UPPER BLACK EDDY - Following the recent death of a canoeist on the lower portion of the Delaware River, the National Park Service (NPS) is re-emphasizing safety messages regarding the wearing of personal floatation devices, also known as life jackets.

The river's latest victim is a 37-year-old State College, Pennsylvania man, who was missing for several days. The body of Christopher Kulcheski was found by two water skiers. Kulcheski was on the sixth day of an eight-day river ride when his dog and canoe with contents including clothes, two coolers, a lifejacket and some empty beer cans were found with no signs of him. He had been seen last alive below the Milford, New Jersey, interstate bridge, Upper Delaware NPS Assistant Sandra Schultz said Thursday.

An autopsy is scheduled to determine the cause of death.

A 14-year-old recently drowned while swimming in the Delaware near Hancock, New York. The death was the first Upper Delaware drowning in three seasons.

MONTICELLO - A planned Sullivan County visitor center on Route 17 may get $4 million in state Department of Transportation funding instead of a planned $2 million.

County Legislator and Public Works Committee chair Rodney Gaebel said the center, probably to be located near the Orange County line, will also be funded by DOT Region 8 in Poughkeepsie, as well as Region 9 in Binghamton.

However, DOT may want the site changed, he added. The initially-favored-hilltop site, near the county line, has too steep a grade to allow trucks to reach highway speeds upon re-entering Route 17. Gaebel said. The state's preferred site would be cheaper to acquire and would likely include state winter maintenance, reducing county costs by $250,000 to $300,000 annually, he said.

WEST TRENTON - A rainy summer has left New York City's Delaware River reservoirs filled to the brim, a Delaware River Basin Commission (DRBC) spokesman said last week

Richard Tortoriello said some of the three reservoirs were spilling water into July and remained "way above normal" at 98 percent of capacity in early August.

Tortoriello admitted the high storage levels in the reservoirs provided little flood abatement capacity against possible late summer tropical storms that might appear. In fact upstream dam releases are scheduled to be cut back in September when unusually high Lackawaxen River flows will be substituted to meet the required flow levels at Montague.

Pennsylvania Power and Light authorities plan to significantly draw off water from Lake Wallenpaupack in September and plan ongoing releases of 625 cubic feet per second (cfs) during the month.

Those releases are significantly higher than the top 425 cfs release from upstream Cannonsville, but upstream fisheries officials are concerned that reduced flows north of Lackawaxen will harm the aquatic population.

CALLICOON - A Town of Delaware man, convicted in June of setting a New Years Eve fire that destroyed a Callicoon apartment building, was sentenced last week to 25 years in prison.

County Court Judge Frank LaBuda levied the maximum sentence on Robert R. Comfort, 28, whom he called a "special breed of criminal."

In addition to the fire at the Lakeview Apartments, LaBuda noted Comfort's earlier convictions involving the sexual abuse of an eight-year-old girl and said that Comfort should never be paroled.