Above: A bagel with lox from H&H Bagels Midtown East. Photo by Flickr user Kenneth Lu.

A story by the business news site Quartz on Oct. 7 confirmed what New Yorkers already know: The secret to NYC's bagels is in the water. 

Bagel entrepreneurs are so desperate to mimic NYC's water that they have spent years and lots of cash adding those minerals back into their own water in places like Denver and Florida, Quartz reports.

The site interviews Josh Pollack, a bagel maker in Denver, who has developed a secret formula to put NYC-style water into his bagels:

“It’s mainly New York’s watershed program that’s the difference,” he says of the initiative that protects the region’s natural water sources, enabling local utilities to minimally-process the city’s drinking water. “They don’t use a sediment filter for their water, so a lot of the minerals that come from the reservoirs, as a result of those watershed protections, are still in the water." ...

A 48-year-old Wawarsing man will serve 13 years in prison and five more on probation for burglarizing homes while responding to calls as a member of the Ellenville First Aid and Rescue Squad, according to a press release from the Ulster County District Attorney's office. 

Left: German A. Lobaton. Photo via the Ulster County District Attorney's office. 

German A. Lobaton pled guilty in July to stealing items from unoccupied homes during a four-month period in 2013. He was sentenced on Friday, Oct. 3.

He targeted the homes his rescue squad had visited during emergency calls, according to the press release:

Shortly after responding, knowing that the homes would be unoccupied, he returned to and entered them and stole numerous items of personal property. Much of the stolen property was eventually found in his home by the police. The case was investigated by the New York State Police in Ellenville.

The New York City Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) and a slew of other groups and volunteers will fan out across the Catskills on Sunday, Oct. 5 to clean up four of the NYC reservoirs -- the Pepacton, the Cannonsville, the Neversink, and the Rondout -- as part of a statewide effort to clean up New York's waterways and beaches. 

Volunteers are welcome at the litter pick-ups, according to a press release from the DEP. Captains in charge of each reservoir will meet volunteers at 1 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 5 and will clean until 3 p.m.

Captains and locations for the four Catskills clean-up groups are below:

Cannonsville Reservoir: The cleanup effort will be led by Tina James, who leads the Future Farmers of America program at the Walton Central School District, and Nick Barone, president of the Deposit Chamber of Commerce. Volunteers will meet at Chamberlain Brook.

Neversink Reservoir: The cleanup effort will be led by Boy Scout Troop 97 in Neversink, which is run by Keith Mentnech. Volunteers will meet at the information kiosk on Route 55.

Above: The interior of the Blenheim Bridge in 2006, in a photo by Flickr user paraflyer. The bridge was washed away by floodwaters in 2011. 

The Old Blenheim Bridge, which was the longest open-span covered bridge in the world before it was destroyed by Tropical Storm Irene in 2011, is being taken off the National Register of Historic Places, the Schoharie Times Journal reported this week.

The paper reported on Sept. 29 that the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation (SHPO) has begun the process of de-listing the site of the former landmark, in the Schoharie County town of Blenheim.