Not content to ban "fracking" for natural gas within town borders, Woodstock's town board has voted to petition New York State to make hydraulic fracturing a criminal offense.

According to an account in the Daily Freeman, the Woodstock town board voted to adopt the resolution in support of statewide criminalization at their Tuesday meeting, with three dozen audience members in support. The Woodstock board had previously adopted a ban on gas drilling, modeled after similar bans in other New York State towns, in August of 2012.

While the mainstream focus of the anti-fracking movement so far has been on pressuring the state to ban hydrofracking, or not to adopt regulations that would permit it, a movement to criminalize the technique has sprung up among the more uncompromising groups in the loose coalition of citizen activists that want to keep the gas drilling technique out of New York State.

The Daily Star is reporting that an employee at Covidien's Hobart plant, which manufactures pharmaceuticals, is suspected of smuggling oxycodone powder out of the plant. The employee, who is not named in the Daily Star article, is expected to face federal drug charges.

In December, Harpersfield resident Robert Wilsey was arrested and charged with drug possession after a search warrant turned up $50,000 worth of oxycodone powder in his possession. Delaware County sheriff's deputies did not announce Wilsey's arrest until January 11.

Police believe Wilsey got the powder from a Covidien employee, the Daily Star reports:

“We traced the oxycodone back to Covidien,” Delaware County Undersheriff Craig Dumond said.

A Covidien employee is suspected of stealing the drug from inside the plant and transfering it to Robert Willsey, 40, of Harpersfield.

It's hot chocolate weather out there, folks. Photo by Flickr user snorlax's cafe; published under Creative Commons license.

After last weekend's downright unseasonable warm spell, it's almost a relief to see the snow clouds rolling back in. Tonight, the National Weather Service is expecting a few inches of snow across the region, possibly with some sleet mixed in.

Most of the Catskills is under a Winter Weather Advisory. In an alert issued for Delaware and Sullivan Counties, the NWS predicts that snow is expected to begin late on Tuesday night, moving northward from the Poconos in Pennsylvania, and spread into the western Catskills by midnight. The heaviest snow will fall Wednesday morning, with accumulations of two to five inches by mid-day Wednesday.

A new package of gun laws that includes a stricter definition of banned "assault weapons" and new provisions on gun ownership and mental illness is making its way through the New York State Legislature. Late on Monday night, the Republican-controlled state Senate voted 43-18 to pass S.2230, which will now head for the Democratic-controlled Assembly and likely passage into law.

The New York Times reports that the gun bill was the result of a deal reached under pressure by Gov. Andrew Cuomo:

Mr. Cuomo, a Democrat, had pressed lawmakers to move quickly in response to Newtown, saying, “the people of this state are crying out for help.” And the Legislature proceeded with unusual haste: Monday was the first full day of this year’s legislative session.

“We don’t need another tragedy to point out the problems in the system,” Mr. Cuomo said at a news conference.

Photo published under Creative Commons license.

For decades, small dairy farms have been disappearing from the rural upstate New York landscape, as rising costs outpace milk prices and farmers struggle to stay in business.

Last week, in a column published in the Chenango Evening Sun, a local dairy expert claimed that the dairy drain is costing the Chenango, Otsego and Delaware County region over $100 million a year in lost economic impact.

In the article, Kenneth Smith, executive director of the Chenango County Cornell Cooperative Extension, takes a look at recent USDA data on milk production, and concludes that the loss of hundreds of dairy farms from the region since 1999 has taken a grave toll on the local economy: