| Watershed Post

Race for Bonacic's Senate seat heating up

If he runs for re-election, state senator John Bonacic will face at least two challengers this fall, in a race that is shaping up to be a referendum on natural-gas drilling in the region (which Bonacic emphatically supports).

Sullivan County legislator Dave Sager, who switched party affiliations from Republican to Democrat in order to challenge Bonacic, announced his candidacy yesterday. From the Times Herald-Record:

"Our current state senator is part of the problem," Sager said. "He is behind on flood mitigation, he is wrong on gas drilling and he has done nothing on ethics reform."

Sager's party switch is giving the Bonacic camp plenty of easy fodder. In Bonacic's campaign-trail thesaurus, "Democrat" is a synonym for "New York City," and the Senator isn't wasting any time painting Sager as a pawn in the hand of city interests. From the Daily Freeman:

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Fun rapidly draining out of Dutchmen's Landing

First the farmer's market got moved downtown. Now the village elders are moving the fireworks, too. Quoth village board president Vincent Seeley in the Freeman:

“There is a potential public safety issue with cramming upwards of 3,000 people down at the boat launch with only one way in and one way out,” he said at a Village Board meeting on Monday. “The second thing is we wanted to bring more attention to our (Catskill Creek) waterfront because that has been part of our revitalization. We wanted to bring more attention to our downtown area.”

On the Catskill Daily Mail's website, opinion on a poll about the fireworks is running 77% against the move.

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Ulster County accuses Kingston man of harassment, extortion

A whole bunch of village, town and county officials in Ulster County are probably wishing that they'd never heard of Richard-Enrique Ulloa, a man whom they accused of fraud and extortion in a civil lawsuit filed in federal court a week ago.

According to court documents, after getting a traffic ticket in Rosendale last May, Ulloa appeared in Rosendale Town Court before Town Justice Robert Vosper. When Ulloa refused to produce an ID, Vosper sent him to Ulster County Jail.

Two days after his court appearance, Ulloa began sending some aggressive pieces of mail. First, he sent Vosper a document labeled "criminal complaint," along with a demand for over $150 million. Then he sent a similar document to the town of Rosendale, demanding over $550 million.

Over the course of half a year, Ulloa sent more invoices and demands, until finally he filed liens for millions of dollars with the New York Department of State against the town of Rosendale and against Vosper. All over a traffic ticket.

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Friday surprise fallout

Reactions to the DEC's announcement last week are still ricocheting around the watershed. The Daily Freeman published an editorial today that endorsed the new regs, WAMC ran a long radio piece on Monday about the issue, and the directors of Schoharie Valley Watch advocated a statewide ban, according to the Times-Journal:

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DEC's Friday Surprise

Schoharie Valley Watch

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Greene County re-animates its zombie courthouse

After a year of operating out of a school building a few blocks away, the Greene County Courthouse in Catskill is finally re-opened for business, reports the Daily Mail.

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Greene County Courthouse

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Greene County

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Government

People

Schoharie's Times-Journal finds Facebook

The Times-Journal, a weekly based in Cobleskill that covers Schoharie County, has had some trepidations about Facebook:

Usually, we like to think we know what we’re doing at the Times-Journal. And almost never, with the exception of editorials and columns, do we write in the first person. Which helps to explain why we’ve waited a while to go public with the fact that the Times-Journal is now on Facebook.

But the newspaper has finally taken the plunge. Its fan page already has over 400 fans, which is enough to make it want more:

You can find us on Facebook by going to our website and clicking on the Facebook button there. Or you can go straight to Facebook and type “Times-Journal” into “search.” We’re not the Times-Journal with the baby in the profile photo—that’s another Times-Journal in Franklin, Georgia--we’re the T-J with the bound volumes of the Cobleskill Times in the photo. Fan us.

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Watershed advocate Herman Gottfried dies

Herman Gottfried, a lawyer who fought New York City on behalf of residents of the drowned towns that now lie beneath the waters of the Pepacton and Cannonsville reservoirs, died on April 24 at the age of 99.

Local historian Diane Galusha (author of Liquid Assets: A History of New York City's Water System) wrote Gottfried's obituary in this week's Catskill Mountain News. Gottfried worked for the city before switching sides to argue on behalf of landowners, as Galusha described in Liquid Assets:

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If he wants to eat any more locally, he'll have to buy a cow

Aspiring locavore Akira Ohiso at Zinc Plate Press recently ditched Dannon in an effort to eat closer to home. Lucky for him, there's Tonjes Farm yogurt from Callicoon, made within 25 miles of his house.

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Drilling "just a matter of time," says Times Herald-Record

An incisive editorial from the Times Herald-Record about why the DEC's Friday decision to make it tough for gas drilling in NYC's watershed means that drilling elsewhere in New York state is now inevitable:

The city, with all its lawyers, money and clout, was a good partner for those towns, cities and villages, plus all their residents, who do not have the resources to take on the oil and gas industry. The struggle to prevent pollution of the water and desecration of the land would be a universal goal.

Last week, however, the state removed the city watershed from the sites where drilling could take place and, therefore, removed the city as a potential ally for others who fear what drilling will bring. That decision had nothing to do with the environment and everything to do with politics.

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DEC's Friday Surprise

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Physical therapy office dumps patient files in Monticello

A medical provider that left its Monticello office months ago apparently didn't have time to follow those pesky patient privacy laws before it departed, according to the Times Herald-Record:

Lydia Truglio-Chavdarova, who works at a nearby RadioShack, said the company left months ago.

She said a stack of about 15 boxes appeared outside the office's back door a week ago. A few days later, the stack was moved to the front-loader's bucket. “I thought someone was going to pick them up, and they never did,” she said.

Truglio-Chavdarova eventually peered into one of the boxes. What she saw startled her, she said.

“I couldn't believe it – the fact that there's hundreds of identities out there that can get stolen,” she said.

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DRC Physical Therapy Plus

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