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"Every other elected official has their own counsel, but I will have to hire outside counsel. If people (the Legislature) want to get the upper hand, they should dissolve the (executive) branch. They could put it up for a referendum. Some counties have done that. They could be in charge."
- County Executive Bob Bondi.
Good Wednesday Morning,
An nice line of thunderstorms moved through last evening and being on the edge of one of them we got rained on pretty hard while the sky just to the west was a deep blue with the setting sun illuminating straggler clouds and wisps of virga a fiery orange.
The weather looks to be dry and hot for the next couple of days, just right for the garden. My tomatoes are fruiting and, starting this afternoon, I'm going to have more zucchini than I can possibly handle which means their should be some around for the taking at the Garden Party. The cukes are getting into gear as are the watermelons which are just now starting to vine around some vagrant tomatoes that sprung up out of nowhere in that patch. The peppers are a bit behind, but there's flower buds on them so they should be catching up.
For those of you who live in Philipstown, specifically near Continental Village, there's a possible new road project coming your way. In order to address some flooding issues generated by a storm last year the Feds want to pave a portion of the historic Albany Post Road northwards from its intersection with Sprout Brook Road. This project not only includes paving but berms and blasting and a "realignment". Sounds like a nice way to ruin an historic road, one which the people of Philipstown have determined they want to keep in place. You can write to FEMA prior to July 26, 2008 via email or by (snail)mail to Robert Tranter, Regional Environmental Officer, FEMA RII, 26 Federal Plaza, New York, NY 10278-0002. For more information contact Noel Kropf.
East Hudson volunteers of the New York/New Jersey Trail Conference are holding a two day outreach event at the Breakneck Ridge trailhead and the Bull Hill (Mt. Taurus) trailhead, both on Route 9D North of Cold Spring, NY, on Friday July 4 and Saturday July 5, 2008. These heavily traveled trails offer a great opportunity to generate awareness about responsible hiking, volunteering and trail stewardship. They are going to have a station at each trailhead to talk to people, sell East Hudson Maps, and offer NY-NJ Trail Conference membership information. They could use some extra hands! If you would like to join them, and are willing to commit to a two or three-hour slot on Friday, July 4th or Saturday, July 5th, between 9 am and 3 pm, please contact: Josie Gray, Chair of East Hudson Committee, email: jospira72@gmail.com
The State of Hawaii has become the first state in the nation to require solar water heaters on every new home beginning in 2010. Without this inclusion a home cannot get a building permit. The state offers hefty tax incentives as do some local utility companies but the Federal tax credit is set to end at the end of this year, shifting federal funds to oil and gas exploration instead. Personally, I cannot see why every town in Putnam County cannot do the same as the sun shines here, too.
Solar hot water systems generally cost between $1500 and $3500 and, as part of the initial construction costs of new homes that amount would almost disappear. The average electric hot water heater uses somewhere around 6400 KwH per year which costs around $700. This means that after just a few years' time your hot water is coming free from the sun. Think about that.
Lastly I have say how proud I am of PlanPutnam's readers. Following on the heels of Sandy Galef's dog-and-pony show a few weeks back where she was pushing her plan to maintain the status quo as it regards property taxes, three readers posted letters to the editor. You can read them here, here and here.
As always, there's more at PlanPutnam.org.
And now, the News:
- Counties show interest in growing green jobs
- Cimarron Ranch Litigation is Focus of PV Supervisor Tendy Comments at Town Board Meeting
- Mohonk carriage roads continue to draw visitors
- Deal Is Struck in Montana to Preserve Forest Areas
- Standards Set For Energy-conserving LED Lighting
- Move To A Suburb--And The World Moves Out With You. A Case Study In Hypergrowth.
- Prepare for revolution
- Pentagon Fights EPA On Pollution Cleanup
- Long-Term Benefit Found in Drug from 'Magic Mushrooms'
Counties show interest in growing green jobs Greg Clary
Journal News Columnist
Economic conditions being what they are, I can't help thinking of that well-worn definition of tough times:
"A recession is when your neighbor's out of work - a depression is when you're out of work."
County officials in Westchester and Putnam hope they've come up with a way to blunt some of the long-term unemployment concerns in our region - and a key element of their plan is green.
That's green as in what's good for the environment, but it's also green as in money - economic development as it's known in the halls of government.
"One of the biggest areas of the 21st century is going to be this green business," Westchester County Executive Andy Spano said yesterday. "You can just hear it coming."
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Cimarron Ranch Litigation is Focus of PV Supervisor Tendy Comments at Town Board Meeting Kaspar accuses Tendy of holding illegal public hearing and personal vendetta
by Edward Paul Greiff
Putnam Valley Supervisor Bob Tendy used the time allotted to him for his opening supervisory comments at the June 18, 2008 Town Board meeting to present an argument justifying the Town's litigation actions against Cimarron Ranch (owned by Alex Kaspar), and others for conducting a commercial operation in a residential neighborhood, and the resulting dangerous truck traffic, noise, and possible contamination of their wells. Immediately following his remarks he asked for public comment only on this litigation issue.
Approximately ten to twelve residents in the Cimarron Ranch neighborhood expressed their concerns regarding the rock crushing noise emanating from the ranch, and the truck traffic on Cimarron, Sprout Brook, and Horton Hollow Roads. They expressed their fear for the lives of their children playing in front yards close to the road. After the residents spoke, Town Attorney Bill Zutt asked the residents if they would be willing to testify in court and say what they just said. He asked those willing to do so to provide him with their signature so he could keep them informed.
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Mohonk carriage roads continue to draw visitors By Greg Marano
Poughkeepsie Journal
NEW PALTZ - When Mohonk Mountain House opened in 1869, it was a grand hotel, isolated on a mountain lake with one carriage road to bring visitors in or out.
Over the course of the next 40 years, the carriage roads along the grounds would grow into a 75-mile network that still serves the resort, the Mohonk Preserve and Minnewaska State Park Preserve, in a variety of capacities.
"It's a pretty amazing trail system," said Nikki Thompson, stables and pavilion manager for Mohonk Mountain House. "It was done before GPS. ... It was all done by man and horse power.
"It was very intricate," Thompson said. "There's incredible spots where they built them on the cliffs."
The original road was four miles long, connecting the gate house to the hotel.
Between 1870 and 1910, the trails grew like vines enrapturing the grounds, as the resort became more popular and visitors wanted to explore more of the property. The network soon took visitors to Eagle Cliff, Sky Top Tower and other scenic overlooks on the grounds.
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Deal Is Struck in Montana to Preserve Forest Areas By KIRK JOHNSON
DENVER — A huge patchwork of privately owned forest in northwest Montana — much of it abutting wilderness, and together almost a third the size of Rhode Island — will be permanently protected from development under an agreement announced Monday by two private conservation groups, the Nature Conservancy and the Trust for Public Land.
The groups will pay $510 million for about 500 square miles of forest now owned by Plum Creek Timber, a lumber and real estate firm based in Seattle. It is one of the biggest sales of forest land for preservation purposes in United States history, conservation experts said.
About half the amount will come from private donations, the conservation buyers said, and about half from the federal government under a new tax-credit bond mechanism that was included in the giant farm bill recently passed by Congress over President Bush’s veto.
The bond mechanism was devised by Senator Max Baucus, Democrat of Montana. Mr. Baucus, his spokesman said, was approached about a year ago by representatives of the Nature Conservancy and the Trust for Public Land, who argued that development pressures were growing so intense that new tools had to be created to buy the Plum Creek properties if they were to be protected.
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Standards Set For Energy-conserving LED Lighting ScienceDaily (July 1, 2008) — Scientists at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), in cooperation with national standards organizations, have taken the lead in developing the first two standards for solid-state lighting in the United States. This new generation lighting technology uses light-emitting diodes (LEDs) instead of incandescent filaments or fluorescent tubes to produce illumination that cuts energy consumption significantly.
Standards are important to ensure that products will have high quality and their performance will be specified uniformly for commerce and trade. These standards--the most recent of which published last month--detail the color specifications of LED lamps and LED light fixtures, and the test methods that manufacturers should use when testing these solid-state lighting products for total light output, energy consumption and chromaticity, or color quality.
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Sprawling, Sprawling ...
Move To A Suburb--And The World Moves Out With You. A Case Study In Hypergrowth. Daniel Pedersen, Vern E. Smith and Jerry Adler
NEWSWEEK
The sales brochures don't lie, because they show you a picture, a sweeping aerial view of forest stretching toward the distant skyline of Atlanta from the vicinity of vinings estates, from high $200s-500s. The table of travel times puts downtown 20 minutes away (a footnote points out that "times may vary in rush-hour traffic"), and the photos of "historic Vinings" in the sales office are not meant to suggest that homebuyers will actually be shopping in a quaint general store. The houses are as crammed with luxuries as a Pharaoh's tomb; the lots are wooded; the road a peaceful two-lane blacktop. It all conspires to make you fall in love with the place--which requires only that you close your mind to what it might look like in five years, when you're battling your way toward it past the Wal-Marts and Waffle Houses that its very existence will call into being.
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Prepare for revolution The Globe and Mail
July 1, 2008
Anyone who has filled a gas tank lately knows that the cost of daily life has become much higher and more burdensome. With oil edging above $140 (U.S.) a barrel, gasoline prices are already well beyond the previous record highs of 1981. Then, supply disruptions were temporary, and occasionally deliberately induced. Today, demand is outpacing supply as tensions rise in the Middle East, rebels cut Nigerian oil output and Libya hints that it may trim production. Worse, the market does not really work, because half of the world's population has access to subsidized oil, and therefore little reason to change its habits. Oil could reach $200 a barrel by 2010, putting the cost of operating an automobile beyond the reach of many lower-income families.
Each upward tick in oil prices signals the slow death of a postwar North American way of life, built around car ownership and suburban sprawl. In a harsh diagnosis of the plight of the United States, which could easily apply to Canada too, CIBC World Markets economists Jeff Rubin and Benjamin Tal foresee "the greatest mass exodus of vehicles off America's highways in history." The change will be especially radical for the four-fifths of households earning less than $25,000 that now own a car. One in five of those low-income Americans will "probably stop driving or give up the second vehicle" over the next four years because the cost of gasoline will gobble up one-fifth of their incomes, a rise from 7 per cent today.
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Pentagon Fights EPA On Pollution Cleanup By Lyndsey Layton
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, June 30, 2008; A01
The Defense Department, the nation's biggest polluter, is resisting orders from the Environmental Protection Agency to clean up Fort Meade and two other military bases where the EPA says dumped chemicals pose "imminent and substantial" dangers to public health and the environment.
The Pentagon has also declined to sign agreements required by law that cover 12 other military sites on the Superfund list of the most polluted places in the country. The contracts would spell out a remediation plan, set schedules, and allow the EPA to oversee the work and assess penalties if milestones are missed.
The actions are part of a standoff between the Pentagon and environmental regulators that has been building during the Bush administration, leaving the EPA in a legal limbo as it addresses growing concerns about contaminants on military bases that are seeping into drinking water aquifers and soil.
Under executive branch policy, the EPA will not sue the Pentagon, as it would a private polluter. Although the law gives final say to EPA Administrator Stephen L. Johnson in cleanup disputes with other federal agencies, the Pentagon refuses to recognize that provision. Military officials wrote to the Justice Department last month to challenge EPA's authority to issue the orders and asked the Office of Management and Budget to intervene.
Experts in environmental law said the Pentagon's stand is unprecedented.
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Long-Term Benefit Found in Drug from 'Magic Mushrooms' NEW YORK (AP) -- In 2002, at a Johns Hopkins University laboratory, a business consultant named Dede Osborn took a psychedelic drug as part of a research project.
She felt like she was taking off. She saw colors. Then it felt like her heart was ripping open.
But she called the experience joyful as well as painful, and says that it has helped her to this day.
``I feel more centered in who I am and what I'm doing,'' said Osborn, now 66, of Providence, R.I. ``I don't seem to have those self-doubts like I used to have. I feel much more grounded (and feel that) we are all connected.''
Scientists reported Tuesday that when they surveyed volunteers 14 months after they took the drug, most said they were still feeling and behaving better because of the experience.
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