, MAY 3, 7 P.M.
For additional information, visit DamascusCitizens.org. • Damascus Citizens, LLC • P.O. Box 147 • Milanville, PA 18443. CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFORMATION
Wes Gillingham, program director for Catskill Mountainkeeper, gave a talk entitled “The Future of the Catskills: Can Catskill Mountainkeeper Help?”. The talk was held at 7 p.m. in the Strawbale House at Hartwick College’s Pine Lake Environmental Campus, as part of the Conversations at the Lake series. Gillingham discussed his work with Catskill Mountainkeeper and our mission to protect the ecological integrity of the Catskill Mountain range and the quality of life of all those who live here. The talk, which was free and open to the public, was sponsored by the Pine Lake Environmental Campus of Hartwick College. Conversations at the Lake is a series of informal talks on subjects relating to sustainability and the environment. Read more about this event in the Oneonta Daily Star.
Down in Texas the big gas companies are talking about northeast Pennsylvania and New York as the place to be. The Catskills and the Delaware River Valley sit on top of Marcellus Shale. Marcellus Shale lies under much of northern Appalachia 6,000 to 8,000 feet below the surface; the pores in the shale contain large quantities of natural gas. The shale layer becomes thicker from west to east beginning at about 50 feet in Ohio to more than 100 feet thick in central PA and NY. Geologists have known about the gas here for years but now with the new technologies of horizontal drilling and hydraulic fracturing, recovering the gas is now the big new "Shale Play" as the industry refers to it. We are seeing the "land men" knocking on doors to obtain gas leases for various companies, with Chesapeake leading the charge in our area (mostly the Delaware River Valley in PA, Sullivan and Delaware counties). Community groups are forming on both sides of the issue from landowner associations to better negotiate a lease to groups fighting drilling altogether.
What does this all mean to the average resident? It means that landowners, towns, counties and regional organizations have a very short time to come up to speed with all the issues involved with gas exploration. As a new "shale play" we don't have a history in this particular formation but we certainly have a history with gas exploration and the complexity of the issues involved. Here are a few topics we all need to look closer at:
• Hydraulic Fracturing: "Fracking” as it is called within the industry involves injecting water, sand and special chemicals into the shale layer at extremely high pressure. This then separates the pores in the rock and the sand particles "hold" the cracks open so the gas can flow back to the drill bore. Some of the injected fluids remain trapped underground. A number of these fluids qualify as hazardous materials and carcinogens, and are toxic enough to contaminate groundwater resources. There are cases in the U.S. where hydraulic fracturing is the suspected source of impaired or polluted drinking water. In Alabama, Colorado, New Mexico, Virginia, West Virginia and Wyoming, incidents have been recorded by people who have gas wells near their homes. They have reported changes in water quality or quantity following fracturing operations. Most of these incidences involve coal-bed methane production, which is a much shallower drilling process, but it highlights how poorly the gas companies are protecting the communities they are working in.
• Regulatory Issues: After decades of deal making between government and the industry it has resulted in exemptions for the oil and gas companies from protections in the clean water act, the environmental response, compensation, and liability act (CERCLA also known as the Superfund law), the resource Conservation and recovery act, and the Safe Drinking Water Act. Also, the gas industry is not covered by public right to know provisions, which mean companies can withhold information about the chemicals they use in the "fracking” process.
• Pollution: The pollution from oil and gas exploration and production has involved known carcinogens, reproductive toxicants, and other toxic chemicals like arsenic, hydrogen sulfide, mercury and volatile organic compounds (VOCs) including benzene and xylene.
• Fragmentation: The Catskills and adjacent lands in Pennsylvania contain some of the largest contiguous forest blocks east of the Mississippi River. This area acts as an important species corridor between the Catskill Park, the Shawangunk Ridge, the Hudson Highlands and the Poconos. There are multiple species of either endangered or special concern and indicator species of healthy vibrant habitat found here. The number of roads and increased heavy truck traffic and cleared swaths for pipelines to connect the drilling pads to the millennium pipeline will dissect these important forest blocks and corridor.
• Air and Noise Pollution: Drilling for gas is a highly industrial undertaking which includes numerous truckloads of equipment, chemicals, sand and water along with generators, pumps, drilling rigs and hoists. All of which are running at all hours of the day producing noise and exhaust fumes. When gas is found there can be a release of the various gases in the formation.
• Normally Occurring Radioactive Material (NORMS): NORMS are found in many geological formations and can be brought to the surface on drilling equipment and in fluids. Once at the surface it can accumulate as sediments in holding tanks and ponds. This is an issue in the Barnett Shale, which are not the same rock. However, NORMS occur in NY at higher levels than in PA and have not been tested in the eastern part of the state.
• Development: Increased development in other rural areas of the country where there are productive Gas fields has resulted in large influxes of industry workers which will have multiple impacts to the respective communities.
• New York City's Watershed: On August 6, 2008 New York City officials demanded a ban on natural gas drilling near upstate reservoirs because they fear the drilling could contaminate the city's drinking water.
The Ashokan Reservoir is part of the city's Catskill water supply system. (Credit: Jim McKnight/AP Photo)
They've asked the state Department of Environmental Protection to establish a one-mile protective perimeter around each of the city's six major Catskill reservoirs and connecting infrastructure -- a buffer that would put at least half a million acres off-limits to drilling. They also want to wrest more regulatory control from Albany. New York is one of just four major cities in the United States with a special permit allowing its drinking water to go unfiltered, and that pristine water comes from a network of reservoirs and rivers in five upstate counties. If the special permit was revoked, the city would have to build a treatment facility that could cost nearly $10 billion, said Walter Mugden, a senior official at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. That's roughly what the state estimated it would earn from gas development over the next decade. In a letter (PDF) from the city Department of Environmental Protection to state officials, obtained by ProPublica, commissioner Emily Lloyd said she was not satisfied with the state's assurances that the environment would be protected from drilling in the Marcellus Shale, a layer of rock that dives up to 9,000 feet below much of the Appalachian east, including south central New York state and the 2000-square-mile watershed. Find out more at Propublica from Investigative Journalist Abrahm Lustgarten here
There are some excellent web sites out there covering these issues more in depth such as The Oil and Gas accountability project By Earthworks www.ogap.org. A very important document they have produced is Oil and Gas at Your Door? A landowner’s guide to oil and gas development.
Another great document put out by the Natural Resources Defense Council is: NRDC Natural Gas Drilling Fact Sheet: Drillng Down: Protecting Western Communities from the Health and Environmental Effects of Oil and Gas Production. (October, 2007 PDF)
Most of the National groups have information on this topic especially concerning public land and the Sierra Club's Atlantic Chapter and Trout Unlimited are actively involved in the issue here in the Catskills.
There are many community groups throughout the country faced with gas drilling that have websites. Here are two for example that offer valuable information; FWCANDO.ORG from Fort Worth Texas, which is in the Barnett shale Similar to Marcellus and Damascus Citizens for Sustainability at www.DamascusCitizens.org an organization based in Damascus PA dedicated to "preventing the dire effects of gas well drilling, such as polluted drinking water, carcinogens in the farmland and food chain, torn-up roads, risk of gas fires, plummeting real estate values, and screeching noise polution."
In the Catskills there are a number of groups that are now working on the gas drilling issue.
Catskill Citizens for Safe Energy is a newly formed grassroots organization specifically focused on the gas drilling issue and keep a calendar of important events related to drilling of the Catskills.
The Delaware Riverkeeper and the Hudson Riverkeeper are closely monitoring and informing the public about gas drilling and it's potential impacts on there respective wathersheds.
**all photo's above courtesy of the New York Times**
** The Marcellus shale maps, horizontal well art, photomicrograph and image captions below are used with permission of Geology.com. Do not reproduce, reprint or otherwise use this content without permission from Geology.com. **
Groups challenge Energy Department’s Mid-Atlantic Corridor designation
Scranton – A group of 11 environmental organizations, including Catskill Mountainkeeper, Thursday announced it would file a lawsuit against the US Energy Department over it final designation of a Mid-Atlantic National Interest Electric Transmission Corridor.
We need you! Show your commitment to the Catskills by joining us. Membership is free, but please consider a donation; we rely on support of people like you to fulfill our mission.
Banner photo courtesy of Aaron Bennett / Catskill Center
Greetings from Catskill Mountainkeeper!
Since our May launch and our last newsletter, we've been very busy at Catskill Mountainkeeper--with our billboard on Route 17, the Mountaintop to Tap trek led by program director Wes Gillingham and a move to our new office in Youngsville.
We'd love to see you there at our open house--we'll send you a "save-the-date" reminder soon. At the open house, we'll report about some of our other projects, including our work to protect farmland and promote smart-growth ideas across the Catskills.
But before that, please take a moment to send a direct message to Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne opposing the massive, out-of-place casinos proposed for Sullivan County.
Send your message to Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne
As we've traveled and spoken with groups in the Southern Catskills, we find that there is strong opposition to the proposals for massive casinos in Sullivan County--even though casino boosters claim no one objects to these Las Vegas-style proposals.
promoters themselves have submitted to the federal government. Our billboard on Route 17, shown above, makes that point.
And, as our petition states, there will be "negative impacts on police and emergency services, open space and farmland." One of the proposed casinos--along the storied Neversink River--calls for 17 restaurants and five bars! The increased competition wouldn't boost restaurant business along Broadway Monticello--or help other businesses much either.
What can you do? Right now, Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne is deciding whether to give Empire Resorts and the St. Regis Mohawk Tribe permission to build a $600 million Las Vegas-style off-reservation casino in Monticello.
Help Kempthorne make the right call for our region.
One problem: huge traffic congestion predicted in the documents that the
Proposed High-Voltage Power Lines Spark Local Opposition
Local representatives are fuming over the Federal Department of Energy's designation of two National Interest Electric Transmission Corridors. This is the first step that New York Regional Interconnection needed to build its high-voltage power line. The Northeast Corridor extends 200 miles from Oneida County to Orange County. The high-voltage powerlines are 110 feet tall and will run through our towns, homes, and countryside.
Catskill Mountainkeeper is dedicated to stopping NYRI and is working in conjunction with the many elected officials, groups and individuals who oppose this massive power-line scheme.
Visit the Stop NYRI website to find out information about the anti-NYRI coalition and how you can help.
Mountaintaintop to Tap Trek: Program Director Wes Gillingham
This summer, Program Director Wes Gillingham kicked off Catskill Mountainkeeper's education program by leading 12 high-schoolers on a 150-mile journey from the peaks of the Catskills to New York City's Central Park.
Along the way, the students--six from Sydney High School in Delaware County and six from the New York Harbor School in Brooklyn--learned the history of the watershed and the politics of protecting the Catskills and the Hudson River.
Wes reports:
"We hiked through the Slide Mountain wilderness on our way to Kingston, then boarded row boats and rowed 50 miles down the Hudson River to Croton Point Park. We made our way over to the Old Croton Aqueduct, which then became our trail to NYC. All along the way we met with scientists, activists and politicians. During these three weeks of hiking and rowing, we learned everything we could about the NYC/Catskill watershed area.
Our group got to hear the real-life childhood stories of Margaret Dolan Smith before eminent domain took her family's home to flood the Rondout Valley. We tested water in a rainshower at 4,000 feet the day we crossed over Slide Mountain and found the rain had a 4.6 ph, acid rain. These students learned about the watershed through real life experience not just as isolated facts. They now have both an intellectual and physical understanding of the NYC Watershed system.
We now have twelve young people who have a heartfelt relationship with the Catskills, the best advocates for our future."
Take a look at the pictures below and visit the trek homepage at the Stroud Water Research Center'ssite. Stroud and many organizations also sponsored the trek.
We hope to see you soon at the open house for our new office in Youngsville. The office is large enough for us to welcome volunteers wishing to help. The office is located at:
By promoting economic revitalization, environmental protection and education, the Catskill Mountainkeeper is a grassroots advocacy organization dedicated to the wise stewardship of the region. Through a network of concerned citizens, we work to promote sustainable economic growth and the protection of natural resources essential to healthy communities.
Catskill Mountainkeeper, a newly formed anti-casino organization based in Youngsville, put up this billboard on westbound Route 17, just east of Exit 116 in Bloomingburg.Times Herald-Record/MICHELE HASKELL
Wurtsboro — The newest casino billboard on Route 17 doesn't say "Casinos Mean Jobs!" "Jobs Now!" or any of the other slogans that pop up on glossy billboards on the way to Sullivan County.
Submitted by Master Admin on Mon, 07/30/2007 - 10:32pm.
Mountainkeeper Wes Gillingham Leads Students Mountain to Tap
Catskill Mountainkeeper Program Director Wes Gillingham is led a a three-week "Mountaintop to Tap" trek with six high school students from the Catskills and six from New York City. The group hiked and rowed from the Catskills to New York City along the aqueduct system.
click here to find out about more about the trek
Teens trek through Westchester on 150-mile environmental hike
By MARC EPSTEIN
THE JOURNAL NEWS
(Original publication: July 28, 2007)
YONKERS - Twelve teenagers tracing the route of New York City's drinking water got a guided walk along the Croton Aqueduct yesterday on the next to last day of a 150-mile hike.
Catskill Mountainkeeper launches with a mission: build active network of citizens speaking out for the Catskills way of life
Seeks to unite residents from all parts of the Catskills to protect open space and promote smart growth in the region's villages, mountains and valleys
Monticello (May 10, 2007) - Catskill Mountainkeeper, a grassroots group intended to unite the entire region's residents in the battle to preserve the quality of life here, announced it is open for business today at a news conference in front of the Sullivan County Government Center. "Residents of the Catskills are as diverse as in any place on earth, but one thing everyone can unite on is that this is a special region that needs its people speaking up so that its tremendous cultural and natural resources stay intact," said Joe Martens, the group's chairman. "Catskill Mountainkeeper will build an active network of citizens to make that happen." Martens also is the president of the Open Space Institute, one of several groups sponsoring Catskill Mountainkeeper.
The group's key priority is to push for a comprehensive, regional vision that takes into account new thinking about smart growth and wise use of the area's natural resources, Martens said. Working with other established groups, Catskill Mountainkeeper then will organize citizens across the region's counties to contribute their ideas for the region's future as part of that process.
At the news conference, members held poster-board cutouts of the region's six counties (Delaware, Greene, Otsego, Schoharie, Sullivan, Ulster, plus a portion of Albany County, which is geographically in the Catskills), bringing them together in a symbolic illustration of the regional unity that the group plans to foster. The group offers free membership in keeping with its goal of having a broad spectrum of citizen involvement.
"With a combination of the web and plain old shoe-leather organizing, our goal is to bring together people who have never talked with each other and have them join in the fight to preserve the Catskill way of life," said Ramsay Adams, the executive director of the new group.
The Catskill region, with its close proximity to New York City, is experiencing intense development pressures. All of New York City's drinking water is supplied by reservoirs in the Catskills which adds an increased urgency to protecting the landscape from development and pollution. There are a number of major threats to the region including a very real possibility that five Las Vegas-sized casinos will be built in Sullivan County. A major development has been proposed at the Belleayre State Park Ski Center that includes two 18-hole golf courses, condos and a massive hotel. Similar proposals have been put forth in Ulster and Delaware Counties.
Development of roads and other impervious surfaces in the region are a major cause of the devastating flooding that has besieged the region in the last 5 years. The New York Regional Interconnect is a proposed major power line that would run from Utica to Orange County, cutting right through the Catskills -- and industrial wind projects are being proposed through out the region. Farmland is being sold for development at a frightening pace throughout the Catskills and the highway system in the Catskills is already near or at capacity and is under growing pressure.
A place this spectacular only comes around every 15,000 years. Join the Catskill Mountainkeeper and help protect one of America's greatest treasures.
Our Mission
By promoting economic revitalization, environmental protection and education, the Catskill Mountainkeeper is a grassroots advocacy organization dedicated to the wise stewardship of the region. Through a network of concerned citizens, we work to promote sustainable economic growth and the protection of natural resources essential to healthy communities.
Asserting that the Bureau of Indian Affairs “cannot lawfully” approve a Las Vegas-style casino at the Monticello Raceway without an Environmental Impact Study, the Natural Resources Defense Council today demanded that the BIA adhere to the law and conduct an EIS before it takes any final action on the casino.
FROM OUR ALLIES AT CARI
