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Good Friday Morning,
Yesterday turned into a beautiful day and last night was stellar, the clearest night we've had in quite some time. The weather guys are promising us hot today, 87º but it should be dry and sunny and wonderful all around.
The Putnam County 4H Fair starts today at noon and runs until 5PM at the fairgrounds in Kent. Head up Gipsy Trail road and turn in at the white church, er, the historical building. Who would put a church on county parkland? Eh? Stop by the Town of Kent's Stormwater Management Committee's tent for some interesting information and fun for your children.
This week a scene was repeated in Pawling that has become too commonplace. Pawling Republican Party Chair, Glenn Carey, in an apparent bid to oust sitting Town Supervisor Beth Coursen without the benefit of an election, packed another town meeting room with anti-Coursen allies, disrupting town business for the second meeting in a row. Mr. Carey, still crying alligator tears from a he said/she said argument with the Supervisor several weeks ago, has turned the town into a Rovian political circus.
Mr. Carey, continued his assault on the Supervisor this past week saying in part, "The Poughkeepsie Journal called me last Friday. I had angst in my stomach. I didn't want to talk about it. I didn't want my personal life on the front page of the newspaper." But that apparently wasn't enough for him to be a mensch about the whole thing for playing the victim was a sure-fire way of getting his name on the front page of that paper - which he is apparently loving rather than hating. He had a choice to make and he made it and his front page appearance, the splashing of his personal life on the front page of the news, was a small price to pay for the free political advertising.
I'll bet you dollars to donuts Mr. Carey announces he's running for the Supervisor's seat and when he does, just remember how he got his start: It wasn't through a desire for good governance but through a calculated smear campaign, the type we've seen too much of over the past few years in our area and the kind that turns voters into pawns.
While we're talking smear campaigns, RACC spokesman Adam Kramer, sent out press release the other day using a picture I took without my permission nor with proper credit claiming he received it from the Degnan campaign. As far as I know, the campaign has not used that image. The press release accuses 99th District Assembly candidate John Degnan of being in cahoots with - oh my! - Democrats. Kramer conveniently forgets that just two years ago the man he is defending also sought backing from the very same Democrats he views as evil today. What he's upset about, I'm guessing, is that Mr. Ball was refused that support. In the meantime, the copyright violation continues and my phoned and emailed request for a written apology has, as of press time, gone answered.
Anyway, enjoy the weekend! Get out and do some gardening.
And now, the News:
- Study Shows A -- Mostly -- Swimmable Hudson
- Cary Institute Hires Klemens
- GREEN SPACE: Rain barrels save dollars, make sense
- Op-ed: Diversity and the changing face of suburbia
- Trying To Save World's Lakes: Controlling Nitrogen Can Actually Worsen Problems
- Entomologists Design Environmentally-Friendly Lawns, Golf Courses
- The Oil Man Cometh
Study Shows A -- Mostly -- Swimmable Hudson POSTED: 11:04 am EDT July 24, 2008
UPDATED: 11:02 pm EDT July 24, 2008 NEW YORK -- The Hudson River is scenic, historic -- but swimmable?
Yes, much of the time, though dirty rainwater and raw sewage still contaminate parts of New York state's iconic waterway after decades of cleanup efforts, an environmental group said Thursday.
"The river is still safe to swim in most times in most places, but when it's not safe, it's very unsafe," said Alex Matthiessen, president of the Hudson preservation organization Riverkeeper.
The group is taking water-quality samples along the river and ultimately hopes to provide up-to-the-minute guidance on where and when it's safe to swim and kayak.
For years, those questions weren't worth asking. The picturesque waterway Henry Hudson explored in 1609 was fouled by cities and industries along its banks in the 1900s.
"The whole river was an open sewer," said Frances Dunwell, the state Department of Environmental Conservation's Hudson River estuary coordinator. "Just about everything society wanted to get rid of or not think about would go to the shores of the Hudson because it was so polluted, and now it's just the opposite."
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Cary Institute Hires Klemens Klemens, who has spent more than a decade improving conservation planning at local and regional scales, has tried to find ways to minimize suburban sprawl impacts during his career. He will continue his pioneering work at Cary Institute, where he will try to bridge the gap between conservation science and land use pressure. Dr. William Schlesinger, president of Cary Institute, was pleased with the hiring.
"Through his work with the MCA, Klemens has shown that ecologically-sensitive land use planning can make a real difference in preserving biodiversity. We look forward to supporting and strengthening his efforts to protect native plants and animals in the Mid-Hudson region and beyond. His output is a valuable resource for land managers," said Schlesinger.
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Pine Plains development proposal is scaled back
By Rasheed Oluwa
Poughkeepsie Journal
PINE PLAINS - Though the Durst Organization reduced its development proposal for the 2,200-acre Carvel site by almost half its original plan, town officials foresee the number of houses being reduced even further before it's approved.
"I'm happy to see the direction that Durst is going with their plan," said Gregg Pulver, the Town of Pine Plains supervisor. "It's obvious that they listened to a lot of the public comments that were made during the public hearings for the DEIS (draft environmental impact statement) and I think they're really headed in the right direction."
Durst officials recently unveiled tentative plans for a drastically reduced alternative to the controversial luxury golf community they planned to build on the 2,200-acre Carvel site.
The alternate plan calls for 648 housing units and an 18-hole championship golf course to be built. Durst officials had initially intended to build a total of 1,022 housing units, one 18-hole championship golf course and a 9-hole academy course. The new plans also calls for larger wetlands buffer zones and larger areas of protected open space.
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GREEN SPACE: Rain barrels save dollars, make sense metromode, 7/24/2008
The only reason my lawn is green this summer is because of the abundance of rain, so it is hard for me to believe this statistic: 40% of the average homeowner's water usage can be accounted for in outdoor usage.
Plus, the sheer amount of pavement and concrete and rooftops mean that most rainfall in urban and suburban communities gets funneled into an increasingly overtaxed stormwater system -- where it must be treated before its release or reuse. Which, of course, takes energy and resources -- that can and should be conserved.
How? By catching that rainwater in a rain barrel that can be used to water your plants and garden and wash your car.
Rain barrels get linked into your gutter system and store the water for later use. Lids keep animals and children from climbing in and they usually have screened louvers to keep bugs from proliferating. One inch of rain falling on a 1,200 square foot roof will yield over 700 gallons of water, so we're not talking small potatoes here.
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Op-ed: Diversity and the changing face of suburbia Next American City | Fri, Jul 18th, 2008
The word “suburb” still raises snickers among some thinkers as a place “out there” where middle-class people without taste reside. The harshest critics dismiss suburbs as the “geography of nowhere.”
Yet the American suburbs have grown so immense and diverse, now housing more than half the U.S. population, that no out-of-date stereotypes can capture their complexity, meaning or future direction.
For example, according to Census data, the number of single people living in the suburbs continues to grow. In fact, some suburbs now have more single households than families with children. Another example: The suburbs in all big metropolitan areas except New York and Chicago contain more office space than the regions’ central business districts.
American suburbs now have essentially the same elements that make a place urban - just arranged in a way that differs enough from traditional central cities.
“Cosmoburbs” is the term used in the forthcoming book “Boomburbs: The Rise of America’s Accidental Cities” to describe wealthy suburbs that are also diverse and that increasingly contain non-traditional households. Leading examples around the nation include Naperville, Ill., Plano, Texas, Bellevue, Wash., and Lakewood and Aurora in Colorado.
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Trying To Save World's Lakes: Controlling Nitrogen Can Actually Worsen Problems ScienceDaily (July 24, 2008) — After completing one of the longest running experiments ever done on a lake, researchers from the University of Alberta, University of Minnesota and the Freshwater Institute, contend that nitrogen control, in which the European Union and many other jurisdictions around the world are investing millions of dollars, is not effective and in fact, may actually increase the problem of cultural eutrophication.
The dramatic rise in cultural eutrophication -- the addition of nutrients to a body of water due to human activity that often causes huge algal blooms, fish kills and other problems in lakes throughout the world -- has resulted from increased deposits of nutrients to lakes, largely from human sewage and agricultural wastes.
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Entomologists Design Environmentally-Friendly Lawns, Golf Courses October 1, 2005 — The PGA Golf course at San Francisco's Harding Park is an environmental model, using fewer pesticides than any other PGA course in the country. Taking a cue from entomologists and other scientists, groundskeepers use microbes to knock out fungus, they use soap to get rid of weeds, they hand pluck wild daisies, flush out moles with hoses, and use traps to catch cockroaches. These simple tricks can apply to almost any lawn.
SAN FRANCISCO--Most people love the look of a lush, green lawn, but if you have kids you probably worry about using pesticides and chemicals to keep it that way. Now there are alternatives to chemicals that will keep your lawn green and clean.
It's one of the greenest, prettiest, best golf courses in the country, and now, San Francisco's Harding Park is on the PGA tour. It made the list even though it uses fewer chemicals and pesticides than any other PGA course in the country.
The golf course is part of San Francisco's pest management program that applies to all city courses and parks. Chris Geiger, entomologist and the toxics reduction coordinator for San Francisco's Environment Department, says, "In its simplest form that means better safe than sorry."
The city is using ingenious ways to keep its grass green. Groundskeepers use microbes to knock out fungus and soap to get rid of weeds. They hand pluck wild daisies, flush out moles with hoses, and use traps to catch cockroaches.
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The Oil Man Cometh By TIMOTHY EGAN
There he is, the sound of money in a wizened Texas drawl, the tired realist looking a bit like the John Huston character from “Chinatown” as he warns in national television ads that we should just listen here and do as he says.
And what the 80-year-old T. Boone Pickens says, in a $58 million campaign, is that we can’t drill our way to lower gas prices. By implication, anybody who tells you otherwise — including the fellow Texan he helped put in the White House — is a fraud.
This is a political parable for the ages: the guy who was behind one of the knockout punches to John Kerry four years ago is now doing Democrats the biggest favor of the election by calling Republicans on their phony energy campaign.
“Totally misleading” is the way Pickens describes Republican attempts to convince the public that if we just opened up all these forbidden areas to oil drilling then gas prices would fall. He’s not against new drilling, but he is honest enough to say it wouldn’t do anything.
Republicans are furious at their longtime benefactor. Senator John McCain is currently running an ad in which he directly blames Barack Obama for $4-a-gallon gas at the pump — as bogus a claim as anything yet made in 2008.
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