The River Reporter Online - Letters to the Editor

[EDITOR'S NOTE: The River Reporter welcomes letters on all subjects from its readers. They must be signed and include the correspondent's phone number. The correspondent's name and town will appear at the bottom of each letter; titles and affiliations will not, unless the correspondent is writing on behalf of a group.

Letters are printed as they are received, or at the discretion of the editor, and without correction to grammar or spelling. It is requested they be limited to 500 words; correspondents may be asked to cut longer letters. Deadline is 1:00 p.m. on Monday.

Kudos to Tom Kane for his recent editorial, and his five articles about planning and land use in Wayne County.

The articles were well researched and clearly written, and added greatly to my understanding of regional issues, from wind farms to quarries. Often reported by the local press as separate stories, and appearing at intervals over many weeks, it’s been hard to find a common thread, and to follow what’s been happening.

But Tom Kane’s articles underlined the root problem. As he put it in his editorial, “Without zoning, a community is vulnerable to any willing buyer-willing seller agreement that can arise.”

Reporting the “hard news” is great, but the community will greatly benefit from more background stories such as Kane has provided. I hope that TRR will encourage him to continue this kind of reporting.

I would like to take this opportunity to commend Sheriff Dan Hogue for the initiative he has taken implementing many programs in the Sullivan County Sheriffs Department, especially those that are visible and benefit our community in general.

One program in particular that is most helpful to the Town of Thompson and Sullivan County is using inmates along our many town and county roadsides to pick and bag litter that inconsiderate people have discarded alongside our roadways.

Sheriff Dan, on behalf of the residents and taxpayers, I certainly thank you as I am sure many others do as well.

The phony hoopla surrounding the Sullivan West High School groundbreaking ceremonies is just so much nonsense designed to divert public attention from the real issues that need to be faced right now.

I know that the Sullivan West administration, Sullivan County BOCES and the school board are going to do their best to cover up and deny the facts concerning the terrible “free” site they picked at Lake Huntington for the new high school.

However, the public deserves the truth about the situation, and there is much more that needs to be disclosed about the site. The driveway will be on a three level uphill grade to the new school which will be unsafe in the winter. The main structure could be erected on the top of the remains of a buried building and the cafeteria is going to be built on the top of a garbage dump. I have the pictures to prove it.

There are large numbers of geese flocking around the beaver ponds. They are a protected species and unlikely to leave the area after the high school is completed. I know of two different football fields in two different states where flocks of geese of this magnitude made the football fields unusable because they heavily manured and slimed them.

Also, our Lake Huntington (swampland) property is overrun with beaver and muskrats, primary carriers of extremely contagious giardia protozoa and cryptosporidium, the waterborne parasites that have infected the water supply around Scranton for years. Given the high water table, it is quite likely the wells servicing the new high school are eventually going to be contaminated with these fecal parasites just as the greater Scranton water supply is to this day. The parasites are resistant to chlorine and other water purification procedures. You never heard the Sullivan West administration or Sullivan County BOCES address this risk. I wonder why?

With all the virgin undeveloped land in Sullivan County, I can’t believe our three communities gave up their independence to build a school on such a dangerous site.

If something isn’t done to correct the situation, I can foresee huge lawsuits down the road from irate: parents with horribly sick kids. We have a major disaster in the making, but it isn’t too late to stop it from happening. Since construction work is only starting, we can still walk away from this site at minimum expense to the district.

According to officials of the Sullivan West Central School District, there will be a groundbreaking ceremony on the site of a new high school next week.

Prior to last year’s referendum, voters were barraged with newsletters from the district citing projected costs for the new high school and renovations to existing facilities. These projections, which district officials claimed to have developed after “exhaustive research,” totaled approximately $49.8 million.

If I’m not mistaken, the bids from the construction contractors were opened last month.

Do you, or any of your readers, know what the actual bids were relative to the projections? Do you or any of your readers know what the local cost will be for the principal and interest on the bond payments that will cover those bids?

Another Memorial Day has come and gone, but hopefully not the memories of our fallen veterans and of those who came back home from the wars and conflicts.

Everyone has had their barbecues and family picnics, but was there any mention to our children of the sacrifice our servicemen and women have made for this great nation?

Twenty days earlier, another very important day came and went—a day that our WW2 veterans will never forget. That day was: May 8, V E. Day.

We have a lot of WW2 veterans in our area, who were there on May 8, 1944, and who will never forget the importance of that day. So, next year, let’s mark our “Hallmark Card list” and see if we can say a little thank you to those men and women.

I would like to mention Guy DeMarinis, of Lehman Township, who served in the 82nd Airborne and who was awarded the Silver Star and Purple Heart for bravery during that period, in the invasion of Holland. His wife, Hilda DeMarinis, also served in the ATS for the British Army.

To all of our WW2 Veterans, and to all of the men and women who have served this great country of ours, thank you so much and God bless you.

Canoes on the Delaware, barges in the Erie Canal, schooners on the Hudson—all manner of boats, large and small have capsized on the waterways of New York. Perhaps the location, Kenoza Lake, is the reason a dump truck filled with “crusher” stone “capsized” rather than experiencing the more prosaic overturning (“rollover”?) typical of a landlubber’s accident.