Fiberglass cats! Board games! Is there nothing the town of Catskill won't try?

Instead of going to jail, as in the original game, players can land in Catskill Town Court.

And the most expensive properties on the board are not Park Place and Boardwalk but the Catskill Central School District Business Office and the Superintendent’s Office.

Hmm. We think a Catskills-region version of this could be fun. The Emerson in the Boardwalk spot? Hunter, Plattekill, Belleayre and Windham instead of railroads? Pass CWC, collect $200? "Get your septic system approved by the DEP" cards?

The gasmen are coming to town. Among the byproducts of the Marcellus Shale natural-gas drilling boom: a flood of legal work that is already well underway a few miles to the south. The Philadelphia Inquirer talks to PA lawyers about the impact Marcellus drilling is having on their practices.

Many lawyers in Pennsylvania think the most lucrative work is yet to come, because development is in its infancy. As wells are drilled and pipelines are built, the amount of work representing drillers before state and federal regulators will burgeon.

A great source of legal information about the gas industry is the Oil and Gas Lawyer Blog, whose author, John McFarland, is a Texas energy attorney who specializes in representing landowners. Today's post: a look at a recent report from Chesapeake.

The New York Times continues its excellent "Toxic Waters" series today, with a disturbing revelation: Rulings in recent years by the Supreme Court have left the nation's courts with an increasingly vague definition of which waterways the Clean Water Act applies to.

The Clean Water Act was intended to end dangerous water pollution by regulating every major polluter. But today, regulators may be unable to prosecute as many as half of the nation’s largest known polluters because officials lack jurisdiction or because proving jurisdiction would be overwhelmingly difficult or time consuming, according to midlevel officials.

An act of Congress could restore the original scope of the Clean Water Act, but resistance to such an action is already mobilizing, fueled by fears that Congress will regulate "rain puddles."

Does every county in upstate New York really need its own jail? In Sullivan County, whose jail is falling apart and has been partly shut down by the state, legislators don't think so--and state senator John Bonacic agrees. The senator just introduced legislation to allow counties to share regional facilities, the Mid-Hudson News reports.

Bonacic’s bill would allow counties to build, finance, refinance and maintain regional jails instead of requiring each county to maintain one. The legislation would also allow long term agreements between a county with an existing jail and a county which would otherwise need to build a new one.

Background: Catskill Chronicle visits the crumbling Sullivan County jail, says "Dracula would have felt right at home."

A May, 2009 New York Times story on the movement for municipal consolidation in New York State.

Kingston Citizens is urging residents to contact their legislators to spare the historic site from the budget axe.