Town of Ulster Supervisor James Quigley III (Photo: Phyllis McCabe)
“We [the legislature] just want to be included in the discussion,” Gerentine said of the letter to Cahill. “Last time, we were left out of the loop, so to speak.”
Cahill had similar feelings, so to speak, after reading the headlines. “It looks like this [Gerentine] letter went to the press before it got to me,” he said. And no, he had no comment on “demands” (Hein’s word) he might or might not make.
Blame the mails. A legislature spokesperson said the Gerentine letter was dated Feb. 12 and mailed to the assemblyman immediately after. Considering Cahill’s office is almost a stone’s throw from the county office building, maybe they should have walked it over.
Water, water
The Niagara Bottling Company has left Ulster County with a splash. Beaten up by well-organized and vocal opponents from Kingston and Woodstock on its plans to build a bottling plant in the Town of Ulster and rejected for millions in state subsidies, Niagara pulled the plug two weeks ago.
But then a major water break under the Sawkill Creek in the city’s main line from Cooper Lake in Woodstock presented the opportunity for at least residual favorable publicity for the much-abused water giant.
Facing the prospect of supplying the city with upwards of a million gallons of water a day, Ulster Town Supervisor Jim Quigley, a big bottle man, asked Niagara to donate something like 340,000 bottles for emergency relief. The company came through with one truckload, about 34,000 bottles.
Kingston’s water department quickly repaired the broken pipe, negating further need for bottled water.
While the conclusion of this short-but-intense controversy represents good news for anti-bottlers, Kingston ratepayers are probably up the creek. The water department had hoped to offset some $16 million in capital costs in the near future with revenues from Niagara. The department’s annual budget is on the order of $4 million. Do the math.
Hein has suddenly become Mr. Environmentalist for one simple reason: he’s trying feverishly to deter the Hudson Valley Green Party from running their own candidate next year for Congress, which would severely impact his own chances of being Gibson’s successor. Given that Hein was a registered Republican for years, and only switched over to enroll as a Democrat for political expediency, the Greens are not going to easily be fooled by his new found environmentalist streak.