Times Herald Record, July 8, 2008, "Group wants to create hydropower at 4 reservoirs"
A nonprofit rural electric cooperative wants to install hydropower at four Delaware River Basin reservoirs.
The Delaware County Electric Cooperative (DCEC) submitted its license application to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission in May. The "Western Catskills Hydro Project" proposes hydroelectric turbines at the Neversink Dam in Sullivan County, the Pepacton and Cannonsville reservoirs in Delaware County and the Gilboa Dam on the Schoharie Reservoir, in Schoharie County.
The reservoirs are owned and operated by the New York City Department of Environmental Protection to supply drinking water to New York City.
The DEP is on the fence about the project. "We're trying to determine how we're going to go on this," said Paul Rush, DEP Deputy Commissioner for water supply. There are five hydroelectric power plants already operating on the city's water supply system, including one on the Neversink in Grahamsville. Those plants are located in DEP diversion tunnels, not on the dams, as the DCEC project proposes.
Rush acknowledged the "greener" benefits of hydropower and the public appeal of a nonprofit cooperative. "Rural electricity: That's like mom and pop, apple pie and all those other good things."
DCEC is one of 900 rural electric cooperatives across the country and among four in the State of New York. Customers own shares in the enterprise and elect a board of directors. DCEC draws its 5,100 members from Delaware, Schoharie, Otsego and Chenango counties.
"We purchase our power on a wholesale basis," said CEO Greg Starheim. "Several years ago, we decided to make a conscious effort to explore local renewable developments in electric generation."
The Delhi-based cooperative already buys 75 percent of its electricity from hydropower at Niagara Falls, Starheim said. The rest is primarily natural gas. Tapping into New York's reservoir system would offer another alternative. Its existing power lines are located near the dams. "It would be very easy for us to interconnect those facilities," Starheim said.
The project would generate up to 63 total megawatts of electricity from the sites, producing enough power to keep the lights on in about 20,000 homes, according to DCEC.
Environmental concerns are sure to dog the process, particularly the needs of fish living around the reservoirs. "Temperature of the water is a really big (concern,)" said Rush. "The water has to be released cold."
If the proper precautions are taken, environmental scientists say a small-scale hydropower project should not be controversial. "Any sort of energy project is going to have environmental impacts," said John Rogers, senior energy analyst with the Union of Concerned Scientists. Adding hydropower to an existing dam, he said, is one of the lowest-impact alternatives.
The federal application process could take years to flesh out. If approved, DCEC hopes to begin construction in 2012 and start operating by 2013.
Link to full articles is here:http://www.recordonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080708/NEWS/807080316
Precious few regulations govern drilling in Sullivan County
Who's going to watch our backs?
That's one of the top questions Sullivan County residents are asking as huge companies plan to drill for natural gas here. With the risk of ground contamination, air pollution and road destruction, residents want to know who's looking out for their health and safety.
Here's a rundown of the federal, state and local regulations — or lack thereof — that will govern gas drilling when it comes to Sullivan.
this is the second of two reports on natural gas drilling coming to Sullivan County. Yesterday: Fear and rejoicing about gas prospecting.
A wash of federal exemptions
Don't look for federal oversight.
The Energy Policy Act of 2005 — and statutes before it — exempted gas drilling from standards in the Clean Air, Clean Water, Clean Drinking Water and Right-to-Know acts.
As a result, farm towns in western states have the same air quality as America's largest cities. It also means that gas companies are not compelled to reveal the mixture of chemicals that is shot into the ground, shattering subsurface rocks to free the gas.
Some said those chemicals are toxic and carcinogenic. Others said they're pumped so far below the water table that worries are moot. Because the chemicals are secret, it's hard to measure their impact.
The feds might have an iota of power through the Delaware River Basin Commission. Gas rigs would use millions of gallons of water, and some believe they'll try taking it from the Delaware River or its tributaries. The DRBC would have to approve that.
State has enforcement power
Gas companies submit development plans and must obtain a state permit before drilling. They're not required to study environmental impacts, but they have to conform to specifications from a general impact study. Permitting usually takes 20 to 45 days.
The state Department of Environmental Conservation inspects the work site pre-drilling to check setbacks, spacing and road location, said Brad Field, director of the mineral resources division. The DEC secures a $250,000 bond in case the companies leave without plugging wells and reclaiming work sites. In the case of spills or other accidents, the DEC can levy fines of $1,000 a day until the site is cleaned.
The DEC does not monitor air, water or soil quality.
Little authority for locals
Because state laws for drilling supersede local rule, town governments only control two things: assessments and roads.
They have the power to assess each drill site, but even their power to regulate roads is unclear, attorneys have said, because they cannot stop trucks from driving on roads.
Studies in other drilling states have shown that huge gas company trucks have caused 85 percent deterioration to country roads.
"That means you're going to see potholes, digs, cracks and breaks in the pavement," Sullivan County Planning Commissioner Bill Pammer said.
He believes the DEC should require gas companies to sign road improvement bonds before running over Sullivan's streets. Currently, the cost of fixing roads would be borne by towns and villages.
Copyright © 2008 Hudson Valley Media Group, a division of Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
New York Times, July, 2008. "Our Towns: A Land Rush is Likely So A Lawyer Gets Ready, Walton, NY"
WALTON, N.Y.

Chris Denton, a lawyer, has been studying oil and gas law.
Chris Denton first got a glimpse of his future and that of much of upstate New York back in April 1999 when he got a phone call to his solo-practice law firm from someone he knew in the petroleum industry. “Do you know about the Jimerson well?” Mr. Denton recalled being asked.
He did not.
“Well, you’re going to have to start studying oil and gas law,” Mr. Denton said he was told. “That well came in in excess of 3,500 pounds per square inch bottom hole pressure. It’s like a Texas well. You won’t be able to do real estate law unless you start learning this stuff. There’s going to be a lot of drilling, it’s going to mean a lot of money, and you need to learn it now.”
He began studying the next morning.
Almost a decade later, the 58-year-old Mr. Denton, the son of an Army colonel who taught history at West Point, is still learning it. But he is one of a handful of people who have any grasp of the moving parts as the state lurches toward a new era of natural gas production in the Marcellus Shale formation, which in New York runs from Lake Erie across to the Catskills.
There are no guarantees, of course. Wells that look promising can be duds. Legislators could confound powerful gas industry lobbyists and slam on the brakes. Someone might invent a magic energy machine or a hydrogen fuel cell that could replace the gas sitting under pastures in the Catskills. Pigs could fly.
Far more likely is this: A frenzied land rush that is already making some landowners rich and infuriating others who leased their land too early for too little. Thousands of gas wells drilled upstate, many using more than a million gallons of water laced with dozens of toxic chemicals like hydrochloric acid, benzene, toluene and xylene, to fracture shale thousands of feet underground to release the gas trapped within it. Enormous questions about industrial noise, truck traffic and new roads gouged into hills; about holding ponds created to trap the polluted and spent water used in drilling; about land reclamation; about the effects on the New York watershed.
Mr. Denton has organized perhaps a hundred forums for farmers and landowners about the leasing process, how to protect themselves, what’s at stake. He has also put together several groups of landowners, each group controlling as much as 50,000 acres, so they have some leverage in negotiating economic and environmental issues with national and international energy companies.
He was in the audience at a forum last week, listening to the cautionary tales told by landowners from Wyoming and Colorado, noting the gas industry representatives, none of whom raised their hands when asked to identify themselves at the start of the meeting.
The meeting, organized by the Catskill Mountainkeeper environmental group, included both curious landowners and staunch environmentalists, many of whom wanted not to regulate gas drilling in the state, but to stop it.
“What I’m hearing is that some people have already given up,” said one woman near the front of the century-old Walton Theater here. “And if anybody wants me to make nice to someone who’s going to come and rape my land, that’s not going to happen. I don’t want to live in an industrial zone. I don’t want them here. And that’s what I want to talk about, how to keep them out. Not how to make nice with them.”
Mr. Denton, for what it’s worth, figures that stopping gas development can’t happen, and it shouldn’t.
It can’t because all the planets are lined up for vast gas exploration upstate. The price is high, and many of the people with land to lease are poor and desperate. Gas could be an economic bonanza for individuals and state government. The new horizontal drilling technology is far more sophisticated than ever. A similar formation, the Barnett Shale, has been a huge success in Texas, and gas companies are rushing to be sure they get a piece of the next hot play, which is the Marcellus Shale here.
“The place to put your money now is in the Northeast,” Mr. Denton said. “They’re not shooting for 15 or 20 percent return on equity. They’re looking for 200 or 300 percent every year. You might hit a dry well, but when you hit one, your return can be extraordinary.”
AND, in his view, the goal shouldn’t be to stop the drilling, because if we want our big cars and big houses and urban empires of light in the Northeast, we can’t expect to be an energy consumer and never a producer.
“The Amish are the only people who have any credibility about saying no,” he said. “They live what they espouse. If we want our gas-guzzling cars and S.U.V.’s and all the benefits of modern technological society, it’s a little hard to understand how we say no.”
Instead, the question more likely is: Do we do it right? And can we? Federal energy legislation promoted by the Bush administration in 2005 exempted the gas industry from many clean-air and clean-water regulations. Albany, where the state recently passed legislation that made it easier for the Department of Environmental Conservation to issue permits for horizontal drilling, may not be a great bet to do any better than the federal government.
The smell of money is in the air, and the game is just starting.
COMMENT HERE ON THE THUNDER 102 ON-AIR PANEL TONIGHT AT 7pm
Marcellus Shale - The Impact of Natural Gas Drilling in the Catskills
Thunder 102 morning show hosts, Mike Sakell and Paul Ciliberto of Sakell & Ciliberto in the Morning, will host a special live on-air forum on natural gas drilling in Sullivan County from 7 - 9 Tuesday night.
Among the guests will be Sullivan County Planning Commissioner William Pammer, Legislator Jody Goodman, Wes Gillingham, program Director for Catskill Mountainkeeper and Peter Gozza, President and CEO for the Sullivan County Partnership for Economic Development.
Listeners can call in questions at (877) 777-1021.
In addition to 102.1 FM, Thunder 102 can also be heard on 94.1 in the Middletown area, 107.7 in the Port Jervis area and 94.9 in Rock Hill.
Gas Drillers in Race for Hearts and Land, New York Times Sunday June 29th, 2008
WALTON, N.Y.
You could have taken a nostalgic drive through the past on Thursday night, through the dreamy green landscape at the outer edges of the Catskills, past sleepy fishing towns like Roscoe and Downsville, to the lovingly restored Walton Theater, built in 1914 for vaudeville acts, honored guests like Theodore Roosevelt and community events of all shapes and sizes.
And, if you got there, you would have received a distinctly less dreamy glimpse of the future. You would have heard an overheated mix of fear and greed, caution and paranoia, of million-dollar gas leases that could enrich struggling farmers, of polluted wells, pastures turned to industrial sites and ozone pollution at urban levels. You would have heard anguished landowners from Wyoming and Colorado, facing issues now improbably appropriate to the Catskills, present their cautionary view of an environment dominated by huge energy companies where some will get rich while their neighbors might just see a hundredfold increase in truck traffic without much else to show for it.
Such gatherings are being repeated throughout a swath of upstate New York, from Walton to Liberty to New Berlin, as thousands of landowners, many of whom have already signed leases with landmen fanning out across the state, contemplate a new era of gas production now hovering almost inevitably over New York’s horizon.
It’s a development born of new technology, rising energy prices and insatiable demand that is turning the Marcellus Shale formation, which reaches from Ohio to Virginia to New York, into a potential trillion-dollar resource in the gut of the nation’s most populous and energy-hungry region.
Development of the Marcellus has been most advanced in Pennsylvania, but since the beginning of the year, development pressures, land prices and activity by oil and gas firms have increased exponentially across a broad expanse of New York from Lake Erie to the Catskills. “It’s kind of a frenzy here,” said David Hutchison, a retired geology professor who attended the meeting.
Experts say the development will have enormous, barely glimpsed consequences for the upstate economy, the state’s finances and the way of life in quiet rural communities like this one, many of them now heavily influenced by the second-home market. There will be questions about the environmental consequences, especially the potential effect on the upstate reservoirs and watershed that provide New York City’s drinking water.
“This is happening, it’s unstoppable,” said Chris Denton, a lawyer in Elmira who is assembling big blocks of landowners to negotiate with gas companies. “And the question is whether we do it in a way that makes sense or a way that’s irrational and irresponsible.”
The Marcellus Shale has been known to be a potential energy source for a century. But advances in horizontal drilling and soaring energy prices have made it attractive to energy firms. A few years back, farmers could lease their mineral rights for a dollar an acre. This year alone prices in many places have soared to $2,500 an acre from about $200.
So, for example, when Henry Constable, 77, a retired dairy farmer who owns 140 acres outside Walton, left the theater on Thursday night, his head was swimming with alternating visions of financial gain and environmental hazard. He did not quite know what he thought. Would he lease his land?
“It’s definitely a two-sided deal,” he said. “I can’t give you an honest answer. I’ll probably sign something, but I don’t know.”
A stranger listening in offered him a business card and started giving him advice.
“Let me give you fair warning,” he began. “I’m a financial adviser and a landowner, so I’m on both sides of this play. First thing, you need to have a good lawyer, to make sure you have a good lease that gives the right to sue or defend yourself if you’re sued in local court. What these companies want to do is sue you in Minnesota or someplace. And you don’t want to sign a walk-down-the-street lease. You need to be working with an oil and gas attorney.”
The man, who declined to identify himself to a reporter, started adding up how much Mr. Constable’s land could be worth at $2,500 an acre and a minimum of 12.5 percent royalties. “That could be $1.2 million per year for every 40 acres,” he said. “Do the math. Assuming you’re just signing a lease and not some other monkey deal, you’re suddenly J. R. Ewing. You have an estate tax problem. You have an income tax problem. You’ve got to talk to somebody soon.”
Most of the meetings have focused on just such issues of what landowners can do to maximize their return and control. This one, sponsored by the Catskill Mountainkeeper environmental group, featured presentations by landowners and environmental and citizens’ advocates like Jill Morrison of the Powder River Basin Resource Council in Sheridan, Wyo., and Peggy Utesch of the Grand Valley Citizens Alliance in New Castle, Colo.
They said those royalty checks came at a huge cost: polluted air and water, industrial noise, well blowouts, toxic chemicals leaching into groundwater and wells and a fracturing of communities. Of paramount importance, many said, would be protecting the New York City watershed, an issue that could touch off regulatory and environmental disputes.
The first wells in New York, which have the required state permits, are already being drilled, and the process could play out over 40 years.
“There are problems and challenges that people haven’t even conceived of,” Ms. Morrison said. “And I can tell you that those of us who have gone through it know it has consumed the last 10 or 15 years of people’s lives. I can’t express enough the profound impacts this will have on people’s lives, on land, water, air, wildlife. You need to do an enormous amount of planning to get out in front of it, because this is the richest industry in the world, and they’re going to come whether you want them or not.”
Americana: The Story of Grossinger’s
Grossinger was born in Chicago in 1937, and at age 8 was whisked away to the Catskills by her mother, a member of the hotelier clan first by marriage and then, after her husband died, by economic necessity. In Tania’s telling, the “owner Grossingers” treated her and her mother, who took a job at the hotel, as second-class citizens — but that rarely interfered with her penchant for hijacking rowboats, intercepting guests’ budding romances and palling around with such celebrity visitors as Eddy Fisher, Rocky Marciano and Jackie Robinson.
“Danny Kaye never tipped,” she writes in a typical anecdote about baby-sitting for the stars’ children. “In fact, he still owes me 75 cents.”
Robinson, on the other hand, presented her with a custom-made cake when she was accepted to Brandeis University.
According to Grossinger, her family’s hotel was, in its heyday, home to some 1,000 guests each week. But it dwindled in size and prestige by the late 1960s because of the rise of jet travel, increased opportunities for young, single Jews to meet without the support of an enormous hotel staff behind them, and the advent of television variety shows that paid entertainers more for a five-minute appearance than the hotel did for a whole weekend.
But Catskills hotel culture remains a source of fascination even for those who never experienced it, Grossinger told the Forward.
“It’s Americana,” she said, adding that the executive director of The Catskills Institute, who is also a professor at Brown University, taught a class on the subject several years ago. “And this was not in Jewish studies, it was in sociology. They used my book as part of the course — be still my heart.”
article is here:
http://www.forward.com/articles/13595/
Unemployment rises in the Hudson Valley
Unemployment rises in the Hudson Valley
WHITE PLAINS – Unemployment in the Hudson Valley in May rose 1.2 percent over May of last year, the state Labor Department reported Thursday. That is the highest May unemployment rate the region has seen in 14 years. It also rose substantially in the Catskills region.
New York joblessness was 4.9 percent in May, compared to 4.2 percent in May 2007.
Labor Department Analyst John Nelson said the higher numbers are a cause for concern.
“In our area in past year during the good times, we were an area that enjoyed very low unemployment rates,” he said. “In recent months, these rates have been going up so it’s definitely a cause for concern.” The May data reflects those concerns, said Nelson.
Sullivan County experienced the highest May unemployment at 6.2 percent compared to 4.9 percent in May of last year.
Delaware County unemployment rose from 3.9 percent to 5.8 percent.
Greene County unemployment rose from 4.5 percent in May 2007 to 5.7 percent this May.
Columbia County joblessness rose from 4.5 percent to 5.4 percent.
Ulster County unemployment in May was 5.1 percent compared to 3.9 percent in May 2007.
The Dutchess-Orange County area unemployment rate in May was 5.0 percent, up from 3.9 percent in May 2007.
The Putnam-Rockland-Westchester area came in at 4.6 percent unemployment in May, compared to 3.4 percent in May 2007.
http://www.midhudsonnews.com/News/June08/20/unemp-20Jun08.html
Concord racino deal has big payoff
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Natural Gas Drilling Bill would notably impact Sullivan County
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ALBANY — State lawmakers are pushing a bill that would set new spacing requirements for oil and gas drilling rigs, and amend state environmental law to allow horizontal drilling wells for the first time ever.
The bill — which passed the Senate and will likely reach a vote in the Assembly before its session ends Monday — would notably impact Sullivan County, where oil companies have solicited property owners for the rights to drill and excavate natural gas from their land. Oil companies would use horizontal drilling wells to retrieve the gas, which is trapped within the Marcellus Shale more than 6,000 feet below ground.
State law has not explicitly allowed or disallowed horizontal drilling, although some horizontal rigs have operated under special-use permits that slightly altered the boundaries set by law for vertical wells. Horizontal wells did not fit into those boundaries because they're dug horizontally on a plane beneath ground and impinge on vertical well setbacks in the current law.
Drilling info sessions
Several groups are hosting info sessions about gas drilling in the coming weeks. Experts will explain the drilling process and its pros and cons.
n Friday at 9:30 a.m., Sullivan Planning Commissioner William Pammer will discuss gas drilling with town supervisors in the County Government Center.
n June 27 at 7 p.m. in the CVI Building in Liberty, lawyers and environmental experts will discuss gas drilling in a forum moderated by Catskill Mountainkeeper.
The new bill says it would create two sets of parameters for horizontal drilling. The first would divvy the land into rectangles, allowing single drill wells on roughly 40-acre plots. The downside to this option is that each drill requires a 5-acre clearing, which would cut several holes in the wooded landscape, like an Afghan blanket.
Option No. 2 would limit that kind of development by allowing multiple drill wells at one centralized location. The drills pipes would fan out from the central location, like spokes on a bicycle wheel. This option would be allowed on parcels of land up to 640 acres.
Both options must maintain a 330-foot setback from the drill or end of the horizontal well. That's down from 660 feet that was required for vertical wells. The DEC said both drilling patterns also require a full environmental review for impacts on ground water, erosion, endangered species and more.
Some have criticized the bill because it lessens the setbacks and speeds up the permitting process for oil companies, who will no longer have to endure hearings before an administrative law judge and the public to get special use permits.
"In some ways, the existing law is probably better right now because it slows the process down a bit," said Wes Gillingham, program director for the Catskill Mountainkeeper environmental group. "The new law opens up the opportunity for oil companies to move at a faster pace."
Environmental groups are worried about water and air pollution that could result from drilling, the rigs and the powerful diesel engines they run on.
But state Sen. John Bonacic, R-C-Mount Hope, said the environmental concerns have been sensationalized, and that the new law provides the DEC with new teeth and regulations. Bonacic voted in favor of the law when it passed the Senate this week.
"There have been 75,000 gas wells over decades in New York, and not one instance of damage to water or the environment," he said. "What we've done is give the DEC more powers on their checklist to make sure the environment is protected."
That Country Air
That Country Air |
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By: Larry Gordon Published: Thursday, June 19, 2008 |
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Summer weather is here, and that’s a sure indication that the real thing—that is, summer itself—cannot be too far away. In fact, summer is not just sneaking up on us as we read these words, but lo and behold, before any of us knows it, we will be smack dab in the middle of those hot and sultry summer days.
I’ve carefully checked out my air-conditioning units, like a responsible captain of a ship or a 747 must do to make certain that all is in tip-top shape and perfect working order. After all, how would any of us survive without that miraculous cool air descending on our heads from our vented ceilings (in older homes) or blowing up at us toward our chins from the floor (in newer homes) to keep us cool.
Amongst the many lost arts that modern man need no longer interface with is the ability to suffer through hot weather without relief. Once upon a time when summer arrived and it was hot outside, it was just hot inside, too. My grandmother used to tell me about how in the Bronx—I guess it was in the 1930s or so—in order to stay cool in the high heat of summer they used to purchase a large block of ice, which, I guess, if placed in a room where it was a hundred degrees managed to bring the temperature down a bit. I guess the lost art I’m talking about here is sweating, though in its place we’ve seemed to create other ways to sweat things out.
No question that for many growing up in the ’60s and ’70s having air conditioning was new and innovative technology. In our case, the big step up was when my parents installed an air conditioner in the window of their bedroom. At around the same time, and perhaps to placate us so that we did not become too restless in the heat, my father also installed an exhaust fan in our kitchen window. It wasn’t real air conditioning, but it did contribute something to help alleviate the excessive heat we had to deal with.
The way it was explained to me was that the fan—which made lots of noise—managed to scientifically pull out the hot air from inside the house and somehow send cool air in through the other windows. Of course, those other windows had to be opened at least slightly so that the alleged air could come sailing through. Add to that the fact that in the 1960s and 70s leaving windows slightly open in Crown Heights created an assortment of additional problems. Those were tough and changing times; the very fabric of society as it had been known was being redefined. As a result, a slightly open window on the first floor of a home in those days was the equivalent to an invitation to whoever came across that window to climb through and help themselves as they deemed rightful and appropriate.
So if we kept the windows open on those hot nights, it was only slightly—and at our own risk.
That was until summer arrived and we got to go on our summer vacation to the Catskills. In those days, there was no need for air conditioning in bungalows or “summer homes” (as they are now known). The entire effort of uprooting ourselves from the streets and climate of Brooklyn was to enjoy and benefit from the cool and crisp mountain air, which meant that owning an air conditioner up there was a contradiction of sorts to the entire concept of going to “the country.”
The story of the mostly Orthodox Jewish migration to the Catskills is historically rooted in the fear associated with an outbreak of tuberculosis in inner-city communities in the early part of the 20th century. It did not take long for the annual trek to catch on, as the summertime communities grew there, even while simultaneously almost everything else about those areas of upstate New York deteriorated. That took a while, but today the old Catskills is a very poor shadow of what it once was.
Perhaps today it’s because of global warming—that is, if it actually exists—that the difference in the daily temperatures between the city environs and the country is not that great. It can be 99 degrees here and 96 upstate. The difference can only really be felt in the evenings, when it can get considerably colder up there than it does here and then still get extremely warm during the following day.
The Catskills also serve an important emotional purpose that helps facilitate the flow of the mostly beautiful days of summer. Being away at a summer home or (here we go again) a bungalow means that you spend most of the summer either arriving from or getting ready to go back upstate to that temporary non-sukkah dwelling. When my kids were very young and we relocated ourselves to Ferndale, New York, every summer for about a decade, the traveling to and from was the essence and most memorable aspect of those summers. There was always something very liberating about that moment on Thursday afternoon when all was done and you could point your car in the direction of the George Washington Bridge. There was an unspoken and unexpressed camaraderie between the men and sometimes women in the other cars on these superhighways, which may have been created for the sole purpose of allowing large numbers of Jews to enjoy an aspect of the fantastic material world in one of G-d’s greatest gifts—the season of summer.
Now, for many, the vibrancy that life in the Catskills once was is mostly gone but still making a valiant and gallant effort to hang on. The massive hotel structures like Grossinger’s and the Concord have long been vacant and desolate, though businesspeople still have hope for the future—and if not the future, then at least the real-estate market up there—that things will turn around. They are making a noble effort to keep the Catskills from going under and are no doubt driven by elements of sentimentality and the hope of massive economic profits.
The hotel business that once thrived over Shabbos, yom tov, and just general vacation times is now frail and teetering, though no “do not resuscitate” orders have been left. To that end, every now and then there arises someone with an astigmatic vision who sees hope and possibilities in revitalizing Jewish life up there. Who knows—with travel becoming so expensive, perhaps some day the Catskills will once again become an option.
Today clusters or communities of Jews in the Catskills are analyzed for their economics and tax base implications for different small towns and entire counties. ShopRite and Wal-Mart can’t wait for the population to swell over the summer, because of the significant way in which it bumps up their business. Some communities otherwise known as bungalow colonies are being incorporated as shuls or yeshivas and as a result are being removed from the tax rolls.
That may in fact be legal and proper, but it also causes consternation and creates criticism that does not cast a favorable light on us.
And to think that this all started because we were overheated and cramped and looking for a little fresh air and a country road without stoplights on which we could take a leisurely morning or evening stroll and feel free, if only for a fleeting few moments.
link to article is here:
https://www.5tjt.com/news/read.asp?Id=2618
Comments for Larry Gordon are welcome at edi [email protected].