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Dust busters

Thanks to the vigilance of Riverkeeper—which filed a complaint about the facility at Cementon across the river from Germantown—Glens Falls Lehigh Cement has been fined $50,000 by the State for allowing leachate to seep into the Hudson River.

The Kingston Daily Freeman reports, however, that the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation will forgive 20% of the fine if Lehigh takes steps to correct the problem within three years. Riverkeeper’s complaint goes all the way back to 2007.

The Lehigh plant no longer manufactures cement from scratch, but rather blends portland cement produced elsewhere with imported slag, a waste from the iron industry. Residents banding together under the rubric of the Germantown Neighbors Association have challenged the facility’s permitting and management over the past decade.

Blotter papers

In the past week, much public curiosity and press attention has focused on a search for former Alderman Quintin Cross “in connection with” a break-in at City Hall. But what of the other 20something man sought by the Hudson Police Department, Jamont M. McClendon?

McClendon’s name, it turns out, has appeared regularly in the police blotters published over the past two years by the Hudson Valley Newspaper chain. A search of online archives indicates that he was arrested at least nine times during that period, for a variety of (mostly) minor offenses.

Below is a summary of this string of arrests and charges lodged against McClendon, whose place of residence alternates shifts during this brief period between Hudson, Catskill, Stuyvesant and Kinderhook:

• McClendon (then “of Hudson”) was arrested in August 2010 by Officers Pierro and Newkirk upon a bench warrant issued the previous month, when McClendon was alleged to have fled from officers. On the 11th, he allegedly fled again “near Fifth and State streets after being told he was under arrest.” Pursued on foot, he “allegedly jumped fences and ran through yards in the 400 block of Long Alley. Patrols responded and were able to flush him out.” He then was charged with both failing to appear and two counts of resisting arrest.

• State Police arrested McClendon (for the moment still “of Hudson”) on Nov. 21st for “false personation” after “allegedly giving police a fake name while being interviewed for a a criminal mischief complaint on Healy Boulevard in the town of Greenport.”

• In the New Year, McClendon (now said to be “of Catskill”) was arrested again, this time on January 5th by HPD Officer Keyser on a charge of “third-degree criminal trespass for allegedly going onto High Rise property when there was a Hudson Housing Authority notice of trespass” dating back to December 2010.

• State police charged McClendon (still “of Catskill”) on February 17th with another count of resisting arrest plus one of “criminal mischief: intent to damage property.” Arraigned in Catskill Town Court, he was “remanded to Greene County Jail in lieu of $1,500 bail.”

• On March 25th, McClendon (“of Catskill”) was arrested yet again, this time by HPD Officer Rowe on a charge of “petit larceny for allegedly stealing $150” from an unidentified person.

• Just six days later, on March 31st, McClendon (now said to be living in Stuyvesant) was arrested by County Sheriff Hofstetter and turned over to the State Police on a warrant “charging him with unauthorized use of a motor vehicle from the Stuyvesant Town Court as he was being released from the County Jail on unrelated charges.”

• McClendon does not appear again in the blotter until the Fall (now identified as living on “Sunnyside Road in Kinderhook”). On October 7th, he was issued an appearance ticket in Hudson by Officer Hodges “for disorderly conduct of fighting with violent behavior… at the intersection of Second and State streets.”

• 10 days later, McClendon (evidently back living in Hudson) was arrested on October 17th by Officer Sweet. He was issued a new appearance ticket on charges of “disorderly conduct of unreasonable noise, disorderly conduct of refusing to move on, and open container.”

• The following month, McClendon (again identified as resident of State Street in Hudson) on the 13th by the HPD's Officer Nero on a charge of “resisting arrest, disorderly conduct of fighting with violent behavior and two active warrants for disorderly conduct on Oct. 21 and resisting arrest on Oct. 25.” The HPD indicated that they were called to Wunderbar on a tip that McClendon was there, “at which time he actively resisted patrol. He was arraigned by Judge Portin and remanded to county jail in lieu of $5,000 cash bail or $5,000 bail bond.”

Note that the police blotters published online in the Catskill Daily Mail, unlike those of its sister publication The Register-Star, carefully and appropriately state that “a charge is not a conviction,” that “all persons listed are innocent until proven guilty in a court of law,” and that charges lodged “can be amended or dismissed.”

Triage vs. Precaution

Further to yesterday’s post on the matter of State policy for assessing the visual impact of development projects, below is another important passage from the 2001 Issues Conference on the St. Lawrence Cement Greenport project. This was the first major test of the new DEC policy, which had been completed concurrently with the agency’s initial, positive review of SLC’s application.

(Some might say that the policy had been tailored, consciously or not, to avoid conflict with that company’s goals; at the time, the Pataki administration in general and Encon Staff in particular were believed to be pro-plant. The still-contested Athens Gen project, visible from the northern side of Olana and from other vistas in Columbia and Greene counties, may also have put pressure on staff to circumscribe its guidelines.)

The speakers below are Adminsitrative Law Judge (ALJ) Helene Goldberger and DEC staffer Rick Benas, who was also a member of Saturday’s Olana panel. This passage appears on pp. 1709-10 of the official transcript [PDF] of the July 2001 hearings, and immediately followed stern challenges from Olana attorney John Caffry to the State’s premature acceptance of the project’s visual impacts:

   16                     JUDGE GOLDBERGER:  […] But Staff is

   17      satisfied that based upon the mitigation that's been

   18      offered by St. Lawrence Cement that it meets the SEQR 

   19      requirements?

   20                     MR. BENAS:  What Staff believes is

   21      that the Applicant has minimized impacts to the 

   22      maximum extent practicable, has offered substantial

   23      offsets and decomissioning that the decision-maker

   24      has to take into account, along with all other

    2      essential considerations to reach a decision in this

    3      case.

    4                     By itself, this discipline does not --

    5      the effects, the significant residual impacts are not

    6      significant enough to suggest denial.

The problem, again, is that the DEC visual assessment policy used by Benas and his colleagues (and still in use today) proceeds from an assumption that SEQR review is a form of triage. The regulator assumes and accepts that some of their patients—here, valuable elements of landscape—will be partially maimed or lost entirely. Not everyone will be saved. He or she then calculates which patients need the most care and which have the best chance of survival, and decides which are most important to try to save first.

In the cases of both SLC’s Greenport project and to some extent the review of Athens Gen, the southern Olana viewshed was deemed by some in Albany to be the more important “patient.” If you did what you could to protect the southern view, at the expense of the rest, that was acceptable from the stanpoint of regulatory triage. Building three medium-sized stacks to the north in Athens, or one gargantuan one to the east in Greenport, was deemed a secondary priority, one that could be sacrificed to benefit the view to the south.

Many citizens and historians, however, would start instead with a more fundamental maxim from medicine—the imperative to first, do no harm. For environmentalists, this notion is enshrined in the Precautionary Principle. And this notion (which polluter-friendly regulators rarely if ever want to contemplate) is in fact built into the State Environmental Quality Review Act as the requirement that proposals must be evaluated in relation to the “No Build Option.”

DEC’s visual assessment policy in this case gave cover to those who, like company attorney Tom West, wished to erase that option from the menu. Or at least, that’s how DEC treated its own internal guidelines in their first major test. This intersected with another common debate between the lawyers on each side: How to interpret the dictates of SEQR’s balancing provisions. How much triage does “balancing” allow? If one impact is unacceptable, but three others are acceptable, can the three take precedence over the one? (In a Coastal Consistency review by DOS, no “balancing” is supposed to occur—if you violate one policy, it shouldn’t matter how consistent the project are with the rest.)

And as it turned out, no such triage was necessary in the SLC case. Today, there is no cement plume from either a Greenport stack or a Catskill one. The Precautionary Principle prevailed. (The same cannot be said of Athens Gen, which was permitted cynically on an unachievable condition that there would be no visible plume from the facility, though one often sees a massive one over Athens from the Columbia County side of the river on cold, damp winter days.)

As noted in yesterday’s post, the current visual policy serves as a non-binding set of guidelines for regulatory staff. It is not law, though a suggestion was advanced at the Saturday panel that it be made so. To do so would be to codify that dangerous assumption: that some “resources” may be sacrificed for others.

A bend in the river... and in State policy

At 3 pm on Saturday, The Olana Partnership presented an illuminating panel discussion at Stair Galleries moderated by Hudson resident and Manhattan attorney Dorothy Heyl about the successful late 1970s fight to stop a nuclear power plant proposed in Cementon—smack in the middle of Olana’s southern viewshed.

Overall, the panel discussion was highly informative, stimulating and at times even inspirational. Of particular interest were Carl Petrich’s recollections of how officials within the Oak Ridge lab of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission supported his landscape planning work in spite of his eventual conclusion that this wasn’t a suitable location for a nuclear plant.Petrich’s independent-minded analysis was in many ways responsible for the project’s demise.

Fellow panelist Wint Aldrich similarly recalled that he was afforded a remarkable degree of autonomy to question the project within the Hugh Carey administration. Today it seems hard to imagine that the same level of non-politicized, objective, but ultimately oppositional research would be as tolerated in our 21st Century Federal and State bureaucracies...

There were, meanwhile, a couple of moments when an informed observer couldn't help wishing for a longer and more detailed debate than is possible on a late Saturday afternoon.

For example, panelist Rick Benas, a semi-retired NYS DEC staffer, touted a visual impact assessment policy he helped finalize in 2000. As reported by John Mason in The Catskill Daily Mail, Benas heralded this internal agency policy as a signature achievement growing out of the nuclear plant fight—characterizing it as “the basis with which the DEC judges all submissions regarding aesthetics. You identify the resource, figure out how to minimize the impact.”

Benas (who had earlier offered an authoritative explication of the visual elements which make the view from Olana so powerful) touted the policy as “an objective way to measure a subjective phenomenon.” He further claimed that it “is supported by both industry and environmentalists, concluding that “What’s in here is what we all share. If an agency’s not doing its job, throw this in their face.”

That sounded pretty darn good... prompting another panelist to suggest that maybe this policy should become law, rather than just an internal guidance policy.

However, Mr. Benas neglected to mention that in 2001 he and his colleagues at DEC had interpreted that very same policy to justify their support for the proposed St. Lawrence Cement Greenport project—a project resolutely opposed by Olana primarily due to visual impacts.

In 2001 proceedings before Administrative Law Judge Helene Goldberger, Olana attorney John Caffry expressed amazement at Benas and DEC’s policy-backed assessment, calling it “mind-boggling.”

Why “mind-boggling”? Because the SLC Greenport proposal featured, among other things, a 400-foot stack the size of an office building, with a plume stretching five miles or more, as well as several dozen other major structures atop Becraft Mountain and at the Hudson Waterfront. County resident Moisha Blechman aptly called it a “new industrial city.” As seen in the documentary Two Square Miles, balloon tests insisted upon by citizens later confirmed just how colossal and pervasive the visual impact of that new “city” could have been.

Yet the DEC’s 2000 policy made it very difficult, if not impossible, for the agency to reject a proposal based on visual impacts... even impacts as vast as those proposed by SLC. That’s because their policy is based on the premise that if a company does everything it can to “mitigate” and “offset” its presence in the landscape, then the project can still be approved—even if after those efforts, there are still significant, adverse, “residual” impacts.

In lay terms, the DEC policy says: If a company gets an A for effort, it makes it OK for them to get an F on the actual test. The policy allows approval of a project despite its harsh and discordant elements, so long as the applicant makes a good faith effort to mitigate them “to the maxium extent practicable.”

So while Mr. Benas and DEC acknowledged in 2001 that it was impossible to hide such a big project, since SLC was offering as many mitigations as possible given the circumstances, the remaining negative impacts did not constitute grounds for a denial.

Thus Benas, backed by then-DEC attorney Bob Leslie, argued from their visual policy that hiding a small portion of the 400-foot stack in an 80-foot hole in the Greenport quarry, painting parts of it light blue, then removing several structures plus the plume from Catskill was an adequate combination of mitigation and “offsets” to warrant approval, even though the plant would still have undeniable visual impacts. Following this policy, the agency proceeds from the assumption that virtually every proposal will be built. In that context, the agency’s job becomes limited to making the best of bad situations—not to prevent them. (This mindset is not limited to government bureaucrats; Scenic Hudson president Ned Sullivan has similarly argued, in the pages of The New York Times, that his organization’s role is to “manage” development, not to stop it.)

Below is the key section of Benas’ 2001 testimony from the Issues Conference held at the Hudson Elks’ Lodge referenced above, pp. 1696-7:

10                     Staff is guided by DEC program policy

11      number DEP-00-2 assessing and mitigating visual

12      impacts.  The policy was the subject of public review

13      and comment, had a peer review and comment, and was

14      issued in July of 2000.

15                     What the policy does is, among other

16      things, it gives the universal list of all mitigation

17      strategies in this discipline.  With that list, if an

18      Applicant demonstrates that they have employed every

19      strategy of mitigation, then the Applicant can assert

20      that they have minimized impact and Staff can either

21      refute or confirm that by looking at the generic list

22      and making sure that  all strategies have been

23      applied.

24                     In this case, even after employment of

2      all those strategies, there remains a residual

3      significant adverse impact, then the policy directs

4      Staff to explore the possibility of offsets to

5      compensate for and reach the balance that SEQR

6      requires.

7                     Applicant has offered significant and

8      important offsets in this proceeding and, further,

9      Staff has gone to require in the draft permit that

10      the facility be decommissioned at the end of its

11      useful life, thus, minimizing the duration of the

12      impact.

13                     We believe that the issue before your

14       Honor, among other things, is are those offsets

15      sufficient to justify approval.

The decision had tremendous precedential value; fortunately, it was not left solely up to the discretion of EnCom staff, who worked closely and privately for year's with SLC to hone its application. For if the Greenport project could have been built here, pretty much anything could. One seriously has to wonder whether, under the terms of the current policy, DEC would be able to stop a nuclear plant at Cementon on visual grounds.

State regulators were also relying on an assumption that was wholly rejected by The Olana Partnership itself, namely that only the southern view from the site really matters... Frederic Church plainly designed a 360-degree experience at Olana, and sketched or painted other views in other directions, for example looking toward Becraft Ridge. DEC staff also rushed to ratify the cement company’s assertion that the project would have no significant, adverse effect on historic resources within the Coastal Zone, even though neither the Department of State nor the Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation (OPRHP) had weighed in on the matter yet.

Ultimately, citizens concluded that the DEC was not, in Benas’ own formulation, “not doing its job” and indeed threw more enforceable laws “in their face.” after years of wrenching controversy and millions spent by both sides, the project was denied via those same Coastal Consistency rules that EnCon had shrugged off … The decision came down from a different agency, much to the chagrin of many DEC staffers, from what opponents soon heard through various Albany grapevines. (“They were shocked and angry over the Secretary of State’s decision,” one well-placed Capitol source reported to me.)

As it turns out, there was no need to compromise one view for another, or to settle for making the best of a bad situation. The 2005 rejection of the Greenport project has now been coupled with clear confirmation of the closing of Holcim’s (SLC’s) Catskill facility. The visual plumes from that destructive, foreign-owned company now have been removed from both sides of the Hudson River, along with the pollution they discharged into our region’s environment. What had been posited as a tough either/or choice, pitting Olana’s stunning southern views against its overall experience, now has played out as a complete win/win for the site.

Another topic worthy of more detailed future discussion: the way in which boundaries were later drawn (under the guidance of Cementon anti-nuclear activist Loretta Simon) to protect the Catskill-Olana and Columbia-Greene Scenic Areas of Statewide Significance, but left a gap omitting all of the City of Hudson in between the two. But that’s something for another day, as this post has already gone overlong.

The End

According to The Albany Times-Union, the Holcim plant in Catskill is really and truly kaput. Click here and here for two previous posts explaining why this news was both inevitable and utterly necessary.

Comparative Burgerology

Does healthy, organic food cost more than “regular” food? And what’s a hamburger supposed to cost around here, anyway?

Ever since Grazin’ revitalized a formerly-empty restaurant space on Warren Street, one has heard more than a few hyperbolic discussions about prices, with little actual relationship to the reality of the 21st Century cost of delivering a decent meal.

The chart below collects some representative menu prices for burgers in the region. For the purposes of a fair comparison, the price of a side of fries was included if those don’t come automatically with the burger:

As the hard numbers above show, the price of a burger in these parts can range from a low of $5.50 to a high of $13. The average burger price of the 15 establishments list above is $9.98—precisely 3 cents higher than than that of the Grazin’ all-organic, Animal Welfare Certifed burger.

In short, getting a healthy, organic, responsibly-created, locally-sourced, farm-to-table burger is no more expensive than eating at most any other non-fastfood restaurant in the area... which just points up the irrationality of some of the anti-organic voices in our midst. Those who denounce $9-$10 for a burger as outrageous clearly haven’t been getting out much lately.

Now some Rush Limbaugh listeners may cry foul, noting that they could get a slider and fries at McDonald’s or Burger King for even less than any of the prices above. Yes, you could... except those aren’t hamburgers. Those are reprocessed sewage patties masquerading as food. If you eat them regularly, you will almost certainly die early. And the price of that to your family and society far exceeds anything that buying organic ever could.

Catskills bearing Irene’s brunt

At (p.m.) last night in Hudson, a patron at the bar was predicting authoritatively that today's storm would hit the Catskills much harder than Columbia County, due to the mountains’ elevation and terrain.

Seems he was right... While Hurricane Irene mostly has not lived up to its advance billing on the eastern side of the Hudson River, the same cannot be said for the western side. Facebook and Twitter are replete with pictures of semi-submerged cars, homes and businesses in places such as Arkville, Catskill, Cornwall, Tannersville and Windham.

Notably, flooding—not wind—is the problem. From the looks of things, many creeks in Greene, Ulster and Delaware counties have risen to, or above, the tops of their banks.

A liveblog over at the indispensable Watershed Post is filling up with alarming reports of roof rescues and (disputed) tales of dam ruptures, and is well worth a check-in: click here.

New (old) media

Over at his Seeing Greene blog, Dick May has leaked the widely-rumored news about three new (and alliteratively-named) newspapers coming this Fall to Columbia and Greene counties and also the Catkskills:

Veteran journalist Paul Smart has announced plans to launch a trio of “independent community” newspapers. [...] In times past Mr Smart edited The Mountain Eagle and The Phoenicia Times, as well as operating The Olive Press [...] He envisions a September 8 launch for three bi-weeklies that are stuffed with local news: The Catskill Current, The Hudson Harpoon and The Mountaintop Meteor.

Appearing (per above) every two weeks, word is that ad revenues are already flowing in nicely.

Holcim Catskill probably gone for good

The Holcim Catskill cement plant officially closed on June 13th. As noted in previous commentaries on the shuttering, most workers were gone months or even years ago, as the plant endured a long series of layoffs and job eliminations.

An article in yesterday’s Catskill Daily Mail contains a couple of interesting tidbits for those wondering if the old beast could spring back to life. While Holcim (pronounced hole-sim, after the French word ciment, as confirmed in these corporate videos) has claimed it will maintain its permits and perform basic maintenance in case they want to reopen, comments from Catskill officials make that sound unlikely.

A Greene County Legislator for Catskill, Forest Cotten, is quoted as saying “Holcim is just not going to stay.”

The article by Doron Tyler Antrim also recognizes what many observers have long understood: Namely, that the Holcim Catskill plant has been falling into disrepair for many years, making it inefficient and unprofitable. Meanwhile, the necessary and significant upgrades to the plant would not only require a major investment, but would also likely trigger a lengthy permitting process under New Source Review (“NSR”)—standards the company might not be able to meet given its location on the Hudson River and in a Scenic Area of Statewide Significance (or “SASS Area”).

Catskill Supervisor Pat Walsh concedes that it would “take a major renovation to get that plant going again,” which Antrim then states “is something Holcim is apparently unwilling to do.”

The Daily Mail also reports, per comments by Greene County Legislature chair Wayne Speenburgh, that the Holcim (formerly St. Lawrence Cement and Independent Cement) site will likely become an “eyesore” like the abandoned Alsen Coal Terminal just to its south. Catskill and Greene County officials might want to consider legislative options to compel property owners to clean up or at minimum prevent further blight.

Antrim’s article also notes that only five former Holcim employees have felt the need to enter the Columbia-Greene Workforce Investment Office’s retraining program. Most of the plant’s workers were gone months or even years ago, as the plant slowly faded away, and workers have moved on to other pursuits.

However, that doesn’t stop former union chief Dennis Smith from attempting to scapegoat outsiders for the company’s failures, in a misleading and inflammatory letter-to-the-editor. Failing to identify his relationship with the company, Smith apparently feels no remorse or responsibility for the many years that this dirty, outmoded plant polluted the lungs of downwind residents in Germantown (and beyond), or poisoned the crops of downwind farms all over Columbia County, or fouled the waters of the Hudson River. And he makes no mention of the numerous fines for safety and environmental violations levied over the years against the facility.

MH Cable: Not tapping that grant after all

It’s hard to imagine any company turning up its nose at nearly $3,500,000 in free money... especially in this economy, and if that money would both expand the company’s customer base and also perform a vital community service.

But apparently, Mid-Hudson Cablevision is one such company.

As a result, potential rural customers in hard-to-reach “last mile” locations—including Yours Truly—are being told they’ll have to pony up thousands of dollars each just to get connected. Customers in densely-settled cities like Hudson or within 200 feet of existing lines typically pay no such fee.

During last year’s hotly-contested Congressional race between Scott Murphy and Chris Gibson, Murphy announced the award of a $3.5 million “rural broadband” grant to MH Cable. According to the then-U.S. rep’s August 2010 press release, the funds would come from the Department of Agriculture’s Rural Utility Services programs.

Now, this funding was not forced upon Mid-Hudson. The company applied for, was awarded, and at the time celebrated the grant. MHC President James (Jim) Reynolds crowed last year that

We are very pleased to receive the news that we are being awarded this grant. These tax payer dollars will help us to continue the work we have been engaged in for 30 plus years. This government support will help make it possible to extend service to rural marketplaces that would otherwise be very difficult reach. We will be moving as quickly as possible to move forward with the outlined in our proposal and certainly appreciate all of the support and assistance that we received from Congressman Scott Murphy.

Murphy in turn gushed that the towns of Ashland, Cairo, Catskill, Coxsackie, Jewett, Lexington, New Baltimore and Windham in Greene County, plus Austerlitz, Copake, Claverack, Ghent, Chatham, Hillsdale and Taghkanic in Columbia County would benefit from this Federal program, stating that

Expanding rural broadband in our Upstate communities is key to building businesses and creating jobs. This is one of the most critical issues for our rural communities. This project will benefit everyone from farmers and small businesses looking to sell their products online, to volunteer firefighters needing high-speed Internet to keep the public safe. Broadband investments like this are a critical component of my Renew Upstate New York plan, and will help ensure the 20th District becomes a leader in the 21st century economy.

Yet according to Mid-Hudson engineer David Fingar, the company has since decided not to tap into these funds—at least for the moment.

Asked why (during a cordial visit to my property recently, after I'd placed multiple calls over the past three months to MHC about availability in my area), Fingar stated that there were “too many conditions attached” to the funding, but did not rule out accessing the funds later.

Until then, potential customers are being asked to come up with rather large lump sums—in my case $1,870 plus tax—for the privilege of then giving Mid-Hudson about $1,000-$2,000 each year in subscription fees, depending on what services one orders. (Fingar—a member of the local insurance clan, which includes County Republican chair Greg Fingar—did offer that if I ordered a significant enough package, they might be able to work out an installment plan on the hookup.) Others in my neighborhood have been quoted figures ranging from $2,000 to $2,600 for getting hooked up. Meanwhile, with an estimated 20,000 subscribers, MHC’s annual revenues are variously reported as between $20 and $50 million.

At the time that the Town of Taghkanic negotiated its franchise agreement with the company in 2007, MHC provided service to only 5.5 of Taghkanic’s approximately 49 miles of roads. Though most residents can opt for Dish network TV service, internet access is glaringly lacking, as many homes are eligible for neither cable modems nor DSL. Making do with either wifi hotspots, satellite internet from the likes of Hughes or Wild Blue, or even 1990s-grade dialup from AOL, many of the innovations of today’s dynamic, video-driven web are not feasible. Streaming movies from Netflix? Forget about it.

But this past fall and winter, Taghkanic residents’ anticipation mounted as MHC trucks were seen stringing heavy black wires in various parts of the Town. Here on County Route 27, activity was spotted to the immediate east and west of my property. But due to a fluke in how telephone poles are sited, a roughly quarter-mile chunk of 27 has no poles on the road, with phone and electricity lines routed through woods. This places homes in “line extension areas,” some of them a good deal more than the typical maximum of 200 feet from existing wires, and thus in the position of having to pay a large “contribution in aid of construction” (or CAC) to get hooked up. These are precisely the type of conditions meant to be addresses by Federal programs like the one to which MHC applied for funding it now has spurned.

The problem is compounded by many rural governments being woefully uninformed about their ability to negotiate better agreements from cable companies, in effect turning over rights worth hundreds of thousands or even millions without negotiating for more community services (such as public access channels, production facilities) or coverage. According to Metroland, 

State law requires cable service providers to set aside public-access channels for home-grown programming [and] also give municipalities the opportunity to enter into contracts known as franchise agreements with these companies, whereby the cable-service providers must give up to 5 percent of their revenues to local governments.

The Town of Taghkanic demanded neither a franchise fee from MHC in 2007, nor secured any free goodies—besides one standard installation each for the town's handful of public buildings. The City of Hudson similarly made few if any requests from Mid-Hudson when they last came before the Council for renewal, despite getting expert advice from Troy media advocate Steve Pierce. In much the same way that insurance policies only get cursory review, many small towns and cities fail to realize how much more they are entitled to, deferring instead to highly-profitable cable enterprises as if they were doing the municipality a giant favor just by showing up. The Town of Ashland, by contrast, would appear to have taken a somewhat more responsible approach, asking Reynolds to answer a host of common-sense questions prior to approving a franchise renewal.

Still the larger questions remains: Since nearly $3.5 million was sought, received and touted by MHC less than a year ago, why not use it to overcome the obstacles to (in Reynolds’ own words) “extend[ing] service to rural marketplaces that would otherwise be very difficult reach”?

What about the stated reason—an excess of onerous grant “conditions”? Recipients do have to fulfill normal, routine responsibilities like keeping payroll documentation and other records; but typically grants cover the costs of such administration. A longer list of conditions can be found here.

One theory is that the decision is somehow ideological—that Mid-Hudson’s generally conservative and politically-connected leadership didn’t want to appear, in the age of Tea Party fanaticism, to be suckling at a government teat... But if that were the case, why did they apply in the first place—and why did they accept and use a $5.3 million loan (arranged with help from Murphy’s predecessor, John Sweeney) for expanding rural broadband access in much the same way? Back in 2009—while acknowledging the lesser-known costs of maintaining rural broadband networks—Reynolds predicted that his company would indeed seek more Federal funding opportunities in the future:

Based on [the Sweeney-backed loan] success, Reynolds said Mid-Hudson is likely to apply for stimulus  funding ... While the earlier buildout was to areas with 20 to 25 homes per mile,  the remaining unserved areas in his footprint are in locales with 10 to  15 homes per mile, butting up against the threshold for making the endeavor cost-effective. 

Indeed, MHC cites this past Federal partnership in most of its applications to area towns and the State's Public Service Commission. Some thus speculate that the reversal may be in some way entangled with the Murphy-Gibson rivalry, i.e. that maybe a grant or loan from the new Republican Congressman would be treated differently.

Another theory—and the one I find more plausible—is that Mid-Hudson is simply testing the waters to see how many people they can get to shell out cash up front before dipping into the Federal pool to cover the rest. Once they've maxed out the folks who are willing to foot the bill themselves, they can in theory then start using the grant funds to hook up the rest, and thus get the most new customers possible at the lowest possible risk to the company. When I asked Fingar—who was quite amiable and forthcoming during our visit—whether those who agreed to pay now would get a refund if they used the grants later, he appeared bemused by the question.

According to a telecom legal expert I spoke with, they can probably get away with such temporizing, as the USDA rarely “claws back” such funding even when it doesn't get used as intended. The Federal government oversees about $5 billion in similar programs, and evidently making sure they get spent wisely is low on the list of priorities... Meanwhile, at least one publication, CC Scoop, has expressed skepticism about the grant programs, and The Columbia Paper is expected to publish an article on the topic as well shortly.

So for now, I've reluctantly extended my satellite internet deal, paying for commercial-grade (but still pokey) service at a steep cost. I’d vastly prefer to do business with a locally-owned company, and to not have to deal with the bandwidth limitations and service headaches common to satellite. But at about two grand to get started, it’s hard to justify at this point. If Mid-Hudson Cablevision waits too long, though, to access those funds and provide this community service, they may get left behind by the ever-increasing capabilities of cellular and other over-the-air networks.

NOTE: Calls to the USDA RUS department which handles the Mid-Hudson grant were not returned in time for publication.

Food notes from all over

More culinary reports from around the region, following on the news of the Hudson diner's purchase:

• The Vanderbilt Inn in Philmont reopens tonight, Monday, with a serious chef and a farm-to-table ethos;

• Chopsticks in Catskill, located near the relatively new Beer World, offers Chinese, Japanese, and most of all Thai food — each of them simple but solid. (It remains a mystery why Columbia County has no Thai restaurant, while Greene has two...)

• Wunderbar in Hudson has changed hands, though Imre is still around for a few weeks for the transition;

• Also in Hudson, the former Hudson House gallery building (which briefly housed an outpost of Hammertown Barn) reportedly has been purchased by a Brooklyn bistro owner, but won't open for one or two years by various accounts;

• MOD's new Hudson digs got their beer and wine license.

• The Ramp Festival launches next weekend (April 30th) at the Basilica in Hudson on Saturday;

* Agriturismo in Pine Plains reopens on the 22nd.

Inevitable and necessary

The closing of the Catskill plant was as necessary as it was inevitable.

Inevitable, due to both the nature of Holcim’s international business model and this particular plant’s challenges. And necessary, to safeguard the health of thousands of downwind neighbors.

As a vast global corporation, Holcim wants to reap big profit margins from very large plants which can dominate their regional markets. They no longer have much interest in running smaller, less efficient facilities with narrow profit margins.

While Holcim failed to build such a plant in Columbia County, Lafarge in Ravena stole a march on its Swiss competitors, and is poised to vastly expand their plant to the north in Rensselaer County. Even if Catskill could expand, Lafarge’s head start would largely foil Holcim’s preferred modus operandi, which is to lock up markets, then bleed them dry. Millions of dollars in fines for price-fixin are, after all, a documented part of their track record.

Moreover, as an older plant with many maintenance and safety issues—having been hit with hundreds of thousands in fines over the past few years—the Catskill kiln was increasingly a drag on the company’s bottom line. Coupled with a national economic downturn—far from being immune to recessions, cement plants closely track building trends—there simply wasn’t much money in that site at that scale.

But any major expansion in scale and technology would necessitate a new permitting process, much ike the failed Greenport one. Despite efforts during the Bush administration to gut NSR (New Source Review), the Catskill plant would clearly be subject to such regulatory oversight. It would again need some 14-20 different permits from local, county, State and Federal agencies.

That would mean a risky new investment of tens of millions on a highly-speculative venture, in a location where citizens had already demonstrated the tenacity and means to mount a prolonged, well- informed opposition. They again could expect a long, expensive, and low-percentage fight against residents all over Columbia, Berkshire, Dutchess, Litchfield, and other downwind counties.

Worse for Holcim, the Catskill location is squarely within the famous southwestern viewshed of Olana, and any expansion there would impact a Scenic Area of Statewide Significance—again, guaranteeing a difficult, stringent review, with many or all of the same 30+ groups which opposed the SLC project to weigh in all over again. And this time, they wouldn’t be starting from scratch, but would have a world of knowledge, contacts, expertise and organizing know-how to bring to bear.

Moreover, the limestone reserves at Catskill would not justify such an investment, even if the permitting were successful.

The Holcim board (and the investors who track its stock) never behaved particularly rationally or cleverly here. But the $58 million they flushed down the drain the last time they tried such a move is hard even for overconfident, negligent corporate officers to overlook.

As for economic development: Again and again, planners and residents and businesspeople here have agreed that the long-range goal has to be sustainable, compatible and contextual projects which complement each other and build upon the strengths of the region.

Most who worked at Holcim (SLC) Catskill knew this was coming long ago, and many moved on to other work already since the multiple rounds of job eliminations and layoffs began about five years ago. Finding a new job is possible; finding a new lung isn’t. The thousands of residents downwind of Catskill are much better off.

Those who now call the closing a “tragedy” (including some, like Linda Mussmann, who once berated this company as an “awful mega-corporation” whose goal is “to take more than it can ever ever give back”) evidently don’t consider it tragic when kids get asthma or grandparents are told they have cancer.

 

In December 2003, Linda Mussmann called St. Lawrence Cement (now Holcim) an “awful mega-corporation” whose "goal" is “to take more than it can ever ever give back.”

Now she considers the departure of that company a "tragedy."

At Catskill, the company was indeed taking from our communities (by polluting the lungs and crops of its downwind neighbors) more than it ever gave back. Meanwhile, they’ve grieved their taxes on both sides of the river repeatedly, while others pay their full share.

The SLC Catskill plant emitted mercury, arsenic, lead and fine particulate matter into the air and water of its neighbors for many years. It was heavily fined in 2008 for some 300 safety violations, putting its workers at risk. It was photographed by Riverkeeper releasing large plumes of waste materials into the river... These were not the actions of a good neighbor.

Other companies bring good, safe jobs to our area without controversy, without dividing people, and without causing others harm. We should build an economy based on mutual respect, not profiting at others’ expense. Naturally, we as a country should “make things.” But we can and should manufacture make things in a manner which doesn’t selfishly and recklessly take other things from others--essential things, like our  health.

Businesses like L’Eurial and Etsy promise as many or more jobs than Catskill ever provided—with none of the downside impacts, none of the controversy, and far more prospects of surviving future economic turbulence. That’s where our focus should be, rather than attempting to reinvent a brief 1950s industrial heyday, which is not coming back, no matter how nostalgic some might be for it.