Barry Foster of Livingston Manor, who runs a baseball card shop, chats with Carolin Walter-Brown inside her home store, Willow and Brown on Main Street in Livingston Manor.Times Herald-Record/MICHELE HASKELL

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LIVINGSTON MANOR — Boarded-up buildings have turned into vibrant mom-and-pop shops. Crumbling roadsides have been replaced by smooth sidewalks lined with streetlights, cherry trees and park benches. The shadowy corners where drug dealers loitered and sold cocaine are now well lit and safe for pedestrians.

The river hamlet that people once called "a tough little town" is quickly transforming into a prosperous one.

Over roughly the past five years Livingston Manor has seen a renaissance that many of our struggling cities, villages and hamlets have only dreamed of. It's been accomplished with a two-pronged approach — the town and business owners paid for infrastructure improvements, and the police surgically removed gangs and other troublemakers who soured the town with drugs and violence.

Business owners say the turning point was 2004. That's when the Town of Rockland — using grants, donations and some of its own money — replaced the crumbling, unsightly sidewalks. New streetlights, benches and roadside trash cans were installed that year, too. The improvements gave Livingston Manor residents a reason to walk about town again, and they gave business owners the impetus to spruce up their storefronts using county facade grants.

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"The cosmetic changes had a tremendous effect," said Barry Foster, a longtime resident who owns Hot Corner Sports Collectibles.

"You look at a shleppy town, and who wants to be there?"

The town's beautification has lured new businesses, like the bicycle shop, bookstore and housewares store. Civic involvement is also rising, residents said. Locals chipped in $1,600 for each new street lamp. On a recent Wednesday night, Lisa Lyons, owner of the Morgan Outdoors nature and sporting shop, hosted a group that stained flower boxes to be placed around the hamlet.

"We wouldn't dream of letting go of the progress we've made," Lyons said. "That's why we spend a weekday night staining planters. We've built a nice, pretty town and we're going to hold onto it."

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Police have helped the people of Livingston Manor regain control. In the past few years, through investigations and covert drug purchases, police have snaked out members of the Crips, Latin Kings and the homegrown Cash Crew street gangs. They had been throwing loud parties, fighting in the streets, and dealing marijuana and cocaine.

"The key for us was surgically finding the problem areas and problem people and directing our resources there," said Sullivan County Sheriff Mike Schiff. Once police gained momentum, school kids started giving them tips and business owners kept the police phone number by their cash registers just in case they spotted trouble. The watchful eyes of locals and police busts have combined to wipe much of the crime from the hamlet, Schiff said.

If you're looking for an anecdote that epitomizes the changing tide in Livingston Manor, here it is: When police last year arrested Bradley Dunham, the alleged narcotics dealer and leader of the Cash Crew gang, they also confiscated his car, a spiffy 1998 Corvette. The car won't be used to deliver drugs anymore, but it will be used to deliver drug messages to youngsters. Police say the Corvette will be outfitted with decals and used as the DARE vehicle.

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http://www.flyanglersonline.com/features/eotg/eotg90.php

Part Ninety

Prospecting for Wild Trout on Small Catskills Streams

By Rob Jagodzinski, Irvington, NY

Each spring and summer, hordes of flyfishers descend on New York's Catskills region to fish the rivers made famous by Gordon, Wulff, Hewitt and other luminaries of the sport. The ensuing pilgrimage can leave name-brand pools on the more fabled waters so full that some stretches look like casting tournaments. But there is relief. When the Beaverkill's legendary runs are sewn up tight by a spiderweb of fly lines, or when drift boat hatches blanket the Delaware River's east and west branches, Catskills flyfishers can find solitude, tumbling water and wild browns and brookies by leaving the valleys and heading for the hills. Mountain tributaries offer a cool elixir for anglers who want to escape the crowds. Even during hot summer spells, many mountain tribs run cold and clear. And the jeweled little trout contained therein rise to dry flies throughout the day. What's more, warm and thin summer water on the lower stretches of the Beaverkill or Willowemoc can drive larger fish into spring-fed, hemlock-shaded little headwater streams. The sight of a hook-jawed brown rocketing from the tail of a bathtub-sized plunge pool to blast your Royal Wulff will put your heart in your throat and may lead to small-stream addiction. That very scene unfolded before my eyes a couple summers ago while I worked my way up the rushing headwaters of a Catskills river. I was picking up a few small, bright brook trout on a rainy August afternoon when I came upon a chest-deep pool walled by a high bluestone ledge. My elk hair caddis refused to float in the downpour, so I tied on a muddler minnow without taking time to cut back the worn 5X tippet. On the first cast into the middle of the pool, the streamer had just begun to sink when a shadow wheeled out of the dark water along the ledge. It transformed into the golden spotted flank of an immense brown trout, likely drawn into the headwaters when rains began to send the water levels up earlier in the week. I'd like to say I played the big brown expertly, gently brought it to hand, admired it for a moment then released it back to the stream. But the fish slammed the muddler, drove to the bottom and snapped me off in about three seconds, leaving me shivering in the rain as my tippet pigtailed in the current. The imprint of that fish on my memory has kept me coming back to the little tribs again and again. So has the sound of cold water purling over rocky staircases, the earthy smell of the woods after a summer shower, the sight of a newborn fawn standing on shaky legs on the bank and the tug of pan-sized brook trout on the line without another soul in sight. One of the most challenging and rewarding parts of flyfishing Catskills rills is the actual process of prospecting for them. Like bird hunters who protect their prized coverts, small stream flyfishers are pretty cagey about giving out the locations of their favorite haunts for fear of having them overrun. After all, solitude is one of the rewards of headwaters fishing. So you will have to do much of the searching on your own. It will require some topo maps, meandering drives through the hills, a few long hikes through mountain laurel thickets, some bruises, scrapes, mosquito bites, poison ivy and protracted hunts that dead-end in dry holes. But once you discover a couple decent streams, you might find that the journey is the goal. The trouble may be worth the effort when you hook that first wild brookie in a plunge pool far from the nearest road, where your fishing companion is a mink or kingfisher. For maps, start with a New York State Gazeteer. It has enough detail to show some of the smaller streams as well as trails, dirt roads and state forest boundaries. For even more details, go to USGS topographic maps in the 7.5 minute series (1:25,000). In addition, the New York-New Jersey Trail Conference puts out a set of five Catskills hiking maps that delineate trials, topography, streams and other landmarks. Look to high ground for likely streams. The state of New York owns quite a bit of land around the Catskills peaks, to the tune of nearly 300,000 acres. Much of this lies within watersheds surrounding the big reservoirs that supply Manhattan's drinking water. State land is delineated by blue, yellow and white signs on trees. That land is open to hiking, hunting, camping and fishing. In addition, the state has purchased fishing easements along many Catskills waterways. Easements are marked with yellow signs. If you find a blue squiggle on the map that starts on a hillside and is surrounded by state land, there's a good chance it's a trib that may contain some fish if it's fed by a couple good springs and seeps and holds water year-round. By the way, map-studying is best done before a woodstove on wintry January nights...maybe when you're taking a break from your fly vise. Once you pore over some maps and mark down a few likely streams, the next step might be some actual driving and hiking, if you happen to live within striking distance of the mountains. This may be best done in the spring, since snow in the higher elevations often shuts roads and trails up until April. Of course, combining back-country skiing or snowshoeing and stream prospecting is also a winter option. Get out of your truck and hike in. Sometimes long hikes are fruitless. But sometimes an isolated stream will hold a good head of trout. Don't immediately dismiss a trickle that you can jump across in summer. Bring a stream thermometer: If the water's cold, 65 degrees or so, and it's on public land, follow it into the woods a ways. You might find deeper pools or beaver dams that can hold nice fish. Blowdowns and log jams, while full of tippet-tangling snags, often become trout havens. Conversely, if the water is above 68 degrees or so, keep moving. Fish hooked and played in warm water may be too exhausted to revive. Likewise, anglers should avoid the tribs during extended dry periods. Some little trickles tend to turn into rock gardens unless they're charged with summer rains. For gear and tackle, think light. A pair of hip boots should be all you need in the tribs. The water is rarely knee-deep. Besides, you'll want to stay out of the water as much as possible, since small stream fish are easily spooked. In summer, consider wet wading, but be careful where you tread. Copperheads also find Catskills tribs appealing. Matching hatches is not terribly important on headwaters streams. First off, many of these fast waters are somewhat infertile and only contain a few mayfly and caddis species. Second, the fish tend to be hungry from dawn to dusk. They will strike many dry fly patterns size 12-16 when the fly is presented properly. Classic Catskills dries such as Hendricksons work fine. For a fly that floats high in the fast water of small streams, on of my go-to patterns is a size 12 elk hair caddis with a brown body and palmered hackle and bleached or tan wing. Not only is it easy to see, but it can catch fish either on a dead drift or skittered at the tail of a pool. Other good patterns include size 12 royal humpys, size 12-14 humpys and size 12-14 Royal Wulff. Terrestrials are important on small streams in summer, so bring some size 10-12 Dave's Hoppers and size 12-14 black deer-hair crickets. For streamers, size 10 muddlers work well, as do Mickey Finns in similar sizes. Keep it light and simple. A 7-foot, 3-4 weight rod should be all you need on the tribs. Some people favor overlining by using one line weight heavier than the rod is rated for so it loads more quickly, making short casts easier. I just usually go with the normal rod/line setup. A 7 or 8-foot leader with a stiff butt and 12-18-inch 4X or 5X tippet should work well. A leader any longer or lighter will be tough to control in the close quarters of small streams. Delicate tippets aren't necessary; the fish don't seem to mind a 4X tippet, which won't snap when you have to retrieve your fly from overhanging boughs that inevitably snag backcasts. Small stream flyfishing often means blind casting; you may not see too many rising fish. Brookies tend to ambush their food in the tribs, often holding in a quiet lie and darting out to nail bugs that wash down the main current. Cast in the eddies behind boulders and in the slicks beside undercut banks. It doesn't take much water for a decent fish to hide. Practice roll casts and even bow-and-arrow casts for use on mountain tribs. Hemlock and rhododendron branches and all sorts of other obstructions play havoc with long backcasts. Learn to make a decent presentation with just one backcast; false casts often get hung up on the surrounding trees. Stealth is key. Wear drab clothes. Crouch while approaching a pool. Walk softly. Wild fish in close quarters are ultra-spooky, especially in clear summer water. Movement, splashing and heavy footfalls will send fish skittering for cover. Make a couple casts to the tail of a pool first. Sometimes larger fish sit in the riffles at the end of a pool. Throw slack in your leader when casting to the head of a pool. Even uneducated mountain trout will refuse some dry flies if they're dragging. Expect to catch quite a few little fingerlings for every meaty fish you hook. Remember, you're fishing in nursery waters. Use barbless hooks so you can just flip out the fly with forceps quickly without handling the trout. Wet your hands if you have to pick a fish up. Use larger flies so the fingerlings can't hook up as readily. Bring a fanny pack or daypack with water, something to eat, bug repellent, a rain jacket, a map and compass and other necessities. Here are a few streams for starters: 1. The upper Willowemoc and Fir Brook: There are state fishing easements along the upper Willow around the village of Willowemoc proper. Also, way up in the headwaters the stream is within the Catskills Forest Preserve and is open to the public. Fir Brook, a major tributary to the Willow, winds through woods and meadows and contains beaver dam pools. There are state easements along the brook. 2. The upper East Branch of the Delaware River: The river above Pepacton Reservoir is small to medium water. Try the stretch between Margaretville and the reservoir for solitude. 3. The Beaverkill Covered Bridge Campsite: About a mile of the upper Beaverkill flows through this state campground, which is open to the public from May through September. Surrounded by privately held river sections, the stream within the campground contains wild and stocked browns and native brookies. It's several miles north of Livingston Manor off Beaverkill Road. 4. The Esopus Creek headwaters above Olivera: It's small water here, but some of it is open to the public through easements and some intersects with state land. Wild brookies dominate. Bring a sense of humor and a sense of wonder. The humor helps when you're wearily slogging back from a deep-woods trib that looked good on the map but turned out to be a chub-filled ditch. The sense of wonder helps when you marvel at the colors of an 11-inch wild brookie hooked in a mountain pool that will remain one of your best secret spots for years to come. ~ Rob About Rob: Rob currently works for the Associated Press as News Editor for the Press Multimedia Services in NYC. Responsible for rewriting and posting breaking news, business and sports stories for AP online customers including Yahoo! news, ABC.com, and hundreds of Web sites operated by daily newspapers throughout the country. He has a wide background as a editor and writer, including a stint as Photojournalist for Pacific Stars and Stripes. We are delighted to welcome his voice here. You can reach Rob at [email protected]

By M. P. DUNLEAVEY

SOMETIME in the last couple of months, the price of gasoline crossed a line. It’s not just that gas is now hovering around the dreaded $4 a gallon. It’s that an unconscious expense has become a painfully conscious one.

A year ago, the cost of gas was still a small enough portion of overall expenses that it didn’t provoke constant comparisons to everything else in life.

Now gas prices have become the elephant in the middle of countless conversations. A tank costs roughly as much as the phone bill — or a pair of shoes. For what you spend on gas each month, you could buy a new dishwasher or get a cheap weekend package to the Caribbean. Some day, the gas legends of ’08 will live on like the myths of Paul Bunyan. “I remember when gas got so high, you could have built a 17-room mansion from the ground up!”

Actually, where I live in Delaware County, a rural area overlapping the Catskills that lies about three hours from New York City, the mood is anything but light. We are dependent on our cars here. Most of the county’s 42,000-odd residents are scattered among a few dozen tiny towns and villages, with at least 10 or 15 miles between them.

Until recently, most people thought nothing of zipping 45 minutes down the road to take advantage of better shopping opportunities in the bigger towns. Now those basic routines are stretching people’s budgets. For us to go to the nearest mall costs $16 round trip.

“You don’t just get in the car anymore,” said Laura O’Connor, who works in a kitchen goods store in Margaretville, but lives about 20 miles from there in Andes. “If I have errands to run, I try to make a giant loop and do everything in one day,” she said. “Most of us are carpooling, too.”

But with prices rising so rapidly, the usual ways of economizing aren’t enough to keep gas costs down. In the Catskills, you can’t just switch to mass transit.

Steve Yaekel, who owns the Margaretville Liquor Store (yes, in Margaretville), said he was driving home to Roxbury, about 20 miles away, one night recently. When he passed a local gas station, he was too tired to refill his tank. “I saw that it was about $3.74, and I decided I’d fill up in the morning,” he said.

The next morning, he said, the price had spiked to $3.82. “With prices going up this fast, how are you supposed to adjust the family budget?” he asked, noting that it now costs $50 for just half a tank of gas for his truck.

Many small-business men here depend on trucks or vans that get very low gas mileage. Allen Taylor, an appliance repairman based in Delhi, travels as much as 170 miles a day for work and says that he spends about $800 a month on gas.

Mr. Taylor says he was appalled when his accountant told him, “I had to increase my basic service charge from $60 to $65 just to break even,” Mr. Taylor said. That was in 2007. With gas costs pinching his customers so much, Mr. Taylor says he is reluctant to raise his prices. “I’m worried with the way the gas is going now, it’s going to put small-business owners like me out of business,” he said. “There’s only so much we can charge, only so much people will pay.”

GAS has become a preoccupation for many people who own second homes in the region, a large number of whom live in New York City. Michael and Lily Idov said their old car consumed about 15 gallons to travel 300 miles round trip from their home in Brooklyn to their house in Andes. They recently bought a Mini Cooper, which gets about 40 miles per gallon, Mr. Idov said. Fuel economy was their chief concern. “Now we go both ways on just two-thirds of a 10-gallon tank.”

In the category of unintended but happier consequences, the backlash against driving may bolster some parts of the local economy.

“We can’t believe how much business we’re getting,” said Helen Voultepsis, who works at Ace Hardware in Delhi and believes that people are less inclined to drive 40 miles to the nearest Lowe’s or Home Depot. “Local businesses are definitely benefiting.”

link is here:

http://www.brooklynpaper.com/stories/31/20/31_20_banned_food_coop_no.html

Water, water everywhere — but there’s no longer a drop of the bottled variety at the Park Slope Food Co-op.

That’s because the environeurotics at everyone’s favorite liberal grocery store, with its 13,000 members, have made good on their threat to stop selling bottled water.

The last bottle of the pernicious beverage was sold last week — the final step in a two-year debate that began with my seminal column, “H-2-Woe! Slope mom wants you to stop drinking bottled water” (Aug. 12, 2006).

Just four nights earlier, nearly 200 members of the Co-op voted overwhelmingly — only one lone hand went up in protest — to stop selling bottled water at the store, which is on Union Street between Sixth and Seventh avenues (and, in other words, within walking distance of at least 42,645 places selling bottled water).

The arguments against bottled water are well known: 30 million bottles — which are made from petroleum, by the way — end up in landfills every day, environmental experts say. In the course of just one year, the petroleum in those bottles could fuel 100,000 cars (though, frankly, that sounds like the lesser of these two evils).

New York City tap water, by comparison, flows down from the Catskill “mountains” with just gravity.

Of course, it’s easy for the Co-op to get on its fully biodegradable soapbox. The store sold only about $800 worth of bottled water every week (a true drop in the bucket). Plus, the Co-op’s membership is so large right now that inconveniencing customers is not much of a concern.

“When I started in the 1970s, people used to quit all the time because we didn’t have everything,” said Joe Holtz, the store’s general coordinator (don’t call him a “manager”! That word is so, how you say?, hierarchical).

“But now we can do this because we no longer have to worry where our next member is coming from.”

I confronted Holtz on the key issue: hydro-hypocrisy. After all, when the Co-op started selling beef a few years ago, meat lovers defended the move because only the Co-op could be trusted to sell meat from humanely slaughtered, respectfully harvested, grass-fed, happy cows. So by extension, couldn’t the Co-op find an environmentally sound water?

Holtz swatted me away like a common fly. The issue is not only about the environment, but about a commitment to a larger good (like public schools).

If people keep buying so much bottled water, fewer people will be left to fight for the quality of municipal water. That quality will, inevitably, decline, forcing more people to switch to bottled water — which will become more expensive as the demand for it increases. Under that scenario, the poorest members of our society will be the only ones left drinking the swill that comes out of the taps of the future.

You might argue, “But where does it end?” And the good news is that at the Park Slope Food Co-op, it never does. Emboldened by the bottled water ban, they — and when I say “they,” I mean “we” — are now considering a full ban on plastic bags.

Mark my words: This one will pass. After all, a study by the Co-op’s “exit and entry advisory group” (yes, there is an exit and entry advisory group) revealed that only 26.7 percent of customers leave the store with a plastic bag.

“The ban will pass,” Holtz said. “Maybe not 180–1, but it will pass.”

©2008 The Brooklyn Paper

Sullivan lawmakers get a lesson in gas drilling

“We’ve got to slow this train down.”

By FRITZ MAYER

MONTICELLO, NY — Gas well fever is spreading through the region like an invasive species, with some landowners lining up to let gas companies exploit their land for natural gas. And with understandable reason: there’s gold in them there hills, at least for some landowners.

The most recent get-rich-quick story comes from Delaware County, where, according to an article in the Binghamton Press & Sun-Bulletin published on May 11, a coalition of about 300 landowners near Deposit have reached a deal with gas companies to allow gas exploration on their lands in return for $90 million. The article further said the deal also includes 15 percent of revenues for any gas recovered from beneath the ground.

With numbers like that, and with Sullivan County sitting over the same geological formation as Delaware County?the Marcellus Shale-it’s not surprising that the gas issue has now officially caught the attention of Sullivan County lawmakers.

At a meeting at the government center on May 8, lawmaker Jodi Goodman said, “I’ve had more calls on this than any other topic. I’m talking about gaming; I’m talking about taxes.” With those words, Goodman kicked off an introductory lesson on gas well drilling.

Dr. Bill Pammer, commissioner of the Sullivan County Division of Planning and Community, explained the basics of gas drilling in the region, which are well known to many residents in the region, especially in Wayne County and the western part of Sullivan County.

Pammer talked of the fracking process and the inherent environmental dangers, and he enhanced his presentation with photographs: one showed a grid of what appeared to be hundreds of gas wells in a wild, remote section of Wyoming. Another showed the clearing that is now occurring in the Allegheny National Forest to provide flat open spaces of up to six acres to accommodate drilling equipment. He said drilling “typically involves a series of drill pads over a large acreage for increased extraction; we’re seeing a goal of anywhere from 100 to 1,000 drilling pads in a geographic area.”

There were many questions from lawmakers about how much control local municipalities could bring to bear on drilling operations. For instance, could the towns pass drilling ordinances to help mitigate the cost of repairing local roads torn up by hundreds of drilling-related vehicles?

Also, the drilling processes are exempt from the Federal Clean Water Act and other federal environmental laws, but are they subject to the New York State Environmental Quality Review (SEQRA) process, which is also intended to protect the environment?

County staff and officials are working to find the answers to these and many related questions. Lawmakers all agreed that any constraints on the drilling process would have to come not from the county level but from the town level. Near the end of the session, lawmaker Leni Binder said there are things the towns could do to buy the county time to study the issues, which she called “essential.”

Lawmaker Alan Sorensen suggested that the county develop a model ordinance that the towns could adopt if they so chose.

Lawmaker David Sager said, “We do have to slow this train down so that nobody’s hurt and the environment isn’t hurt.”

Later that evening, at the town meeting in Bethel, residents sparked a conversation about the gas drilling issue. After discussing the matter for about 15 minutes, supervisor Dan Sturm said he would consult with the town attorney to see if a moratorium on gas wells was possible and advisable.

Catskill Park master plan revised

ALBANY – The Catskill Park State Land Master Plan, first developed in 1985, has been revised and the state wants public comment on it.

The plan classifies Forest Preserve lands in the park based on their physical character and capacity to accommodate human use based on four land classifications – wilderness, wild forest, intensive use and administration.

Now, the state has revised the land master plan to include creation of a new land classification, Primitive Bicycle Corridor, encompassing 156 acres; increase the size of the Colgate Wild Forest from 600 acres to 1,495 acres; and include invasive species management.

The State Department of Environmental Conservation is accepting comments on the revised draft plan until 4 p.m. on May 19.

LINK IS HERE:

http://www.midhudsonnews.com/News/May08/15/CatsPk_MP-15May08.html

Book highlights best the region has to offer in hiking

By Ralph Ferrusi • Hiking columnist • May 15, 2008