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Instant takeaways from the NY-19 Democratic primary

The results of this highly unusual seven-candidate regional primary will take a long time to fully digest, but here are some immediate takeaways:

• As predicted, the projected winner is in line for victory without a solid mandate. Antonio Delgado as of 11:15 pm on Tuesday is ahead with less than 1/4 (22%) of the votes cast, with some results still rolling in.
• Looked at one way, this means that 78% of Dem primary voters go to bed disappointed.
• Gareth Rhodes was in second place as of 11:15 pm. He won Columbia County, with Delgado second.
• Turnout in Columbia was about 30% among registered Dems; turnout districtwide was more like 26%. About 35,000 participated, much better than the less-contested Teachout-Yandik primary in 2016. But that still means almost 100,000 Dems did not bother to make a choice.
• Delgado appears to be a candidate virtually all Dems will get behind, especially with the fever to blunt Trump and the GOP in Congress. His GOP opponent, John Faso, can be expected to go after his heavy funding from by New York City law firms and lobbying connections.
• Erin Collier’s belated attempt to capture the women’s vote fizzled, earning less than 5% despite women making up more than 50% of the electorate.
• Brian Flynn’s campaign underperformed many expectations, coming in 5th slightly behind firebrand ex-CIA agent Jeff Beals as of 11:15 pm.
• Many of the candidates may look tomorrow at Dave Clegg as the spoiler in the race. Clegg garnered the vast majority (over 70%) of his votes in one County, Ulster. His votes in Ulster alone would have put any of the 2nd, 3rd, or 4th contenders into contention with or ahead of Delgado. While this could be said of some others as well, Clegg is the only one whose support came pretty much exclusively from his home turf.
• Thankfully, corporate spook Pat Ryan did not win. (Maybe now he will be liberated to get back to his true passion, getting paid by big business and spy agencies to snoop on union leaders, journalists and activists.)
• Beals, once expected to finish near the bottom of the heap, did a good deal better than expected, most likely due to extensive late exposure via an “This American Life” profile. (One suspects that a large number of likely primary voters are also WAMC listeners.)
• One is left wonder what would have happened in a two- or three-way race between Delgado and one of the other top contenders. He might well have won narrowly, but with so many candidates cannibalizing each others’ support, it is very hard to say whether the best candidate won, or just the best-funded.
• Notably, pretty much none of the candidates had any district-wide profile prior to running, and little if any experience serving in local elected positions. One again wonders what would had happened if, say, someone like New York State Assembly member Didi Barrett had run. Would as many challengers have come forward, if any? That the Dems fielded seven new faces could be a sign of fresh blood, or a symptom of not having much of a bench from which to draw.

Holcim-Lafarge deal hits rocky patch

Image: Agg-net.com

According to the Wall Street Journal, the proposed megamerger of cement giants Holcim and Lafarge has hit a snag, with Holcim’s board rejecting proposed terms from Lafarge.

Lafarge operates a large cement plant on the Hudson River near Ravena and Coeymans, while Holcim appears to have sold its interests in its former Catskill plant, Greenport quarries, and Hudson waterfront properties to smaller construction materials businesses. (This site is not 100% confident that they have fully relinquished all future mining rights or other options on its former Hudson Valley holdings.)

Though the Journal characterizes this news as “cast[ing] serious doubt” on the merger, it seems more of a speedbump than a roadblock. Each company’s stock is down today, Lafarge’s substantially. The boards of these two massive industrial polluters have major incentives to see the merger through to completion, so Holcim’s move looks more like posturing to gain concessions than a deal-breaker.

UPDATE: The New York Times also weighs in on the development.

[h/t Peter Jung, Ken Dow]

After the Flood: Shakeup in County development?

A shakeup is reportedly brewing which may alter the leadership of some or all of Columbia County’s various development agencies.

In 2010, when David Ginsberg was still President of the Columbia County Development Corporation (CEDC), Kenneth J. Flood was hired to wear three hats: Executive Director of CEDC, Executive Director of the Columbia County Industrial Development Agency (IDA), and Commissioner of the County’s Planning and Economic Development.

Four years later, multiple sources now claim that Flood is likely to lose at least two of those titles.

Several versions of this leadership upheaveal predict that Flood will be out entirely. According to another, Flood will retain his Commissioner’s position, but the overlapping roles of CEDC and IDA director will be handed to someone new—new, at least, for Columbia County.

Sandy Mathes (SOURCE: nysenate.gov)

The reported frontrunner for the position is former Greene County IDA chief Alexander (“Sandy”) Mathes, who also in the late 1990s was the Republican majority leader in the Greene County Legislature.

After moving over to the agency in 2002, Mathes left the IDA in 2011 under something of a cloud. At the time of his abrupt departure, The Watershed Post reported

If you know the history of Mathes' tenure at the IDA, however, it's not hard to guess why he’s out.

Mathes made statewide headlines last year after news broke that he received a $175,000 bonus in 2009 on top of his $130,000 salary. Although the IDA's chairman, Paul Slutzky, defended the payments to Mathes, he later resigned. It’s not surprising to find that Mathes has followed suit.

When the scandal broke last year, Mathes told the Daily Mail that the only reason he stuck around in Greene County was because of the super-sized bonuses.

While some news outlets reported that Mathes resigned, others (such as The Albany Business Review) said that the Greene County IDA “terminated” his contract due to the controversy over allegedly unearned bonuses. According to The Kingston Daily Freeman, Catskills Legislator Karen Deyo “said the issue of Mathes' bonuses was most recently raised by lawmakers following committee meetings on Aug. 9, and led to a shouting match.”

The Albany Times-Union wrote that a State Authorities Budget Office

report also found that Mathes’ salary, which jumped from $75,000 when he was hired in 2002 to $130,285 last year, has risen without proper board approvals. In fact, the report found that Mathes' salary is in the top 5 percent of all IDA directors in the state, comparable with those in more urban areas such as Westchester and Nassau counties.

A scathing 2009 investigation by New York State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli likewise did not look favorably on the performance of the Greene County IDA during this period. The Watershed Post again succinctly summarized the situation:

DiNapoli’s report shows that while Greene County’s IDA gives out the largest number of net tax exemptions in the state after New York City’s IDA, those exemptions, which amount of 25% of the county's tax levy, did diddly squat for job creation between 2002 and 2009. [The report found that] ‘in several of the counties with relatively large tax exemptions compared to total levy, there were job losses between 2002 and 2009 – including Greene County.’”

More recently, Mathes was hired as a consultant to Otsego County’s IDA at the beginning of this year. According to the official page of State Senator James Seward, Mathes was hired to “facilitate the preparation of a strategic economic development action plan which will include greenfield site preparation, re-development opportunities, and the re-use of vacant buildings.”

According to a source who closely tracks preservation issues, Mathes sought to set up a novel program while at the Greene County IDA to identify neglected or underused historic properties which wcould be eligible for grants—dubbed “preservation-ready,” a play on the more familiar industry phrase of “shovel-ready.” He is credited with attracting the Serta Mattress facility in Greene County, and (per the T-U) helping to convert the Steifel facility in Durham to “a toothpaste factory.”

Mathes also was a booster for a proposed $110 million “indoor water park complex” in New Baltimore which evidently has not come to pass. Greene County also lost the once-thriving Friar Tuck Resort during this period.

Said by some to be the highest-paid Columbia County employee, Flood has been under fire for a series of missteps, including several high-profile projects which have failed despite County support (such as Phoenix Hudson and Local Ocean) as well as for the handling of the proposed County Airport and Ginsberg expansions.

Other names bandied about as possible successors to Flood—if indeed there will be a succession—include CEDC microenterprise loan doyenne Martha Lane, CEDC publicity maven Carol Wilbur, former CEDC deputy director Todd Erling, Columbia County Chamber chief David Colby, Pattison Koskey principal Mike Bucci, among others.

If there is any truth to the Mathes rumor, it would extend the curious phenomenon of many prominent Columbia development officials living outside the County.

 

 

R.I.P. Dick May

I was very sorry to learn this week of the unexpected death of Greene County resident Dick May. A professor of history with an abiding interest in the correct use of language, Dick’s gentlemanly manner managed to keep his searing wit from ever offending.

I last saw Dick a couple of months ago at a charity poker tournament (in which he placed fourth out of a couple dozen players), and he seemed his usual acerbically-witty self.

For several years, he posted wry observations about local politics at Seeing Greene. His blog posts will be missed—with hope someone will archive them—but their author will be missed far moreso.

GCCA draws to a flush

Laetitia Hussain and I have donated playing card designs for this Saturday’s Playing With a Full Deck show at the Greene County Council on the Arts (GCCA) gallery in Catskill. Organized by Fawn Potash, the show features works from 52 artists—some as well-known internationally as Kiki Smith, as appreciated regionally as Kenny Polinskie, and others as obscure as, well, me. The opening is from 5-7 pm.

Potash has printed up full decks of the art cards, which now are available online prior to the opening for $35, or $50 once the show debuts. An uncut print of all the cards as a single sheet poster is likewise available at the same prices... Each deck purchase includes an option to play in GCCA’s charity poker tournament on February 8th at 6 pm, featuring prizes donated by area business. Packs can be purchased in advance, or at the door.

2013 in review

Some of the biggest ups and downs of the year include:

• Biggest Sale of a Small Object: Auctioneer Colin Stair of Stair Galleries in Hudson sold a Tsarist figurine by Fabergé for $5.2 million in October to an undisclosed phone bidder. The figurine was discovered in a Rhinebeck attic.
• Wackiest Would-Be Terrorist: County resident (and Kinderhook Elk) Eric Feight was arrested as part of a harebrained plot to build a ray gun intended to beam radiation into mosques, with the apparent crackpot goal of giving Muslims cancer.
• Most Avant-Garde New Building in an Historic District: Grigori Fatayev built this handsome black box off Willard Place behind the Allen Street home of painter Tony Thompson. The building now serves as Thompson’s studio.
• Most Welcome Threat to Leave the County: Following two catastrophic fires in 2012, and after suing the Town of Ghent for upholding its zoning code in 2013, TCI of NY threatened to move their PCB (mis-) handling business across the river to Coeymans. While many breathed a sigh of relief, reminding TCI to not let the door hit them in the back on the way out, it remains to be seen whether Coeymans will really take on the troubled company. The first weeks of the New Year may provide an answer, as the end date for the postponement of TCI’s lawsuit comes due. The company agreed to drop the suit if they found a new home.
• Liveliest Glimpse of Old Hudson: A  video of people hanging out and partying in the 7th Street park in the early 1990s was posted by YouTuber Satansdarkmetal.
• Most Misleading Local Headline: The Register-Star titled an article about the Board of Supervisors voting to keep on pursuing eminent domain against Meadowgreens owner Carmen Nero: “Board Rejects Eminent Domain Resolution.”
• Most Pandering Local Headline: For its article about a local engineer who allegedly “zoned out” while speeding a Metro-North train into a fatal accident around a curve at Spuyten Duyvil, Columbia Paper editor Parry Teasdale used this headline: “Germantown Engineer Assists Crash Probe.”
• Most Heartening Turnout at a Public Meeting: Hundreds streamed into the Livingston Town Garage for the first public meeting of Livingston Farmers & Families, which is organizing to alter or stop a massive power line project from Upstate to NYC. The meeting featured the political speech of the year, a ripsnorter by farmer and Town Board member Will Yandik, who seems destined for higher office.
• Clumsiest Campaign Rollout: The first major media introduction of newly-minted Hudson Valley resident Sean Eldridge, who is seeking to unseat Congressman Chris Gibson, came in the early Summer pages of the New York Times. But the article mainly provided fodder for his opponent. The Times’ revelations about the cost of Eldridge’s Shokan house, with the implication that he and Facebook zillionnaire Chris Hughes had shopped around for a district to run in, were swiftly followed by an Albany Times-Union exposé of how Eldridge’s campaign was paying area residents $100 a pop to focus group attack messages on Gibson.
• Most Revealing Comment by an Official Once Thought to Be More Enlightened: Mistakenly thinking that the press and public had left the room, Hudson Development Corporation director Sheena Salvino denigrated citizens who had come out to support the Community Garden as a “mob.”
• Most Revealing Comment by an Official Never Thought to Be More Enlightened: County Economic Development tsar Ken Flood shared his unvarnished opinion with Ghent resident Kevin Delahanty that “restaurants in Hudson and Chatham ... don’t provide good jobs except for the owners.”
• Worthiest Ideas Gathering Dust on Some Politician’s Shelf: In July, the Columbia County Emergency Management Council proposed a series of sensible, forward-thinking guidelines to prevent major disasters. Little or nothing has been heard about their recommendations in the six months since.
• Ugliest Use of Social Media by an Elected Official: Ghent Town Board member Richard Sardo opined in a Facebook post that MSNBC host (and Berkshire County resident) Rachel Maddow “looks very much like an ugly man.” Sardo, who coupled this assessment of Maddow’s looks with his barely-disguised hots for FOX anchor Megyn Kelly, badly lost his Tea Party bid for Town Supervisor against Republican Mike Benvenuto.
• Most Gratifying Told ’Ya So: The Valley Alliance was vindicated as the City of Hudson glumly acknowledged the group’s contention that the people, not Holcim, already owned 4.4 acres along the Waterfront. Research by the Alliance demonstrated that the riverfront lands had been improperly sold in the early 1980s without State approval.
• Least Merited Award: Hudson Phoenix president John Tonelli was given the Chamber of Commerce’s “Businessperson of the Year” award in June, just months after announcing the arrival of his plastics extrusion business. But Phoenix seemingly never made any hires, and according to a Chamber source the company had “ceased operations” by November.
• Least Festive Street Fest: A car show put on by American Glory’s Joe Fierro, with little or no notification to neighbors, shut down the 300 block of Warren Street on a Spring Saturday, but attracted little interest.
• Most Hilarious Banter Between Star Chefs: A New York Magazine article about the opening of Fish & Game featured this exchange between the restaurants’ principals, Zak Pelaccio and Jori Jayne Emde:

  Foraging for ingredients turns out to have its limitations. Before long, Pelaccio suggests we give up the mushroom hunt. Emde reluctantly agrees. “I mean, I can smell mushrooms though,” she says, then tells me about recently sniffing her way to ramps. “Zak calls me a hound dog.” She gives an animalistic howl. “It’s weird, that’s the sound I make when we’re having sex.”
  
  “It boosts my self-esteem,” says Pelaccio.
  
  “Like you need it,” she returns.
  
  “We always need it,” Pelaccio says.

• Least Effective Tool for Promoting Business: In March, the Columbia County Industrial Develpment Agency (IDA) had to revoke its Payment in Lieu of Taxes (PILOT) plan for fish-breeder Local Ocean, as the company had gone into default. Yet another past Chamber award-winner, the company announced its closing in August.
• Lamest Campaign by a Candidate Claiming to be a Skilled Organizer: Hudson’s Victor Mendolia garnered the lowest number of votes of any mayoral candidate in a two-person race in recent memory, possibly in City history. The former City Democratic chair lost his campaign manager in the process of losing to incumbent Bill Hallenbeck, despite Democrats having a massive registration advantage over Republicans, and despite Hallenbeck himself earning fewer votes than his first run. Turnout was almost half of Hudson elections of a decade ago, despite the number of registered voters staying the same. As of August, Mendolia had spent more on restaurant dinners than his campaign had banked up for the Fall campaign.
• Most Important Unread Mail: Government records uncovered by Ghent resident Patti Matheney revealed that the Department of Homeland Security had warned local emergency officials of the presence of highly-explosive sodium in the TCI building. But the warning apparently went unheeded, contributing (along with egregious negligence by the company itself) to some 12-15 explosions when water was dumped on the company’s smoldering building. Shamelessly, TCI attorney Bill Better shamelessly tried to use this revelation to deflect responsibility from his client.
• Most Confusing Campaign Signage: Road signs for the Taghkanic Republican slate seemed to deliberately conflate 20something candidate Ryan Skoda with his much better-known father, farmer (and sitting Town Board member) Richard Skoda.
• Most Concerted Effort to Deny the Obvious: Hudson City Attorney Cheryl Roberts, Alderman Cappy Pierro, Council President Don Moore, and attorney Giff Whitbeck repeatedly attempted to deny that Standard Oil had occupied a key piece of the Hudson Waterfront, even after clear evidence was brought forth to prove it. Roberts, who had incorrectly identified the Standard Oil location, and lectured citizens about being “completely wrong,” even wondered aloud whether oil tanks existed in the 1880s. Moore similarly wagged his finger at the public about “being careful.” Eventually, the Gang of Four could not help acknowleding their mistake, brushing it off with barely a shrug. (Their motivation appeared to be a desire to avoid any investigation into contamination.)
• Most Selfish Bogarting of Scarce Public Services: The new Barlow Hotel somehow convinced the City of Hudson to not only build an awning over the sidewalk, but also to grant the business exclusive use of two parking spaces in the 500 block of Warren, ostensibly for loading and unloading of baggage. The request was granted despite the block being the the busiest in Hudson, and there being a vast public parking lot immediately behind the hotel. (This frequent perambulator of that part of the street has yet to see a single guest using the two much-needed spaces for their intended purpose.) The City has not clarified what the criteria are for securing one’s own private parking spaces, but no doubt others would love to get the same special treatment.
• Least Dignified Post-Election Email: Claverack resident Chris Lastovicka broke with American election tradition in trashing the Town’s voters in the wake of her partner’s loss of her Supervisor seat. Incumbent Robin Andrews lost by 20 votes to Republican Kippy Weigelt. Lastovicka blamed weekenders whom she claimed did not turn in enough absentee ballots—despite Andrews picking up 60 votes from absentees. No blame was assigned to the candidate herself for failing to take a stand on issues such as TCI or the County Airport, or for opposing both an increase in the State minimum wage and common sense gun regulations.
• Most Blatant Media Conflict of Interest: Community radio station WGXC had scheduled an interview with recently-departed Mendolia campaign manager Clay Laugier. But the interview on the @Issue show was abruptly canceled without explanation—the most obvious being that Laugier was likely to be critical of Mendolia—a co-host of the show, on leave at the time.
• Two Most Pleasant Out-of-County Finds of the Year: Discovering that Dope Jams Records of Brooklyn had reopened in Oak Hill (Greene County) and stumbling upon an utterly authentic northern Chinese restaurant in Wappingers Falls.
• Most Missed Bar, Bar Owner, and Bar Patron: 2013 brought the sad demise of the Iron Horse bar, its owner Frank Martino, and one of its most loyal patrons—former Hudson Police Commissioner Jeff “Sweeps” Bagnall. Join me in pouring one out tonight, New Year’s Eve, for all three.

Brooklyn’s loss is the Valley’s gain

The celebrated Brooklyn record shop Dope Jams lost its lease on bustling Myrtle Avenue—and has decided to move its entire operation to Oak Hill, about a 30-mile drive from Hudson... (A friend reports stumbling upon “about 200 hipsters dancing in the street” of the sleepy Greene County village during their grand reopening a couple of weekends ago.)

Get directions to their new digs at 7811 Main Street via this Google maps link.

Rural broadband options expand—slowly and unsurely

With relatively few residents scattered across a large area, Columbia County denizens have struggled for years to obtain even basic internet connectivity. Just retrieving email and watching YouTube, let alone streaming an HD movie at a decent resolution, can be deeply frustrating—and also costly.

The population density in Columbia is just 99 people per square mile. As you head southward, that number climbs steadily, with 371 per square mile in Dutchess, 431 in Putnam, and 2,193 in Westchester. This low density means that many fall into the dreaded “last mile” category, in which houses at the far end of a road or more than three miles from a telephone switching stationcan get neither cable modems nor DSL service.

But that is finally changing, though in baby steps that leave this area far behind metropolitan regions.

For the layperson, 3 Mbps is the bare minimum necessary to stream a movie in any decent resolution, without it looking all blurry and blocky—pixillated, designers would say. If you have a big TV or a projector, or have multiple people online in your household (whether on a smartphone, a tablet, a Roku, or just surfing the web) you probably need twice that just to cover normal usage. A power user or large household may want 10-15 Mbps or better.

Several new options have emerged of late for rural broadband customers that bring parts of the County into that territory, at least on paper:

(1) FAIRPOINT. Though it’s not yet reflected on their website, Fairpoint Communications says it has bumped up its top download speeds for both business and residential accounts from 3 Mbps (megabytes per second) to 15 Mbps. A web designer in Chatham reports that she recently upgraded her business account with Fairpoint, and is now getting just over 15 Mbps. The price structure, according to a rep I spoke with, remains the same as before, but with far higher download speeds. Fairpoint services mainly customers in central, northern and eastern parts of the County.

(2) HUGHESNET. For those out of range of cable and DSL, satellite internet provider HughesNet is now advertising its Gen4 service, promising download speeds comparable to Fairpoint’s, up to 15 Mbps. However, since this is delivered via satellite, service can be intermittent. But far more troubling than weather outages is HughesNet’s continued insistence on a “cap” on how much bandwidth customers use to prevent overloading their satellites.

Such caps can greatly diminish the value of higher speeds. HughesNet’s most expensive “power” plan costs $99 per month, and promises a monthly total of 40 GB (gigabytes) of data. If you exceed that limit, your download speeds will be slowed to a crawl, unless you buy expensive “restore tokens.”

Worse, the fine print shows that the 40 GB number is misleading, as half of that allowance can only be used between 2 am and 8 am. So unless you spend most of your time on the internet during the wee hours of the night or early morning, you are really only getting 20 GB. If 20 GB still sounds like a lot, consider that may mean at most 4-8 hours of video streaming at a high resolution per month, setting aside some bandwidth for your other internet usage.

Unless you are a weekender who would only be using the web for a small portion of each month, or someone who only uses the internet for basic news and email, that cap makes the new 15 Mbps Hughes offering pretty useless; it just means you’re going to burn through your small allowance that much more quickly.

I was a HughesNet satellite customer for more than 5 years, and found the service maddening. The data caps (then daily, instead of monthly) often made it difficult to do more than rudimentary stuff online. And their customer service was truly atrocious: ignorance, incompetence and outright dishonesty characterized the typical dealings with Hughes reps. Unless there has been some major change in the culture of this company, I would exercise extreme caution before signing up for these Gen4 services, as promising as they initially sound.

NOTE: The satellite provider WildBlue is basically a repackaging of the same services as Hughes, just with slightly different pricing and bandwidth offerings. The same caveats apply, though I don’t have the same direct (bad) experience with their customer service.

(3) HOTSPOTS. Wireless companies like AT&T, Sprint and Verizon are now aggressively marketing mobile hotspots (with goofy names like “Mi-Fi”) which can provide broadband-like internet to homes over cellular networks. Some of these deliver fairly decent download speeds, depending on your location; the Verizon Jetpack 4G LTE promises downloads in the 5-12 Mbps range.

Various friends in places like Claverack report being satisfied with these services, with the caveat that they are not much into internet video. And currently, there are few places in the County were you can get better than 3G coverage. Depending on the model and plan purchased, you may be able to carry that service around with you if you commute or travel a lot, which is an added bonus.

However, as with satellite internet providers, the devil is in the details. These services can be pricey, and typically have strict bandwidth limits. The highest-level Verizon plan, for example, costs $110 per month with a limit of 20GB of usage. After that, you have to start buying gigabytes of data à la carte at exorbitant rates, or wait until your next billing cycle rolls around. Cell-based services seem to be advancing more rapidly than cable and DSL due to the huge number of people with smartphones; so in a couple of years, the idea of being tethered to a line for internet may seem ridiculous. For now, however, this option requires many compromises.

(4) GTEL.  Gtel based in Germantown promises DSL speeds up to 10 Mbps for qualifying business customers, but with lots of asterisks and caveats attached.

(5) MHCABLE. Lastly, Mid-Hudson Cable now claims it can offer business customers speeds as high as a truly whopping 50 Mbps, while their advertised residential cable modem plan top out at an unremarkable 5 Mbps. However, Mid-Hudson still does not reach many parts of the County, primarily servicing the 12534 zip code on this side of the river.

This site was first to report back in 2011 the head-scratching news that MHCable had sent back a much-hyped multimillion-dollar Federal grant to help provide broadband services to “last mile” customers in rural areas of Columbia County.

This meant that customers in less-accessible areas were quoted up-front prices of $1,000-$3,000 for the privilege of then paying MHC for monthly service. Among the reasons cited by Mid-Hudson president James Reynolds for sending back the money for which his company had applied was the belated recognition that it would require MHC to pay its workers prevailing wage on any Federally-funded work.

Others complain that MHC services do not necessarily deliver promised speeds. Mark Orton of Hudson, for example, ran extensive speed tests back when he was still an MHC customer, eventually switching to DSL in order to gain more stable, reliable service that could handle his videoconferencing and other needs.

Considering that Columbia County is now home to many people used to far better internet connectivity, and also an unusual number of so-called telecommuters and self-employed people who work at home, one would think that local leadership would make internet access more of a priority. The County will propose to spend $1 million primarily to benefit a single company operating the Ghent airport, even as many residents can’t get a decent signal through their Apple Airport.

And while it seems that rural broadband conferences are held on a regular basis (and with a lot of press hoopla for any politicians who pay lip service to the idea), progress remains slow. Greene County political blogger Thomas Pletcher called the last such symposium there “a sham.”

In many towns in the area, cable and internet contracts are renewed with little or know actual negotiation or haggling, with the widespread perception in certain municipalities that the well-connected management of such companies have more clout than local taxpayers.

UPDATE: Several people have emailed with questions about NYAir, another relative newcomer here (though basically an arm of Mid-Hudson Cable). I wrote about NYAir back in March at this link. This is not really a broadband service at this point, as you can’t reliable get more than 2 Mbps down, and speeds tend to hover closer to 1 Mbps.

One of their techs told me last summer that the company was planning to upgrade from a 900MHz broadcaster to a faster WiMax system sometime “in the next year,” which could mean closer to true broadband speeds, depending on what they install and how far one is from a tower. Note that NYAir is “backhauling” from these towers (such as the one on Blue Hill in Livingston) to MHCable, which seems to result in major slowdowns in service during primetime hours as thousands of their cable and internet customers tune in.

What good is red sauce without wine?

Local listings maven, radio personality, and Hudson 3rd Ward Supervisor Ellen Thurston informs this site that Dionysos restaurant in Athens has had its liquor license reinstated by the State Liquor Authority. The plight of the waterfront Italian restaurant with the Greek name had been the subject of a 400-signature Change.org petition. Dionysos will reportedly resume serving wine and booze tomorrow night.

A tale of two fire companies

 

Before TCI moved to Ghent, it was known variously as Trans-Cycle Industries and TCI Incorporated. Documents from the early 1980s show the company was dogged by residents reporting fires at and emissions from its Newburgh location. The company initially tried to move to Athens (NY), but ran into a buzzsaw of community opposition.

The opposition of Athens’ first responders was particularly instrumental to TCI’s defeat there. The 1980s document above (found in a large archive of legal papers held by a Ghent resident’s attorneys) reveals what the firefighters of the Town and Village of Athens thought about the project. The Athens firefighters opposed it based on their assessment that  that:

• the “hazardous materials” handled by TCI “could pose health hazards during a fire”;


• fighting such a fire would require extensive “public infrastructure”;


• “a fire in this industry has implications for the public health”;


• “an inadequate response” to such a fire could have implications “beyond property damage”;


• these implications could include “the issue of toxic fumes... if a fire cannot be contained satisfactorily”;


• “water used to put out the fire” could be “contaminated” and “run into the ground.”

Abandoning the idea of moving from Newburgh to Athens, TCI set its sights on Ghent, securing permission in 1986-87 from the Town to build a structure on land owned by David Rivenburgh.

No similar objections appear to have been raised, except for the Town Planning Board chair briefly quizzing the company in a short letter about the potential presence of PCBs onsite. The same archive referenced above contains a 1988 letter from TCI of NY President David Laskin to a lawfirm in New York City, which purports to memorialize a visit to TCI by West Ghent fire chief Tom Rivenburg—a different spelling of the name, and no known relation to David:

Here, Laskin claims that Rivenburg said that “I don’t see any problem” with the facility’s arrangements. The letter also claims that “the fire department has been supplied with the same SPCC [Spill Prevention, Control, and Countermeasure] Plan that has been supplied to the DEC and all pertinent Material Safety Data Sheets,” and that this had also been forwarded to the Columbia County Emergency Management office.

The letter further invited “the entire fire department” to tour TCI’s newly-built plant, which Laskins says has “an open-door policy to enable concerned citizens to view our operations.”

Today, multiple reports indicate that the remains of the TCI facility is under 24-hour armed guard while it is being demolished and, the public has been told, remediated of any pollutants. A stormwater plan for the site was recently agreed to by TCI and the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation, but not before almost a foot of rain has fallen on the site since the time of the catastrophic fire.

Plume

UPDATE: I’ve spoken with Rick Georgeson, a public information officer for the DEC, and he is going to attempt to pull any records the State might have of hazardous materials stored onsite at TCI.

UPDATE #2: The Associated Press is calling the fire “stubborn” and that “Police say the firefighters are spraying foam Thursday morning because they don't know exactly what is burning. A reader reports as of 1 pm that a dark plume is still visible from Route 66 heading north toward Chatham.

A reader in the Ghent/Stockport area just sent in the above photo of a lingering plume this morning from TCI’s fire. As previously noted, one County official has said that at its peak, this plume was two miles long.

Another reader reports an as-yet unconfirmed rumor from a Columbia Memorial Hospital worker that the National Guard was brought in to assist firefighters. Anecdotally, CMH has apparently had some walk-ins with eye and throat irritation.

The Berkshire Eagle reports on air quality warnings across the border in Massachusetts:

A Great Barrington emergency management team issued telephone calls around 5 a.m. on Thursday to residents of Egremont, Alford, Sheffield and Great Barrington about the fire in West Ghent and the possibility that their may be toxic fumes drifting their way in an air plume because of the wind patterns. As of 8:15 a.m., the alert has been expanded to Stockbridge, West Stockbridge, Richmond and Sheffield. Residents have been warned to close their windows and not use air conditioners which may filter polluted air into homes.

Meanwhile, while some Hudson officials have attempted to tamp down concerns, The Catskill Daily Mail reports that even eastern Greene County residents are advised to turn off their A/Cs and stay inside. The paper writes:

Occasional explosions were heard inside the building, including one series that resembled rolling thunder, causing some spectators to run in the opposite direction. 

“There are a lot of hazardous materials here,” said Emergency Medical Services Coordinator P.J. Keeler. “That’s our concern.” Keeler was pulling a cooler that had dozens of water bottles stacked on top of it. 

County Emergency Management Director William Black said the building contained big mineral oil tanks, two tractor trailers of fuel oil, fork lifts with propane tanks, and other hazardous substances.  “It’s the combination when they mix we have to be concerned with,” he said. “There’s sodium in there.”

Here is a handy link if you want to follow media reports of the event on Google News.

Proposal quietly floated by Athens Gen

Athens Gen in winter

New Athens Generating Company (NAGC), the tri-stacked power station which was permitted in 2001 in Greene County amidst great controversy, has quietly proposed an expansion of its transmission capacity to the New York Energy Highway Task Force. A brief overview by the company, found buried at the Task Force’s website, can be downloaded via this link [PDF].

The move is intended to increase the amount of electricity moved by the facility by as much as 5.7 million megawatt hours (MWH) annually. The proposal also alludes to the measure as something of a stop-gap “until a larger transmission project is installed to alleviate congestion between Leeds and Pleasant Valley.” 

An Albany source summarizes the technical proposal as follows:

In layman’s terms, they are seeking permission to install equipment and software upgrades that would allow them to pump more MW through the existing transmission system in order to serve higher demand Downstate, and overcome the hard infrastructure bottleneck that current transmission lines through mid-Hudson Valley represent.

In short, while the proposal would not technically expand the existing plant, it would allow it to tap into existing capacity that it can’t currently use—a de facto expansion, at least for those downwind, in that Athens Gen would substantially increase the amount of power produced and therefore the frequency of its plumes in certain weather conditions.

(Though the plant was permitted in part on the flimsy promise that there would be no visible plumes—ostensibly satisfying the concerns of several intervenors—in practice tall, billowing plumes are often visible from numerous sites in Greene and Columbia County during colder months. Any increase in activity would likely increase the frequency of these supposedly non-existent plumes.)

Made in conjuction with National Grid, the proposal describes the plant’s existing 1080MW capacity as “nominal,” i.e. that it is not currently operating at full capacity. The somewhat turgid language of the proposal appears to say that its present technology allows for only 330MW to be transmitted at a time. Their apparent intention is to double that amount by upgrading the facility from a Special Protection System (SPS) to an Enhanced Special Protection System (ESPS), and sending the resulting increase “downstate.”

NAGC claims that no permitting will be necessary to complete this project, except perhaps from the generally industry-friendly Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC).