| Watershed Post

Prattsville rallies for Housing Expo

On Saturday, March 3, Prattsville held a Housing Expo and Home Improvement Show for homeowners looking to rebuild after the devastating Irene floods.

The Daily Mail's Michael Ryan was on hand, and spoke to a few of Prattsville's determined residents:

...David Lang has moved the foundation of his flood-ravaged home back 30 feet from the Schoharie Creek and raised it at least 6 feet above the flood plain.

“My wife and I aren’t going anywhere,” Lang said, noting many homeowners are opting to raise their homes, as mandated by FEMA, rather than leave, being joined by virtually every merchant that was open pre-Irene.

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Free tonight? Write tonight.

Above: The original laptop. Photo by Flickr user xlibber; used under Creative Commons license.

Interested in writers and their writing? Tonight, from 7-9pm at 76 MAIN! in Stamford, writers will present new works in progress. Part of the Roxbury Arts Group programming schedule, this writers' evening happens the first Monday of each month and is open to the public. Donations are welcome and support Roxbury Arts Group programming. For more information, see the listing in our calendar. -- Andrea Girolamo

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Ready for his close-up

Over the weekend, local photographer Mark Zilberman caught the soulful gaze of his neighbor's horse on film. (Well, on pixels, anyway.)

Photo taken in Andes on March 3. Thanks to Mark for sharing it in our Watershed Post Flickr group pool. We often feature new images from the pool on watershedpost.com, so if you're a local photographer and you'd like to see your work here, check out our Flickr group.

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Liberty to get a new supermarket this summer

The Times Herald-Record reports that a new supermarket is coming to site of the former Liberty Great American, shuttered since last summer:

NSA Supermarkets, a Brooklyn-based company, is in the process of buying Great American's North Main Street property. It estimates it will have the property renovated and reopened by the summer.

"We want everything to be fresher," said John Lim, the company's comptroller. "We want to provide a full line of products — everything that the community needs."

Great news for the village of Liberty -- but elsewhere in the region, towns are still desperate for word on when their local supermarkets will open.

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This week around the blogshed

Above: Oh, hey, Plattekill! So, it snowed this week, but don't worry, it'll melt in time to muddy up the weekend. Good one, Mother Nature, good one. Photo by Flickr user Oliver Rich, used under a Creative Commons license.

Upstater is reporting this week that more people are fleeing from the Hudson Valley than are fleeing to the Hudson Valley, according to a Marist College survey. Two questions come to mind. 1) Does this mean it will be easier to get a reservation at Peekamoose this weekend? 2) Do you think it's because we're full of crazies? And, why not a third: How is this possible when LivingSocial is making it so attractive to come here?
The Cha Cha Hut introduces a Frito Lay Pie; Peggy Hill would be proud.
Catskills Cycling basks in mild New York winter; goes on awesome mid-winter cycling road trip anyway. Sees irony, but writes a great blog post about it.
Winter in the Catskills posts some great shots of snow-laced skiers on Blockbuster at Plattekill last weekend, proving to surly, rain-drenched downstaters that we have, in fact, had a little bit of winter.
Metal Camp is coming to Wurtsboro. So, you know, stock up on the earplugs, Sullivan County!
We (and, OK, everyone else in the world, including Gizmodo) reported about the fossilized forest near Gilboa Dam and it blew up all over the web; got us linked to by BBC (gratuitous horn-tooting...now).

For more random tidbits from around the watershed, check out Around the Blogshed.

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Denning trash czar fights firing with civil rights lawsuit

Above: Former Denning Recycling Manager Ed Mues in happier times. Photo courtesy of Denning Concerned Citizens.

To hear his supporters tell it, Ed Mues was more than a trash man. Mues, recently dismissed by the Denning town board from his job as manager of the town transfer station, was a one-man social hub, friendly neighborhood recycling guru, and town welcome wagon.

"Ed Mues is the George Bailey of Denning," wrote local resident John Kuhner, on an online petition supporting Mues.

But every George Bailey must have his Henry Potter -- and Mues seems to have found his nemesis in Republican town supervisor Bill Bruning.

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Denning Concerned Citizens

Robert Isseks

Forty people evacuated after lift stalls at Belleayre

Above: A ski lift at Belleayre. Via the Belleayre Mountain Facebook page.

A ski lift at Belleayre Mountain Ski Center malfunctioned yesterday, causing 40 people to have to be evacuated, according to Department of Environmental Conservation spokeswoman Lisa King.

There were no injuries and there was no obvious problem with the lift, King told the Watershed Post. The whole evacuation, which happened around noon on March 1, took about an hour, she said.

"It seemed to be an electrical problem on a lift. That particular lift was closed for the remainder of the day, and it re-open today around 9:11am," King said. "[Belleayre staffers] were monitoring their computer system and it showed that there may have been a derailment. They went out and visually inspected the lift, and it appeared to be fine. But they couldn't re-start it, so that's why they evacuated the people."

Four other lifts remained operational throughout the day, King said.

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Department of Environmental Conservation

Windham sees some FEMA funds

Above: A house being built in Windham on February 3 following destruction by last fall's floods. Photo by Hans Pennink for FEMA.

The Windham Journal reported this week that the town of Windham has actually received cold hard cash from the Federal Emergency Management Agency to help cover the cost of last fall's devasting floods:

Town board members, at a meeting last week, were informed by highway superintendent Thomas Hoyt that $339,000 has been reimbursed by FEMA thus far for costs incurred fixing what Tropical Storm Irene broke.

Of course, that's only some of the money Windham needs from the agency:

Hoyt said project worksheets for an additional $1.4 million have been submitted to the federal agency for consideration, with the town having already laid out approximately $1.6 million on flood cleanup and repairs.

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Fresh: Cow-to-cone gelato from Lazy Crazy Acres

Above: Jake and Karen Fairbairn in Lazy Crazy Acres's mobile kitchen-on-wheels. Photo courtesy of Lazy Crazy Acres.

The Lazy Crazy Acres recipe for ice cream is deceptively simple: Start with a cow.

Meet small-batch gelato makers, dairy farmers, and owners of Lazy Crazy Acres, Karen and Jake Fairbairn. Last year, with the help of their farming neighbors, Chris and Judy DiBenedetto, they started their "cow-to-cone" operation, the only one of its kind in New York State.

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Albany pols propose three very different redistricting maps

With a joint Senate and Assembly redistricting task force hopelessly mired in partisan bickering, the once-a-decade Congressional redistricting process is now in the hands of a federal court.

Earlier this week, any hope that feuding Albany pols could hold hands, sing 'Kumbaya,' and produce a fair map of Congressional districts evaporated, when a panel of federal judges named U.S. Magistrate Roanne Mann to preside over the redistricting process.

Yesterday, three groups of legislators -- Assembly Democrats, Assembly Republicans, and Senate Republicans -- each submitted a different redistricting map to Mann, who had asked legislators and good-government groups to submit maps to the court.

Senate Democrats did not submit a map.

Because of nationwide population shifts, the state is losing two districts, moving from 29 to 27 Congressional seats.

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