SamPratt.com

Song Sung Blue

By the author of Sweet Caroline, from The New York Public Library’s digital collection.

Politician gives himself a gold star

Patting himself on the back for a job poorly done, Hudson Council President Don Moore awards himself a gold star in the pages of The Register-Star. The achievement of which he’s so proud? Ushering through a sorry excuse of a Waterfront plan, one which doesn't guarantee Hudson any new jobs, or any meaningful environmental protections, or even a realistic new location for a boat launch... The one thing it does guarantee is plenty of headaches for future leaders and residents alike.

If Moore actually believes any of what he’s written, why have few if any of the concerns that he himself raised in his own March 2010 letter been addressed in this plan?

For example, Moore argued last year that if a certain zoning change demanded by Holcim/O&G were made, the City would lose control over its activity, and (in his words) there would be “no longer any restriction” on their South Bay activity.

Yet exactly that change was made for H/OG—with Moore’s apparent blessing—and now he ignores his own warning. Instead, he attempts to place gauzy halo over a Plan that has gotten weaker with each revision that he’s overseen in office.

If the Council President actually believed any of what he has written, he presumably would not have been so afraid to allow any of the 80+ people in the audience who attended the recent “special meeting” on this plan to speak, before rushing it to a vote.

What was he afraid of, exactly? That if the public were allowed to participate, this carefully-manicured veneer of responsibility might be punctured by actual facts— from both citizens and legal experts, who were waiting to speak?

Moore’s Politiburo-style move was un-democratic and un-American no matter what your position is on this plan. It was conduct ill-befitting any Common Council President, and something his precedessors such as Mary Anne Lemmerman, Mike Vertetis and John Cody never stooped to, even in the midst of other controversies.

As to the tissue-thin “substance” of Moore’s commentary, it reveals that he either does not understand his own Plan, or simply does not want to understand it—because to do so would be to require him to show some political mettle. (Moore has been heard many times to make bilious remarks about Linda Mussmann as a public figure, but his current position on the Waterfront is indistinguishable from hers.)

Moore apparently doesn't want to understand that the issue is not whether such activity stems from the cement, or gravel, or some other industry. If it were garbage hauling, or incineration, the concerns would be fundamentally the same, just with slightly different particulars. The public's concerns have been, for years now, the impacts.

Can Moore look the owners of, say, the Basilica, and tell them that a four- or five-fold increase in trucks running all day past the entrance used by their patrons and workers is not new "industrialization"? Can he tell us that the dust and fumes and noise from such a major increase is not further "industrialization" of the dock area, with no impact on neighbors trying to enjoy the publicly-funded park next door? (If he can, then he is sadly self-deluded, because such impacts have not even been assessed in the shoddy Generic Environmental Impact Statement associated with the Plan, and would likely never be assessed in the future he extolls.)

As a State attorney at the meeting said, as currently constructed the City would not be able to place limits on either trucks or the volume of gravel at the Waterfront. If that is not heavy "industrialization," what is? When attorney was asked after the meeting if Holcim were to increase the amount to the levels of the SLC Greenport Project, could that be limited or stopped under the current Plan, he could not say that it would.

The hard facts are that Holcim and O&G have estimated in a various applications that they intend to increase existing activity from the current baseline 100-130,000 tons per year to 500,000 tons per year, some 4-5 times the current amount. In 2005, the amount was zero. That is a massive increase in industrial impacts by any measure: many more trucks, many more barges, many more rail crossings, much more noise, and much more fugitive dust and fumes wafting over the Waterfront Park.

Yet the latest version of Moore's vaunted plan actually makes it harder to do anything about the industrial impacts, not just to the environment, but to neighboring businesses and public resources. Future Zoning Enforcement officers and future members of the Planning Commission, Zoning Board of Appeals, or Coastal Consistency Board would have neither clarity nor many tools to deal with an ever-escalating situation.

What are the effects of trucks, or a conveyor, or diesel fumes, or fuel spills, or constant barge traffic? How are neighboring businesses or public activities (from kayaking to concerts) or habitats limited or made impossible by severe nearby impacts? Since the 1970s, local and State and even Federal planners have recognized that Hudson's waterfront is very small, and produces "use conflicts" of this kind. Moore prefers instead to stick his head in the mud and pretend that he is not rushing ahead with a plan that gives the City few real controls over these very real concerns.

At the Valley Alliance website, you can see that the group has sent an authoritative legal memorandum detailing the issues with this plan, as well as 24 pages summarizing continued citizen concerns. The Register-Star and Columbia Paper have been provided with both.

402 years ago today

Entry in the September 24th, 1609 journal of sailor Robert Juet, who was aboard the Half Moon as it encountered the flats of the “middle ground” between what is now Hudson and Athens:

The foure and twentieth was faire weather: the winde at the North-west, wee weighed, and went downe the River seven or eight leagues; and at halfe ebbe wee came on ground on a banke of Oze in the middle of the river, and sate there till the floud. Then wee went on Land, and gathered good store of Chest-nuts. At ten of the clocke we came off into deepe water, and anchored.

The five and twentieth was faire weather, and the wind at South a stiff gale. We rode still, and went on Land to walke on the West side of the River, and found good ground for Corne and other Garden herbes, with great store of goodly Oakes, and Wal-nut trees, and Chest-nut trees, Ewe trees, and trees of sweet wood in great abundance, and great store of Slate for houses, and other good stones.

The sixe and twentieth was faire weather, and the wind at South a stiffe gale, wee rode still. In the morning our Carpenter went on Land, with our Masters Mate, and foure more of our companie, to cut wood. This morning, two Canoes came up the River from the place where we first found loving people, and in one of them was the old man that had lyen aboord of us at the other place. He brought another old man with him, which brought more stropes of Beades, and gave them to our Master, and shewed him all the Countrey there about, as though it were at his command. So he made the two old men dine with him, and the old mans wife: for they brought two old women, and two young maidens of the age of sixteene or seventeene yeeres with them, who behaved themselves very modestly. Our Master gave one of the old men a Knife, and they gave him and us Tabbaco. And at one of the clocke they departed downe the River, making signes that we should come down to them; for wee were within two leagues of the place where they dwelt.

The seven and twentieth, in the morning was faire weather, but much wind at the north, we weighed and set our fore top-sayle, and our ship would not flat, but ran on the Ozie banke at halfe ebbe. Wee layed out anchor to heave her off, but could not. So wee sate from halfe ebbe to halfe floud: then wee set our fore-sayle and mayne top-sayl, and got downe sixe leagues. The old man came aboord, and would have lad us anchor, and goe on Land, to eate with him: but the wind being faire, we would not yeeld to his request; so hee left us, being very sorrowfull for our departure.

At five of the clocke in the after-noone, the wind came to the South South-west. So wee made a boord or two, and anchored in fourteene fathomes water. Then our Boat went on shoare to fish right against the ship. Our Masters Mate and Boat-swaine, and three more of the companie went on land to fish, but could not finde a good place. They tooke foure or five and twentie Mullets, Breames, Bases, and Barbils; and returned in an houre. We rode still all night.

 [ h/t Ian Nitschke ]

American Beauty

Forbes has named the Hudson one of the World’s Most Beautiful Rivers, along with the Caño Cristales, the Danube, the Kenai, the Mekong and more... The magazine didn’t, however, manage to find a particularly stunning photo of our river; see their shot here. The more dramatic snapshot above is by Hudson’s own Alphonse Telymonde.

S.P.ecies

The New York State Department of State (DOS) has proposed upgrading Hudson’s South Bay to a Significant Fish & Wildlife Habitat. The Valley Alliance has created a web tool which allows you to simply and directly send an email to DOS supporting this beneficial idea.

Doing so not only will help protect and restore the ecology of this unique area. It may also lead to Hudson developing a more forward-looking Waterfront plan, one with far more economic, social, cultural and environmental benefits than the current draft.

Attached here are the extensive comments I’ve submitted to the State, documenting numerous rare, threatened, endangered and other species of concern which have been identified in the South Bay area—in many cases, by Holcim itself. But you don’t have to be any kind of expert to participate, so please visit the VA’s action page today...

Hudson 101: The Cement Plant Battle (Part 2)

[ Click here for Part 1 ]

NOTE: This piece originally appeared in last year’s environment issue of Our Town (the Columbia County quarterly), under the title The Bullet We Dodged: How the Cement War was Won.* I’m offering it here in several installments over the next week, in a somewhat expanded form, and with added visuals and links, both for those who lived through the tumultuous years of 1998-2005, and for others who moved to the area more recently—who may wonder what all the fuss was about...

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Whenever big projects like the St. Lawrence Cement complex get proposed, citizens are told that the project is inevitable—a “done deal.”

Invariably, the company behind the project is said to be vastly wealthy and influential—politically wired in. Accommodationists starting making lists of tepid compromises, empty concessions which benefit only themselves or their immediate circle. Defeatists sigh that there’s no point fighting, since you can’t fight City Hall. 

But in every one of these controversies, the supposed minority eventually can become a majority, and the people prevailed.

The pattern in each of the fights listed in Part 1 of this series was nearly identical, and went something like this: At first, the press only reported the company line, with Town, County and State officials dutifully toeing it. Jobs, jobs, jobs was the mantra, plus some token assurances that all environmental rules and standards would be “met or exceeded.” The few who dared ask even basic questions were automatically branded as a “strident” or “vocal” minority.

Those who merely expected their politicians and regulators to do a little due diligence before going all in on these projects were given derisive labels. They were CAVE People (Citizens Against Virtually Everything) with BANANA (Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone) outlooks and NIMBY (Not In My Backyard) attitudes.

But as Hudson River bard Pete Seeger likes to say: NIMBY should be spelled with a second “I”, standing for Now I Must Be Involved.

And that’s the answer when people ask how we stopped the cement plant—despite the fact that SLC’s parent was the largest cement manufacturer in the world, despite the initial widespread support of political officials and the County establishment, despite the company’s $60 million expenditure on lawyers, consultants, experts, flacks, ads, mass mailings, campaign contributions, charitable donations, and more— because everyone got involved.

We won because ordinary residents decided to stand up like woodchucks on their hind legs, scent the air, and then burrow in to our own home turf for a long trench war.

If there is another giant controversy in the next decade, the people surely will prevail again; but only because people power is not a passive cliché. It works. There’s no such thing as a done deal when local energies are properly organized and channeled into a focused, comprehensive campaign.

But how does this people power work in practice, rather than theory? The labor leader Cesar Chavez was often asked the secret to his success at organizing farm workers. “First I talk to one person; then I talk to another person,” was his standard reply.

Confused, the questioner would repeat the question. But Chavez would simply repeat: “First I talk to one person; then I talk to another person.”

Eventually the questioner would get that the “secret” of organizing relies not on any trick or scheme, but on the combined talents of many individuals working together as a community—complementing and amplifying each other’s skills, contacts and perspectives.

Naturally, any long campaign has to be constantly guided, shaped, strategized, narrowed, expanded, recast, reinvigorated, and re-imagined along the way. Early on,  grassroots groups often will stumble over simple mechanical obstacles, such as group structure, personalities, fatalism, expertise, exhaustion, funding. But once a group gets its feet planted, and begins defending that home turf by beating the bushes for more like minds, anything’s possible.

What follows is a partial chronicle of those who emerged from the Valley underbrush and made striking contributions to the Stop the Plant cause. Their stories not only deserve to be recorded, but may also inspire the next generation of accidental activists who find themselves fighting the next life-or-death battle for the soul of our region. Naturally, a full portrait of all who gave their time, energy, courage and imagination (not to mention dollars) to stop the plant would be impossible. The victory achieved was an amalgam of countless individual contributors, which transcended any single contribution.

THE LONGTIMERS • Divide and conquer was SLC’s key strategy from the get-go. The company blanketed the region’s airwaves with inflammatory advertising, and filled mailboxes across five counties with what retired Hudson advertising maven Tom Mabley called “commercialized hate mail,” intended to ignite a culture war.

“Don’t let a group of millionaires from New York City deny Columbia County good-paying jobs,” blared one glossy postcard. Meanwhile, the Register-Star churned out vicious, willfully ignorant editorials in favor of their biggest advertiser on a nearly weekly basis—caricaturing plant opponents as elitists attending “wine and brie” parties, while denying that the company’s tens of thousands in annual ads had nothing to do with the paper’s position.

But plenty of local people remembered the bad old days of Hudson’s cement era, when brown snow fell in winter, and widows grieved the early deaths of their breadwinning husbands.

Hudson resident Al Cook, a silver-haired and gravelly-voiced former union chief who led the longest strike in the history of Atlas Cement, was among the first to express skepticism.

Though neutral on the project at first, “Cookie” took a show-me stance, warning that “You can’t trust these cement company bosses farther than you can throw ’em. Their promises don’t mean nothing unless it’s written down.” Others who had lived here all their lives stepped forward. Deb Novack, a realtor and popular local bartender, joined opponents’ steering group after getting tired of hearing too much misinformation bandied about at Melino’s Pub. Hudson matriarch Mary Lou Groll wore “Stop the Plant” buttons on her lapel to counteract some of her own family members’ “Support the Plan(e)t” banners.

Opponents were invited to speak everywhere from the Hudson Rotary Club to the Germantown Lions Club to the Ladies Auxiliary of the Elizaville Fire Department to the basement of St. James Church in Chatham, and no brie was in evidence.

We were graciously hosted by Dave Staats and other members of the Federation of Polish Sportsmen, where our big annual picnic was held each summer. We were likewise welltreated by the ladies managing the former St. Mary’s Academy gymnasium, the site of our yearly winter get-together, drawing over 500 attendees from all walks of life.

So while the company and its allies sought to distort the facts of the project and demean those who would have to live in its shadow, longtime residents stood alongside those who had lived here “only” ten, twenty, or thirty years, proving SLC’s divisive rhetoric just as false as the rest of their far-fetched claims.

THE RESEARCHERS • Whenever I’d spot Elizabeth Nyland opening the door to my office—in her usual long skirt, her hair in a bun, toting an armful of file folders bursting with Post-It notes—I knew that our knowledge of the economic side of the plant argument was about to take another quantum leap forward.

A retired analyst for companies like American Express, living on Route 23B, a couple miles from the proposed stack, Elizabeth focused her forensic skills on the economic claims buried within SLC’s 800-page application. Through the careful work of Elizabeth and others, it became clear that the project wasn’t going to be an employment boon.

The company already had 154 employees in the area, and with the new plant, the total would go up to 155, a net gain of only one new job.

Bit by bit, volunteers like Elizabeth teased these facts out of the depths of SLC’s own documents, turning the company’s own words against it, revealing the contradictions within its claims.

Claverack’s Ian Nitschke, whose deliberate Australian drawl and patroon-like gold eyeglasses were familiar fixtures at our meetings, used expertise developed at the State Public Service Commission to locate more ammunition. Ian dug up 1970s testimony about the failed nuclear project, which spoke to the immense cultural importance of the Hudson Valley, noting how pertinent it was to this new fight. He had also worked closely on challenges to the Athens Generating plant with Laura Skutch, a Sleepy Hollow Lake resident who stumbled across a then-little-known set of regulations: the State’s 44 policies for managing lands within New York’s Coastal Zone. Since the proposed plant would affect designated zones north and south of Hudson, these policies also applied to SLC. In the end, this was the legal handle we turned to stop the plant.

Sign created by Bob Blechman

Taghkanic’s Moisha Blechman, though diminutive and outwardly delicate, brought a fierce and seasoned activist will to the battle. She proposed an idea which no one at first believed would ever come to fruition: writing a comprehensive manual covering every essential detail of the cement project and industry. The idea was to have a single reference source for all the questions that were constantly cropping up. Not only did Moisha complete the project, she obtained a grant to finance printing of 20,000 copies, handsomely packaged with graphics by her son, Nicholas. Though some old Sierra Club rivalries briefly threatened to derail the project, and some allies almost balked at distributing it, in the end SLC: Understanding the Impact proved an indispensable tool for organizing both thought and action, conferring the authority of a book upon the opposition’s research. Knowledge is power, and for citizens faced with a wellfunded and politically-connected adversary, it’s one of the few affordable weapons available—fighting the company’s PR fire with blazing facts.

NEXT UP: Historians, Go-Getters, Creatives, Marketeers, and Converts turn the tide.  [ Click for Part 3 ]

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* Readers who want to read the full, original OT article as edited by Enid Futterman and designed by John Isaacs can download it as a PDF right away by clicking here. A full, week-by-week chronology of the fight can be found at Stop the Plant.com.

We bring benzenes to life

As one astute observer of the Hudson River PCB problem remarked to me today: “Capping roughly a quarter of the dredge area isn’t a victory.”

Letter to the Editor

The following “Our View” column was submmitted today by The Valley Alliance, in response to recent attacks by Hudson Mayor Rick Scalera and former Waterfront Advisory Steering Committee chair Linda Mussmann of Time & Space Ltd.

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It’s the people’s waterfront,

not a political football

by Sam Pratt & Peter Jung
Co-directors, The Valley Alliance

For the Valley Alliance, the future of the Waterfront isn't about personalities, or who wins and loses. That future should be all about securing the most economic, social, educational, cultural and ecological benefits for a broad spectrum of residents. The Waterfront has terrific potential to be the prime vehicle for spreading prosperity to all segments of the community.

Compared with the draft now on the table, the Waterfront plan we favor would create many more jobs, local tax relief, recreational and commercial opportunities. It would foster more cohesion among divided groups, and also eliminate the heavy truck traffic which Holcim has imposed on our downtown. Plus, a more community-minded approach could be enacted both efficiently and legally.

Our singular goal is to ensure an outcome that will stand Hudson and the region in good stead for decades to come, long after the current personalities and politics are forgotten. We have openly set forth these principles at our website:

www.hudsonwaterfront.org

Meanwhile, the Valley Alliance is just one of many who have participated in good faith in the Waterfront process. Others, from the Village of Athens to the Olana Partnership to the LWRP Task Force to nearly 900 residents have expressed concerns about where the draft plan is headed. Also this week, the Greenport Planning Board asked tough questions and insisted on more information from Swiss-owned Holcim and Connecticut-based O&G, the two companies at the center of all the ruckus. (Both have had major recent worker safety problems, by the way.) It’s not so easy to accuse the Greenport board of either delaying tactics or being “newcomers.”

But lately, readers don't hear much about all those other groups and peoples’ concerns. Instead, the pages of the Register-Star and the halls of government have become the scene of outbursts from Rick Scalera and Linda Mussmann, each in a personal rage against "Peter and Sam" or "Pratt and Jung."

Unfortunately, these explosions of anger suggest that they consider the Waterfront only good for one thing: settling political scores. Their motivation to personalize the issue are obvious. Scalera failed to site both a toxic waste operation and a massive cement operation in South Bay. Mussmann betrayed her own principles to cozy up to the cement folks, wrongly imagining this would help her third attempt to become Mayor turn out differently from the previous two. So both have seized on the Waterfront as their best chance to get even, all at the expense of the people.

That’s not a sensible approach to public policy. Readers are free to take Scalera and Mussmann's outbursts at face value, though it defies reason how a group formed several months ago could have delayed a plan that's been in the works for 23 years. And of course, it was politicos like Scalera who didn't want the LWRP to move forward an inch from 1998-2005, as it might have hurt campaign contributors at St. Lawrence Cement.

For those who like to make up their own minds based on first-hand information, Mid-Hudson Media’s Rob Johanson has documented our half-hour presentation to Hudson business leaders last month. These online videos also include a frank, hourlong question-and-answer session:

www.midhudsonmedia.com/clients/valleyalliance

One key question from that session was asked by local mortgage broker Seth Rapport, who wondered how the public might acquire the remainder of the waterfront for more beneficial uses. We clearly discuss how this can be done without any use of eminent domain, through a partnership of City, State, Federal, nonprofit, and private funding.

More defeatist voices like those of the Mayor and Ms. Mussmann don't want the public to hear realistic and nuanced solutions. Instead they want to inflame and limit debate by focusing n personal vendettas and extreme either/or options, such as industry vs. recreation or eminent domain vs. property rights. That’s just the usual Hudson divide-and-conquer politics. There are many shades of gray along those spectrums, and also creative solutions which don't fit into their predictable us vs. them pattern.

Meanwhile, falling in line with instructions from their City Hall patrons, the city's attorney and planner (who've just been awarded another $15,000 to grade their own work) have worsened this unhelpful dynamic by repeating these false either/or choices. In over 100 pages of comments, we (like many others) have soberly set forth many omissions and misreprestations in the draft, such the lack of a true Harbor Management Plan necessary to ensure boater safety.

Now the City is in the last stages of the process, when it's required to review and incorporate public input. Legally, that required step can't be skipped over. Yet the City's hired guns spent nearly all of three recent Council meetings lobbying the Aldermen to let them ignore the clear community consensus contained in those comments. The advice received has been both slanted and incomplete.

Residents, taxpayers, businesses, workers, investors and travelers alike can benefit enormously from a better plan which allows many types of positive development alongside well-protected habitats. Unlike Newburgh or Yonkers, Hudson's waterfront is compact, so the key issue is compatibility. The one piece of the puzzle which simply can't coexist with the rest is noisy, dusty, and hazardous activities which harm other legitimate uses and scare away jobs.

On that score we agree 100% with the Secretary of State who set forth in 2005 exactly how to rezone the Waterfront in a more forward-looking, economically-beneficial direction which phases out incompatible uses. The basis for that official finding was, ironically, the 1995 Hudson Vision Plan, which recommended that the City acquire property from the cement company, and zone out harsh impacts. The Mayor opposed and derailed that plan, so it’s astonishing that he would now try to misconstrue and even co-opt it.

It's time to streamline the draft Plan so that it fully reflects the Secretary’s clear recommendations. Finishing the Waterfront process doesn't have to be difficult or lengthy, if it's done right — rather than used as a vehicle for political retribution and community division. This is no longer high school, so the Mayor should stop playing political football with the City's future.

New Alliance hires legal eagle

See the full Valley Alliance press release at the Save the South Bay site, which reads in part:

The Alliance announced Monday morning that it has raised the funds necessary to retain the well-respected land use attorney Warren Replansky of Pine Plains to analyze the City's Draft Local Waterfront Revitalization Plan, or LWRP. [...] Replansky's extensive track record includes assisting municipalities and citizens throughout the region to properly enact and enforce land use planning laws.

Jenny turns 60

Rossman Avenue, Hudson

Making the rounds (5/3)

HUDSON » Tortillaville, the wildly popular taco stand which occupied the corner of 5th and Warren streets last summer, is returning in 10-12 days—to a new location in the now-empty lot in front of the former John Doe Books & Records (before that, City Glass) in the 300 block of Warren Street. Owners Brian and Allison have announced some additions to their already stellar menu, including a roasted vegetable and polenta burrito, and a shrimp and egg burrito... Hours of operation will be Wednesdays through Sundays, roughly 11:30 am to 5:30 pm.

GHENT » The “European-style Heavy Metal Fest” which was slated for Meadowgreens has been moved northwest of Schenectady to Pattersonville “due to unforeseen issue's [sic] at the Meadow Greens [sic],” according to the promoter’s impressively ugly website.

HUDSON VALLEY » According to this wire report in the Kingston Daily Freeman, home sales jumped in the first quarter of this year compared to 2009: “by 54.3 percent in Greene County, by 43.7 percent in Ulster County, by 42.9 percent in Columbia County, and by 8.8 percent in Dutchess County.”

HUDSON RIVER » General Electric says that Phase 1 of its EPA-ordered dredging projected cost $561 million (or about 3.6% their gross annual revenue). Poor things.

Wading in the Hudson

This fanciful, colorized William Wade engraving of the Hudson waterfront shows both the North and South Bays, and appeared in Wade & Croome’s Panorama of the Hudson River from New York to Albany in 1846. (You can click the image to enlarge it somewhat.)