View From the Blog

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LAST year, right around the time his clique of Hamptons summer share pals fell apart, Nick Baily and his wife, Rebecca Phillips, fell in love with the Catskills.

Mr. Baily’s father had recently bought a place in the Catskills, and visiting his home the couple realized how much they liked it there. Soon enough, Ms. Phillips and Mr. Baily thought about buying a getaway of their own.

“It’s tough to go into a sort of rural area, where everyone’s been there forever,” said Mr. Baily, the director of publicity at Shore Fire Media, a Brooklyn-based public relations and online marketing firm. “There’s a real barrier for entry. You stay at a B & B and think, oh, wouldn’t it be nice to have a place here? To go from thinking about buying a place to looking at places — seriously, it’s a big jump. It’s a little scary. You just don’t know what a good deal is; you don’t know the landscape. You can’t go buy a manual. You need to find someone you can trust.”

A Web search led Mr. Baily to blog.catskill4sale.com, a blog about the real estate scene in Sullivan County, N.Y., written by David Knudsen, a broker at Catskills Buyer Agency. On his widely read site, Mr. Knudsen ruminates upon everything from current market conditions to energy drilling and new restaurant openings. Mr. Baily said he read “pages and pages” of the blog, and not only was he convinced he’d found his real-estate agent, he said, but he also gained confidence in his decision to buy a home in the area.

That real-estate agents have an online presence is nothing new. (According to a 2007 study from the National Association of Realtors, 84 percent of home buyers use the Internet in their search.) What’s changing, however, is the growing importance that blogs play in the real-estate world in general, and in the vacation-home market in particular.

For brokers, blogs are, of course, a handy marketing tool: they’re economical, practical and easy to update. But for prospective buyers, a sophisticated blog — one with more than an agent’s plea, “check out my new listing” — can help potential buyers forge a connection to a faraway community, learn the landscape of an area and, ultimately, make informed purchasing decisions.

“Blogs are a medium that are well suited to a mix of information, opinion and personality,” said Mr. Baily, who, working with Mr. Knudsen, bought a fixer-upper Victorian on 22 acres in Bethel, N.Y., in August. “If the person is well-informed and has the background to contextualize the information for you, it’s a really great way to keep your finger on the pulse of something.”

Ultimately, agents’ blogs are tools to attract new clients. “If you’re going to sell a home in the mountains, you’re going to have to sell the mountains,” said Elwin Wood, a real estate broker who is also chairman of community and economic development for the Sullivan County Legislature.

Nonetheless, comprehensive vacation-home blogs — ones that address everything from details on the real estate market (Is inventory on the rise? Is it possible to buy a waterfront home for under $500,000?) to quality-of-life questions (Is there cellphone service? Can I get a pizza delivered?) — can help potential buyers get a sense of a community that they may have visited only once, twice, or never.

“The thing about a second-home market, it takes people three, four trips to an area before they buy something,” said Mike Kennedy, an agent at Railey Realty in McHenry, Md., and a prolific poster on his company’s blog (realty.railey.com/blog) about vacation homes at Deep Creek Lake. “You’d spend half the time looking at houses, half the time in the car answering questions about the area.”

With the blog, he said, “you work through some of those things up front, as opposed to the three, four trips that it takes people to get educated.”

Joanne Hanson, a broker-blogger, agrees. The clients who come to her via her blog, www.mountain-living.com/blog, “come to us much more ready to buy,” said Ms. Hanson, leader of the Mountain Living Team at Coldwell Banker Colorado Rockies Real Estate in Frisco, Colo.

Such was the case for Jeff Geslin, a Houston-based geological adviser for ExxonMobil. Earlier this year, he and his wife, Lorna Campbell, decided to buy a mountain home in Summit County, Colo., about 90 minutes from Denver, where Mr. Geslin’s family lives.

“We weren’t familiar with the real estate in the area, and we weren’t familiar with having a second home that we were going to rent out,” said Mr. Geslin, who said his agent pointed him toward Ms. Hanson’s blog for answers.

Throughout the spring, the couple did an enormous amount of research online and looked frequently to Ms. Hanson’s blog for advice. “When we showed up in June, we had a pretty good idea of our price range, what we were interested in and how we were going to manage it,” said Mr. Geslin, who visited 15 properties in a single day, revisited two on the second day and made an offer on a furnished two-bedroom condo on the third. “It made for a very effective trip.”

Sometimes it’s the nitty-gritty market details on a blog that help buyers take the plunge. Kathy Murray, along with her husband, Rob Murray, her father-in-law, Bob Murray, and his girlfriend, Christine Prettyman, were interested in purchasing a home at Deep Creek Lake, in western Maryland. The family, who plan to rent out their home when it’s not in use, knew they wanted a place with multiple master bedrooms — but, thanks to the Railey Realty blog, expanded their must-have list.

“The blog gave us insight into the rental market,” Kathy Murray said. “We knew what we liked; they had a different perspective.”

Ms. Murray said what they hadn’t considered were the little extras that help a property do well in the short-term rental market, such as a great view or interesting architecture. Looking at the blog, they realized that there were “a lot of factors to consider when buying a rental home,” she said. “You need to have a pool table, Ping-Pong, some sort of entertainment. I could care less if there was a pool table. But in the rental market that we’re going to go into, that appeals to people.”

In late September, the family closed on a five-bedroom, five-bath newly built chalet with a “fantastic view,” according to Ms. Murray, where there’s plenty of room for the pool table.

For agents, a blog can provide an avenue for a slightly softer sell. Karin Elliott, an agent with IBA Mountain Homes in Big Canoe, a resort community about an hour north of Atlanta, said that every three or four posts on her blog (ibamountainhomes.com/wordpress/), she writes about a listing — to little effect. “People blow past that — they don’t want to read that,” said Ms. Elliott, who focuses on life’s little details, like mushroom hunting and the local Oktoberfest. “I just write about the stuff that doesn’t stress people out.”

Kelli Clay and her husband, Brett Newsom, bought a two-bedroom cottage in Big Canoe in March. Ms. Clay said she discovered the community, as well as her future vacation home, via Ms. Elliott’s blog. “It’s not a hard sell,” said Ms. Clay, who lives in suburban Atlanta and as a wellness instructor helps families live healthy lives. “It talks more about the day-to-day life in Big Canoe. It’s a warmer feeling, in terms of the draw. It kills two birds with one stone in a very nice way: there might be a soft-sell point to it, but you can completely ignore the selling point if you’re not interested.”

“A good second-home blog is a little bit like an opinionated Web cam,” said Mr. Knudsen, who, thanks to his blog, is something of a celebrity in Sullivan County. “With second-home blogging, you’re communicating information to people at a distance — a little bit like an electronic newspaper for people who don’t have ready access to the local newspaper, who aren’t stopping into a local bar or restaurant and picking up local gossip and tidbits.”

In fact, some find these blogs better than the local newspaper. During his Catskills home search, Mr. Baily had the local newspaper delivered to his Brooklyn Heights home. “I read it every day,” he said. “I didn’t renew it. What I read from David’s blog was much more helpful.”

2008 Second Home Owner Study

Between 2001 and 2007, the County experienced a 65 percent increase in second home ownership. For example, the Sullivan County Division of Planning, using tax roll data from the Sullivan County Office of Real Property, established that 6,089 second home owners existed 2001. In 2007, the Division, again using tax roll data, revealed that 10,085 persons owned a second home in Sullivan County, and an additional 6,196 people owned vacant land in the County with a full-time residence outside of Sullivan County.

2008 Second Home Owner Study

2008 Second Home Owner Synopsis

Appendices

A. Copy of Survey sent out

B. Raw Data of Second Home Owner Responses

C. Accuracy of Sample Size

 

If you have any questions or would like additional information, please contact us.

Two of the state’s largest developers of wind power agreed on Thursday to follow a new, stringent code of conduct created by Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo, who has been investigating the companies over allegations that they bribed or intimidated municipal officials to approve wind projects.

By agreeing to follow the code of conduct, the companies, Noble Environmental Power and First Wind, agreed not to hire or give gifts to town officials responsible for approving wind power projects. The companies also agreed not to compensate the relatives of officials involved in deciding the fate of wind power installations, which have become a major source of income in many upstate communities.

In July, the attorney general’s office began investigating a growing number of complaints from community groups, residents and law enforcement officials in upstate towns where wind farms were either built or being developed. No one has been prosecuted as a result of the investigation.

But Mr. Cuomo expects that the Wind Industry Ethics Code will stem abuses and threats in communities where wind power companies are eager to install turbines. Mr. Cuomo expects other wind power companies to agree to follow the code as well.

“Wind power is an exciting industry for the state that will be a cornerstone of our energy future,” Mr. Cuomo said in a statement. “But it is important to make sure that this alternative-energy sector develops in a way that maintains the public’s confidence, and that is what this new code of conduct does.”

Mr. Cuomo’s office also set up a task force to monitor compliance with the new code. The group includes three district attorneys, the executive directors of the New York State Association of Counties and the Association of Towns of the State of New York, and a director from the New York Public Interest Research Group.

Companies caught violating the code of conduct can be fined up to $50,000 for a first offense and up to $100,000 for a second offense. Dozens of companies either have wind farms upstate or are trying to develop them.

The attorney general’s office has received many complaints about board members and other officials in upstate towns who received favors in return for approving the construction of windmills. In some cases, the complaints said, officials owned businesses that were hired by wind power companies. Mr. Cuomo is investigating whether different companies colluded to divide territory and avoid bidding against one another for the same land.

Nine large wind farms housing 451 towers, each with a turbine, are operating in New York, with at least 840 more towers planned for construction. The towers are one of the few economic bright spots in some upstate counties.

The statewide guidelines governing wind companies could become a template for the policing of conflicts of interest in other industries, Mr. Cuomo said. “There’s no reason it shouldn’t pertain to hotel developers, casino developers and road construction companies,” he said.

The attorney general dismissed concerns that the code of conduct would slow investment in wind power. Instead, he said, more projects probably will be approved because many opponents of wind farms have cited conflicts of interest by municipal officials as their reason for trying to block or slow construction.

But Carol E. Murphy, executive director of the Alliance for Clean Energy New York, a trade group of environmental advocates and wind power producers, said opponents simply do not want the windmills in their backyards. “The reason it’s difficult to do business in New York is Nimby-ism and people not wanting to look at windmills,” she said.

While Ms. Murphy said the code of conduct was sensible, she is worried that the new task force will become an additional way for opponents of wind power projects to try to block construction. “The unfortunate thing is it singles wind out with a task force and gives an additional place for Nimbys to go to,” she said.

link to article is here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/31/nyregion/31wind.html

Study shows wildlife-watching generates billions
By WES SMALLING
Star-Tribune staff writer

Wednesday, October 29, 2008 9:54 PM MDT

A new federal report shows how the rapidly growing outdoor pastime of watching wild animals has become an economic powerhouse.

Released in October, the new addendum report tacked onto the federal government's "National Survey of Fishing, Hunting, and Wildlife-Associated Recreation," which is published every five years, concludes that expenditures from wildlife watching equal the revenues generated from all spectator sports, amusement parks and arcades, casinos without hotels, bowling alleys and ski resorts combined.

"Wildlife Watching in the U.S.: The Economic Impacts on National and State Economies in 2006" concludes that in that year wildlife watchers generated $122.6 billion in total industrial output for state and national economies.

The country's growing interest in watching birds and other wild animals is no surprise to Jessica Lynn, community naturalist for the Murie Audubon Society in Casper. At the Audubon Center at Garden Creek, she greets more than 500 student visitors a month and, depending on the season, about 100 adults a month. They come to peer through binoculars at birds and walk the nature trail that's near the base of Casper Mountain.

"You just missed a flock of 30 turkeys that were right here," she said, taking a break last Friday afternoon from setting up for a children's Halloween event at the Audubon Center.

What does surprise her about the report is the massive amount of money generated by observing wildlife.

"I had no idea it was that much," she said. Then it started making a little more sense to her as she added up her own usual birding expenses: gas money for trips and gear, all that gear.

"Binoculars, backpacks, birding guides and maps, clothing for all four seasons," she said.

People spend all that money on watching wildlife because observing the animals helps put them in touch with nature, she said.

"There's just that connection to the natural world, and with so many people who live in town, live in cities, it's seeing something different, getting away from all the hustle-bustle and the noise."

While participation in wildlife watching grows, federal surveys show how the number of hunters and anglers continues to decline. That national trend is most likely a result of the country becoming more urban, said Nicolas Throckmorton, spokesman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's Wildlife and Sportfish Restoration Program. The program distributes wildlife conservation grants to states and other entities from the revenues raised on a tax on hunting and fishing equipment.

"It's a disturbing trend, because hunters and anglers provide the dollars for wildlife conservation," he said. "There's an 11 percent excise tax on hunting and fishing equipment. There is no tax on wildlife watching equipment."

According to the surveys, wildlife watching is one of the most popular types of outdoor recreation in the country.

In 2006, nearly a third of the U.S. population, about 71.1 million people, enjoyed observing, feeding and photographing wildlife -- an increase of 8 percent since 2001. Wildlife watchers spent $45.7 billion in 2006 on travel, gear and other related expenses. According to the report, those expenditures had a ripple effect across local, state and national economies generating $122.6 billion in industrial output and resulting in more than a million jobs and billions of dollars in tax revenues.

Together, hunters and anglers spent more in 2006 -- $76.7 billion on travel, gear and other expenses of their sports.

In Wyoming, participation in fishing has declined 31 percent over the last decade, and there has been a slight decrease in the number of hunters. The state has had a slight rise in wildlife watchers who come from all over to visit the state for its wildlife, most notably at Yellowstone and Grand Teton national parks. The parks receive millions of visitors each year who come to camp, hike, see geysers and snap photos of bison, elk, grizzlies and wolves.

The big hit in the Casper area for birders is watching the showy springtime mating displays of sage grouse. There's a growing local interest in the unique birds, and some people come from other states to see them, said Robin Kepple, spokeswoman for the Casper office of Wyoming Game and Fish, who teaches wildlife watching classes at Casper College.

"There aren't many other places where you can go experience something like that," Kepple said of watching sage grouse in the Casper area. "We do have some amazing wildlife populations in Wyoming, and it's great you can just jump in your car and drive 15 minutes or so and see them."

Like Lynn, Kepple is surprised at the billions of dollars generated from wildlife watching. As a baseball fan, she's especially shocked that watching wild animals has more of an economic impact than pro sports.

"If that's the case, it makes you wonder why professional athletes are making so many millions of dollars while wildlife are always scraping for habitat funding."

The numbers are in

Recently released federal surveys conducted in 2006 show that during that year:

* Nationwide, 87.5 million people spent $122.3 billion hunting, fishing and watching wildlife.

* Anglers numbered 30 million and there were 12.5 million hunters, with 8.5 million participating in both pursuits. Combined, hunters and anglers spent $76.7 billion.

* Wildlife watchers numbered 71.1 million, an increase of 8 percent since 2001. They spent $45.7 billion, which generated $122.6 billion dollars in industrial output and resulted in 1,063,482 jobs, federal tax revenues of $9.3 billion, and state and local tax revenues of $8.9 billion.

* The top five states ranked by economic output for wildlife watching are California, Florida, Texas, Georgia and New York.

* In Wyoming, 762,000 people hunted, fished and watched wildlife. About 203,000 of those fished and 102,000 hunted, while wildlife watchers numbered 643,000. Note that the sums of anglers, hunters and watchers exceeds the total number of participants in wildlife-related recreation because many people engaged in more than one type of activity.

Over the last decade, Wyoming has seen a 31 percent decline in the number of people fishing in the state. Hunting participation in Wyoming has remained relatively steady, showing only a slight decline. Wildlife watching has shown a slight increase in Wyoming.

The federal reports, "Wildlife Watching in the United States: The Economic Impacts on National and State Economies in 2006," the "2006 National Survey of Fishing, Hunting, and Wildlife Associated Recreation" and state-by-state breakdowns are available for download online at the Web site of the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service's Wildlife and Sportfish Restoration Program at:

http://wsfrprograms.fws.gov/Subpages/NationalSurvey/reports2006.html

States petition for mercury reduction

Friday October 31, 2008

ALBANY, N.Y. (AP)

© Copyright 2008, Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

October 29, 2008

‘The First Basket’ depicts journey from Ellis Island to shooting hoops

link to article is here:

http://www.jewishjournal.com/sports/article/the_first_basket_depicts_journey_from_ellis_island_to_shooting_hoops_200810/

By Peter Ephross

It's true that major league baseball has seen a renaissance of Jewish players during the past few years, but the historic American Jewish sport is surely basketball.

It makes sense if you think about it: Easy to play on the concrete surfaces that are ubiquitous in urban areas, basketball was the sport most accessible to the sons of the immigrants who had flocked to the United States between 1880 and 1920.

As David Vyorst makes clear in his comprehensive and entertaining documentary, "The First Basket," those sons took to the game with fervor. Interview after interview with former players and coaches makes clear that basketball, not religious observance, was what mattered to this Americanizing generation.

"My father was busy trying to make a living. My mother was busy taking care of the household. And we were busy in the streets, and in the schoolyard, playing basketball and growing up," Ralph Kaplowitz says in the film. Kaplowitz lived in the Bronx and later played two years for the New York Knicks.

Kaplowitz wasn't alone in making a religion out of basketball: The Jewish kids who learned the game in the rough-and-tumble New York City neighborhoods of Brooklyn's Brownsville and Williamsburg, on Manhattan's Lower East Side and the Bronx's Grand Concourse, later stocked the top collegiate teams and the early professional ranks.

The trailer

Indeed, the film's name stems from the fact that in 1946, a Jewish player, Ossie Schectman, scored the first basket in the Basketball Association of America, the precursor to today's National Basketball Association.

Considering the paucity of Jewish players in today's NBA (there's currently one, the Los Angeles Lakers' Jordan Farmar), it's astonishing to remember that several members of Schechtman's 1946-1947 Knicks team were Jewish, as were players on other teams. Some still affectionately refer to the game that they and top coaches such as Red Sarachek and Red Auerbach developed -- emphasizing teamwork, crisp passing and defense -- as "Jew ball."

This style of play originated earlier in the 20th century, when Jewish players competed on both the amateur and semiprofessional levels. Teams were sponsored by settlement houses that wanted to Americanize immigrants, and by labor unions and Workmen's Circle/Arbeter Ring branches.

Players on the most famous of these teams, the South Philadelphia Hebrew Association, or SPHAs, wore Hebrew letters and Stars of David on their uniforms. What's more, after many SPHAs games, the court was turned into a dance floor where young Jews could socialize and look for husbands and wives. Some of the figures mentioned in "The First Basket" -- Hall of Famer Dolph Schayes and current NBA Commissioner David Stern, both of whom were interviewed in the film -- are well known.

Others are less familiar to casual fans. Barney Sedran, for instance, was an early 20th-century player who, at 5 feet 4 inches, is believed to be the shortest player in the Basketball Hall of Fame. During his heyday in the 1910s and '20s, Sedran played in as many as three games a day, often for different teams.

The Jewish connection to basketball isn't entirely rosy. "The First Basket" points out that the roots of the 1950s-era college basketball scandals rest in the Catskills summer resorts. The cooks apparently were the first to fix the games with college players, who were there for summer jobs and a bit of basketball.

In the Catskills, gamblers first made the connections that would eventually rock the college basketball world and lead to the suspensions of several City College of New York players, as well as players from other schools in New York City and around the United States. No longer would such New York City teams as CCNY, New York University and Long Island University dominate college hoops, as they did between 1935 and 1951. In a devastating archival clip that is part of the documentary, Nat Holman, the legendary CCNY coach, admits that he never got over his players' participation in gambling.

The Catskills gambling story could be a nice segue into some of the pitfalls of Americanization: Do any of the players interviewed for the documentary have regrets about their rebellion against their parents' religiosity? Did they maintain their Jewishness, and did they pass it on to their children and grandchildren? An exploration of these questions would have added another layer of complexity to the film.

Also, the final section of "The First Basket" feels a bit disjointed. Sure, Holman helped bring the game to Israel, contributing to basketball's globalization. But the link between Maccabi Tel Aviv's stirring victory in the 1977 European Cup semifinals against a Soviet team and the acculturation of American Jews through basketball, which is the film's focus, feels tenuous.

To its credit, however, "The First Basket" is a rare documentary that not only provides context (thanks to interviews with scholars of Jewish history), but also is fun to watch. The film's story, while covered in such works as Peter Levine's 1992 book "Ellis Island to Ebbets Field" (Oxford University Press), has not been put on celluloid in such detail.

Vyorst's interviews allow for a glimpse into a generation of Jews who shaped basketball - and who are proud of their accomplishments and their toughness. As Jack "Dutch" Garfinkel, who played for the Boston Celtics from 1946 to 1949, remembers with a smile: "I'm the first man who used the look-away pass in basketball. My passes were very tough. I broke a lot of fingers."

"The First Basket" opens in Los Angeles on November 14. For more information, visit www.thefirstbasket.com.

October 30, 2008
link is here:
http://www.stargazette.com/article/20081030/NEWS01/810300330

Millennium Pipeline set to go online Dec. 1

Testing, other work continues in Chemung, Steuben counties

By Michael Hill
The Associated Press

ALBANY -- A long-planned pipeline stretching across 182 miles of the state is to begin delivering natural gas to the New York City area in December, a month behind schedule.

The Millennium Pipeline will run from Corning to Ramapo in Rockland County, where it will tie into other lines and provide gas to area utilities.

The pipeline was first proposed in 1997 as a 425-mile link connecting gas supplies in Canada with the New York City market. Work was delayed for years by a combination of regulatory complications and local opposition. The plan was eventually retooled to the existing 182-mile pipeline, 30 inches in diameter.

Construction on the pipeline is expected to finish Dec. 1, and gas will start flowing soon after, said Millennium spokesman Michael Armiak. There will be a compressor station in Corning, where Millennium will tie into another pipeline that brings natural gas down from Ontario.

Millennium says the pipeline can handle enough gas on a daily basis to handle the needs of about 2 million households.

"By introducing more supply options, it should make the prices more competitive with national averages," Armiak said.

Armiak said Millennium also will be able to carry gas from wells and subterranean supply fields in western New York. That region has undergone a boom in gas exploration in the past decade and more wells could come online once exploration of the deep but plentiful Marcellus reserve gears up in New York.

Armiak said while the company is now focused on completing the pipeline, its capacity could be increased to handle production from Marcellus wells.

The pipeline is owned by subsidiaries of NiSource Inc., National Grid and DTE Energy Co. Millennium has long-term deals to provide gas to the utilities Consolidated Edison, KeySpan and Central Hudson.

Columbia Gas Transmission, a subsidiary of NiSource, will use the gas to serve its existing customers including, Orange and Rockland Utilities, Central Hudson and New York State Electric & Gas Corp.

Construction began in May 2007 and was expected to be finished by Nov. 1, but crews hit some snags. Wet weather this spring slowed crews down, work in environmentally sensitive areas took longer than anticipated, workers hit hard bedrock while drilling under water bodies in the Catskills region and the company had to wait for materials, Armiak said.

"There's so much pipeline construction going on around the world the suppliers were behind schedule," he said.

As of this week, pipe was still going in the ground in Orange, Delaware, Sullivan, Broome and Tioga counties, while pipeline was being tested in Chemung and Steuben counties. Work also was continuing on the Corning compressor station.

Millennium is nearing completion as other plans to update New York's energy infrastructure have faced difficulties. The governors of New York and Connecticut this year announced their opposition to a plan to build the world's first floating liquefied natural gas terminal in Long Island Sound, and a proposed 190-mile long high voltage power line through upstate New York has been vehemently opposed by local residents.

Heather Briccetti, vice president of government affairs for the Business Council of New York State, the increased gas supply from Millennium will be beneficial.

"There's certainly the market for it in the New York City area," she said.

New York Eases Access Requirements to 13,000 Acres Located in Catskill Mountains 
From New York Department of Environmental Conservation

Agreement gives public easier access to split 13,000 Catskill acres

ALBANY – New York State and New York City officials Tuesday announced the completion of an agreement to ease recreational access to approximately 13,000 acres of city-owned property in the Catskills.

Under the cooperative agreement, hiking, hunting, fishing and trapping on dozens of city-owned parcels that are adjacent to state Forest Preserve land in the Catskills no longer require a separate city permit.

This is the latest in a series of recent recreational improvements for the Catskills, including opening new areas to mountain biking at Mount Hayden and launching a pilot program for boating at Cannonsville Reservoir.

"This is a significant accomplishment that will boost recreational opportunities in the Catskills, and a sign of the rejuvenated partnership among state, city and local officials," said state DEC Commissioner Pete Grannis.

"DEP is committed to working with its partners in the watershed to improve recreational and economic development opportunities," said New York City Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Emily Lloyd. "It is important that recreational access is expanded while vigilantly protecting the high quality of New York City’s water supply."

For many years, DEP permits have been required for access to city-owned land in the Catskills watershed. Under the new agreement, first outlined a year ago, the applicable DEC hunting, fishing and trapping licenses will be the only permits needed on the land impacted by this agreement. No permit will be necessary for hiking.

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