“The last time I did the Regatta as a Town Board member, it was probably 2002,” said Brown. “And I fell in. I remember thinking I need to get home and get a shower, because I have no idea what I just covered my body in. It’s such a tragedy. But it is all the more reason we have to be vigilant.”
Like the councilwoman, the mayor thinks the problem is overwhelming — but he also thinks it can be fixed.
“I’d love to be able to fish and swim in the Wallkill. I mean, who wouldn’t,” West said. “What I’m curious is why we’ve allowed it to go on so far. It’s been staring us in the face, but we kind of don’t do anything about it. I’m not blaming anybody.”
West said he envisions a day where New Paltz has solved its problems as a sewage polluter, is improving water quality and working with others to improve the Wallkill’s health.
For Brown, the pollution of the Wallkill is a question of quality of life. Hydrofracking and the impending shutdown of the New York City aqueducts in 2016 point to an oncoming scarcity of drinking water.
“It just highlights that we take our clean water for granted,” she said. “I’ll tell you, it keeps me up at night.”
Pollution numbers
Riverkeeper has the results of monitoring the Wallkill from 2012, but they’re still working to prepare a 2013 report in time for November. Until that time, or possibly even after it, it’ll be hard to draw conclusions or lay blame.
Those dramatic tests from June also took place “after significant rainfall events,” where more than an inch of rain had doused Ulster County. But answering the question of “who done it?” isn’t so easy.
“We’re not ready to go deep with a discussion of what’s happening here,” Lipscomb said. “It’s very, very important for our project that we’re always patient enough for the data to do the talking. There’s always people — within our team and outside of our team — that have conclusions they’ve made ahead of time. Then they try to make the data support it.”
Lipscomb noted that Riverkeeper can’t afford to make an assertion that isn’t true. With all the data, they’re still searching for patterns. The group sees themselves as starting a dialogue, or maybe arming those who wish to track down polluters with a starting point.
Actually finding the exact source of the fecal matter would require more time, more tests and some environmental detective work.
For instance, in Saugerties the lighthouse keeper Patrick Landewe caught wind of the test results that showed pollution where the Esopus Creek meets the Hudson River. Landewe, also a village trustee, approached the Village Board with Riverkeeper’s findings and demanded an answer from the boss of the sewer plant.
“It’s just upstream, closer to the falls from our two sample locations. It’s just before the falls,” he explained. “He hauled this guy in and said, ‘What gives here? Why is the plant causing so much pollution?’
“He was wrong to ask that. The data didn’t support that.”
Saugerties village officials eventually cleared the sewer plant of guilt. “It was a misstep, but it was action by the public. And the conversation is going outside of Riverkeeper,” Lipscomb said.
Landewe eventually helped organize a group that started testing the Esopus with the help of Riverkeeper. They found the pollution issue crops up during flooding, but they haven’t yet found an exact culprit.
The situation in New Paltz is similar. Even though the Wallkill is polluted, no one is sure exactly what or who is causing it.
Culprits could exist anywhere from the river’s starting point in northern New Jersey, to Orange County or into Ulster County. It could be manure from a farm field, illicit dumping, a flood discharge from a sewer plant or cracked sewer pipes.
Into the future
With any luck, the testing data provided by Riverkeeper could help bring the kind of grants that New Paltz needs to fix its sewer system and clean up the river. Lipscomb noted that lawmakers in Albany seem to be paying attention.
State officials could potentially use Riverkeeper’s fecal pollution findings to help prioritize and target areas in need of sewer infrastructure upgrades.
“It would be great if you could identify a spot where there was a local problem, and where the money you have at hand would make a difference,” he said. “If you have $10 million, it might make a difference in a small community that needs a sewer pipe. If you go to New York City and say we’re going to solve your combined sewer overflow problem with $10 million, you’re not even going to buy the wrapping paper with $10 million.”
In other places, like Irvington, data from the environmental group’s tests have allowed for the reopening of a beach on the Hudson where the tests came back clean.
On a local level, the group hopes the data will help environmentalists and county Health Department officials track down polluters.
Pollution is tough to talk about, but Lipscomb is hopeful those who see the data will work for change rather than sink into despair. Riverkeeper’s main mission is not with tributaries like the Wallkill and Rondout, but with the Hudson. With the big river, people haven’t shied away from the problem.
“We made that problem public. Instead of turning their backs on the river … we had faith that the public would rally behind the river,” he said. “And that has been the case.”
The group expects to have their 2013 information about the health of the tributaries to the Hudson available by November. At about the same time, Riverkeeper will put up those findings on https://www.riverkeeper.org/.
The amount the village received in their successful grant application was $600,000 from the State and even then when they had the money and had used my stuff they took a powder? Small claims court, it was.
As for Kitty Brown, all I can remember is how the Two Steves Project got stopped by the federal government for filling in wetlands. Who was that? Environmentalist? Not.
As for the Town supervisor, she has no political will or integrity to scratch the town assessor King for being withoutcapacity and judgment; nor rid the board of assessment review of the members with conflicts of interest?
As the town is complicit with defrauding the residential property tax payer, so is the Village of New Paltz concomitant. All the information sent by the Village Planning Board via the Village Building Department to the Town assessor is out and out fraud. I just published a list of 164 SBL numbers, all commercial lodging services with STAR exemptions granted by the incompetent assessor. That means thatnot only is the town committing fraud, they rely on the village to help them defraud the residential property tax payer. Did I say the word “fraud” yet?
Am I the only person in the county who has read the entire folder in the Humidor at the Elting Private Library about “sewage” and also read the Ulster County Health Department Sewerage report of 1970 and also looked into the scatalogic rites of all nations, which is what your jumping into the waters with white mice and brown trout is all about? Must be.
It was in Zimmie’s last term of the last century that the lady who owned a house with a parking space above the spouting manholes of Water Street across from Rugerr’s factory showed up at a Town board meeting to complain about the very same manhole being spouted about here. What kind of 10 year cycle are we on here? Every decade the same people Brown and Zimet and His Nibs say the same old thing: “What, us worry?”. They are there in office to protect the status quo and that is it. I think better to address the “Toilet Paper Gap Amongst All Nations” than local politicians wiping their collective ass with the State Constitution? Did I say that right?
Regarding His Nib’s vulgar words of language: four letter words are easy; it’s finding your way around them that counts.
Steve Vermille and Steve Ruelke, the Two Steves’ Project. Filled in the wetlands over by 32 south across from the university; a government agency stopped them from any more filling in of protected wetlands the assessed value dropped to $5,000 an acre until everybody forgot about the government intervention; and His Nib’s government approved Sifffre buildig 300 toilets to connect to a sewer system that overflows on Main Street at the Village line two blocks away. Vermille.And that was all within the last 10 year since the “Intent to sue” by the Riverkeepers.
Next: extending the commercial lodging services to North Chestnut by tearing down old buildings and putting in more toilets down the rail trail because the sewer system in the street is under pressure originating at Town and County apartments next to town hall. Grants will be sought to put sewer lines in for the developers of more commercial lodging services which pay no commercial property tax rate, recreation fees and not assessed for value by income capitalization, as the Town assessor is too stupid anyways. Even the first entry of the first page of the first book, assessment book that is, is wrong. But don’t get me started? Too late.
Cloacina, Goddess of the Sewers, should be the next farcical aquatic even in the New Paltz River as long as the fecal matter floats. “Cloaca Maxima”, Rome’s greatest sewer, can’t hold a tissue to the Walkill River these days.
The article doesn’t say that on the the tributary that carries the raw sewage under Wurts Street to Rugger’s Hole, there is a black graveyard from the Mt. Zion Church. That’s where the first pipes for sewers always go in, right through many a black graveyard. Except the one on Huguenot Street I discovered last century by following the sewer lines that, well, that’s another story for another day. Good find, though, a real good find.
I bet the pristine (potable) waters where Kitty Brown swam in the 1970’s “near the grist mill”, was likely the Shawngunkill and not the Wallkill. In the 1970’s a swimming hole behind where Connie’s Bar once stood was a popular spot (near the Albany Post Road overpass of the Shawngunkill and near the grist mill).
You are right. In fact, I believe she hit her head on rock at the time and the “New Paltz News” (the “other” New Paltz newspaper; now defunct) ran an article about it?
No commentary intended by me — just a nostalgic trip into the 1970’s. I’ve lost count of the number of folks who dunked in Connie’s swimming hole back then and incorrectly thought they were swimming in the Wallkill. Memories of a proximity to the grist mill is the give-away here – the grist mill operated from the waters of the Shawngunkill, not the Wallkill. And regardless of where she swam, I suspect Kitty’s head is just fine.
After 10 years of videotaping every town board meeting from 1998 to 2008, with Brown on it all the time, I can assure you, it is not. (10×52 meetings plus other events would be about 600 quorums. And that is just the Town Board video-tapings.)
Shawangunk is the one by the Gristmill. Kids jump off the overpass into the water. Crazy. Cant fish with them punks there. Water’s green. I wouldn’t swim in it.