Above: A photo taken by a Watershed Post reader in Fleischmanns Park on August 31, 2011, after the Irene floods. Six months later, Fleischmanns still must undertake millions of dollars' worth of rebuilding work, which has been stalled while the village searches for up-front funding.

When the final accounting for the Irene and Lee floods is done, the Federal Emergency Management Agency is likely to be writing some very large checks to upstate New York towns and villages. But even where FEMA reimbursement is likely, towns and villages across the Catskills are delaying much-needed projects, simply because there is no money to get them started.

A trustee of Fleischmanns, a tiny village in Delaware County with a population of about 350 people, is calling on state officials to front a $1 million interest-free loan to the village, to cover the up-front costs of flood repair and rebuilding work that FEMA has been slow to process paperwork for.

Photo of hammer and nail by Flickr user Mike Bitzenhofer. Published under Creative Commons license.

On Saturday, March 3, the flood-ravaged town of Prattsville will host a housing expo and home improvement show, featuring contractors, architects, suppliers, green-building specialists, government and nonprofit agencies, lenders, realtors and more.

The expo is the first phase of Prattsville's long-term recovery and rebuilding plan. In Part II, slated to begin in mid-spring, the Prattsville Housing Committee will open a Housing Resource Center to help local homeowners with rebuilding projects.

Rebuilders from beyond Prattsville's borders are welcome too, said event organizer Annie Hull in a press release:

The legality of town bans on gas drilling in New York State is being tested in court -- and so far, the bans are holding up. Today, a state judge upheld a gas drilling ban in the Otsego County town of Middlefield, which was challenged by a local dairy farming company.

The New York Times reports:

...an acting State Supreme Court justice, Donald F. Cerio Jr., found that New York law did not prohibit municipalities from enacting legislation pertaining to land use. He said that while the state had regulatory powers over “the method and manner of drilling and the like” so that the gas industry operated under uniform standards statewide, local governments could decide whether they wanted drilling at all.