| Watershed Post

Hope springs eternal; the hopeful are wise to bring hammers and nails

Above: Prattsville depicted in the days of Zadock Pratt on an 1844 postcard, when Pratt's tannery was the biggest business in town. From Wikimedia Commons.

Thanks to Irene, the picture the country has of Prattsville in its collective consciousness is, most likely, of Anastasia Rikard's yellow house leaning precariously to one side on the cover of the New York Time s. Or perhaps it's of the Great American supermarket, roof folded in with shin-high mud thick on the floor. Perhaps it's the Reformed Church, with pews and piano herded to one side by the rush of the floodwater.

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Hurricane Irene Relief

rebuilding

Schumer bill takes aim at rural doctor shortage

Photo by Flickr user Andres Rueda. Published under Creative Commons license.

U.S. Senator Chuck Schumer, D-NY, is seeking to pass a bill that would inject new funds into a program that funds doctor training, with preference given to rural areas.

The bill, called the Resident Physician Shortage Act of 2011, was introduced last year by Schumer along with three other Democratic senators: Florida's Bill Nelson, Pennsylvania's Bob Casey and Nevada's Harry Reid.

In a press release yesterday, Schumer's office said that the legislation would enable Medicare to fund an additional 3,000 doctor residency slots every year for five years, half of which would go to hospitals in areas with physician shortages.

The Times-Union reports that New York State would get a big boost from the legislation:

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chuck schumer

healthcare

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Government

Big Fracas uses music, clever wordplay, to grab attention

Some people sign petitions, stage protests, write congress, when they're unhappy about something. Big Fracas Productions has chosen the time-honored tradition of using music to gather attention and support for their anti-hydraulic-fracturing position (Get it? Fracking? Fracas?). The Oneonta Theatre will host the event, which is scheduled for this Friday; doors open at 7 pm. Area musicians from towns at risk for fracking are donating their time to make the event happen, and representatives from antifracking groups will be on hand for information sessions before the musicians, including Diane Ducey and Measured Mile, The Mountebank Brothers, Little Slice and The Good Things, and Hagalicious With Sage, take the stage at 8. For more information, see the listing in our calendar. -- Andrea Girolamo

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Public enemy number two

Warning: Gross story, gross picture. Read at your own risk. - Ed.

A serial poop vandal is at large in Delhi. In February, employees of three local businesses found nasty surprises in their bathrooms: cheery messages and random scrawls painted in feces.

So far, the vandal has struck a Sunoco, a McDonalds, and an Express Mart in the village of Delhi in Delaware County without being apprehended.

Eva-Rae Andrews, a part-time clerk at the Country Store at the Delhi Sunoco, was the first to discover the evidence in the store’s bathroom. She snapped a photo of the perpetrator’s smiley-face message on the mirror, which appears below.

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Crime

New York State Police

serial pooper

poopy painter

Michael Mills

Delhi Police Department

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At last, scientists get a good look at Gilboa's fossil forest

Above: Chris Berry, a paleontologist at Cardiff University, examines the fossilized stump of a Gilboa tree in a quarry at the Gilboa Dam. Photo courtesy of Cardiff University.

Scientists around the world have been waiting for nearly a century to walk among the stumps of the primeval trees of the Gilboa Forest, a group of ancient fossils discovered at the bottom of a quarry near the Gilboa Dam in the 1920s.

At last, the ancient forest floor has been unearthed again, studied, and thoroughly documented. A team of paleontologists from Binghamton University, the New York State Museum and Cardiff University describe what they found there in the prestigious journal Nature today.

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People

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Schoharie County

Gilboa

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NYC Department of Environmental Protection

Phoenicia school to stay open: Onteora board votes for "bookends"

The Daily Freeman reports that the vote was 6 to 1, with Dan Spencer as the lone holdout.

The Times Herald-Record has a few more details, including some figures on savings:

Having two lower elementary and one upper elementary building allows for larger classes, helping the district achieve $2.12 million in savings. This is expected to get the district $443,055 below the 2 percent tax levy cap.

The district will slash 28.5 positions in the realignment.

Phoenicia's hamlet-boosting Twitter handle, run by local resident Jen Dragon, rejoices:

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education

Phoenicia Elementary

Onteora Central School District

Bennett Elementary

Woodstock Elementary

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Government

Tonight: Deciding the fate of the Onteora School District

Tonight, at 7pm in the Middle School/High School auditorium of Onteora School, the Onteora Board of Education will vote on a plan for reconfiguring the school district. Two of the proposed plans call for the closing of the Phoenicia Elementary School, either with clustering of the elementary grades at Bennett and Woodstock, or keeping Bennett and Woodstock as K-6 schools. Under a third plan, dubbed the "bookends" plan, all three schools would remain open, and elementary grades would be clustered, with grades K-3 at Phoenicia and Woodstock, and 4-6 at Bennett. (We've written about this before, here, here and here.)

In this letter to the editor, a Pine Hill parent explains her objections to closing the Phoenicia school. - Julia Reischel

To the Onteora School Board,

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Phoenicia Elementary

Onteora Central School District

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Deadline looms for FEMA flood buyout

Above: FEMA External Affairs Interns inspect the recovery effort in Prattsville on Feb. 22, 2012. Photo by Hans Pennink.

Wednesday is the deadline for New York State towns and counties to submit lists of properties for a federal buyout program.

Under the program, run by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, home and business owners with badly damaged properties in flood-prone areas can get up to 75 percent of the pre-flood value of their properties from FEMA. The other 25 percent is the responsibility of the homeowner, unless the local government agrees to cover the cost.

Individuals cannot apply to FEMA directly to be part of the buyout. To be considered, properties must be on lists submitted to FEMA by the state Office of Emergency Management, which applies on behalf of local governments.

Here are some links to news coverage of the program, from around New York State:

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Winter storm on the way

Above: WBNG-TV forecast of a winter storm headed for the Northeast later this week.

Looks like Old Man Winter's finally woken up at last: A big snowstorm is barreling towards us from the Midwest, and will start dumping some sleet and snow on upstate New York and northern Pennsylvania by Wednesday.

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Books and internet (literally) rolling into Delaware County tomorrow

I often see a commercial on TV for a company that provides high speed internet access to rural communities and hard-to-wire places; it tells people who want to sign up to go to a website and fill out a contact form. While that seems like a joke worthy of a stand-up act, it's no joke. The assumption that internet access is universal can leave those without access in the dark. The CyberMobile is rolling in to serve those folks.

If you, or someone you know, will be in Delaware County tomorrow and need internet access for any reason, the Four County Library System is sending its CyberMobile your way, complete with internet access and a mobile library. CyberMobile will be making stops in Grand Gorge, Hobart, South Kortright, Davenport, East Meredith, Meridale and Treadwell tomorrow starting at 10 am. Fun fact: books you borrow from the CyberMobile have no late fees! For more info, see the listing in our calendar. -- Andrea Girolamo

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four county library system

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