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.

The PTA All Prize Bingo held on March 2 was a huge success thanks to the generosity of your business. Thank you for your donation. The money raised will be used to benefit the children of the Lakeside and Stourbridge Schools.

Apparently, Van Fuller of Cochecton is in total denial about the dangerous environmental situation exposed by the Center for Health, Environment and Justice with respect to the Narrowsburg School.

Van Fuller’s statement, “Where was all this concern before the merger? It is not like kids just started going to school in Narrowsburg or people just moved into town. I graduated from NCS in 1982 and don’t ever remember Van Swol’s concern before or after,” demonstrates that he never thoroughly read or comprehended my recent letters in The River Reporter on this subject.

Van Fuller is putting loyalty to his alma mater ahead of common sense and he obviously does not understand what the merger means. Before the merger, no one would ever have dreamed of intruding on Narrowsburg’s independence in dealing with this matter. Now, taxpayers from Callicoon, Jeffersonville and even Long Eddy will be directly impacted by the inevitable lawsuits resulting from this serious problem. They will pay most of the bills.

For Van Fuller’s information, the disclosure that the Narrowsburg campus is the only school within one half mile of a federal or state Superfund site in Sullivan County was made in a nationally distributed report in January, not before that time.

The center’s disclosure is a bombshell. It exposes the public health risks Narrowsburg students and staff face for the first time. No one locally could have anticipated this.

The report also has the potential of turning this unfortunate situation into a national issue if the problem is ignored.

Van Fuller’s statement that, “Love Canal was more media- generated hysteria than anything else,” is unbelievable. Denying the seriousness of the Love Canal situation is as ludicrous as saying the Holocaust never happened. The Cortese Landfill is a Class II Superfund site, the same category as Love Canal, which means it is just as dangerous.

Could it be that Van Fuller doesn’t care at all about the health of future generations of students who may be forced to attend school at the Narrowsburg campus in the future?

Can Van Fuller guarantee the health and safety of these students in light of what we have only known since January?

This issue casts a permanent shadow over the continued use of the Narrowsburg School, but it doesn’t have to be that way.

The Sullivan West school board now has a wonderful opportunity to cut its losses at the Narrowsburg campus and put that $4.8 million in renovation money toward a new school building in the Narrowsburg area far removed from the Cortese superfund site. Alternatively these funds could be used to build an annex at Delaware Valley or Jeffersonville-Youngsville for the Narrowsburg students.

[Editor’s note: Effluent from the Cortese Landfill, a successfully cleaned up Superfund site, flows downward and toward the river. According to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the landfill does not pose any threat to students at the Sullivan West at Narrowsburg building.]

“Casinos may be road to nowhere; added traffic could make Route 17 in Orange County, one long parking lot.” That’s news?

The notion that it’s news is a joke and a prominent Catskill region newspaper has blown a lot of credibility by printing it as news and by identifying it (the traffic nightmare) as “... a major environmental impact no one had apparently thought of.” Therefore, nobody’s fault, right? Wrong!

Although others and I have been expressing our concerns about the potential for grim traffic and other serious problems for years, should casinos come, and though county officials and others have routinely chosen to ignore or downplay these concerns, the local newspaper has, finally, at least disclosed this potential problem broadly.

But then, referring to the question of trying to fix the problem with an extra traffic lane or a monorail, they boldly (and doltishly) ask “ ... whose rail lines would be used?” rather than asking, “At whose expense?” But, on second thought, why should they ask? They already know the answer—at our expense—yours and mine! Unless you expect casino interests to foot the bill. In which case, I have some news for you; casino interests don’t do that. They make enormous profits by passing those costs and lots of other costs on to taxpayers (with the necessary and active connivance of politicians, of course). And if you don’t believe it, there’s a Three Card Monte dealer who has an investment idea you’ll probably find wonderfully exciting.

Now I’m kinda curious as to what kind of freight helicopters Kohl’s new distribution warehouse off Rt. 17 might decide to use. Or maybe they’d decide to diversify and turn their enormous new facility into a casino.

Pataki’s hypocritical attitude toward the gambling issues is being unrelentingly prodded along by the ineffectual bureaucratic jurisdictions on promoting casino gambling.

He has reached unparalleled heights by acting in consort with his sleight-of-hand clinging servile followers and the unprincipled back-scratching politicians.

But Pataki is mainly influenced by the alien three-vested gambling operatives and by the firmly entrenched, empowered, large-scale capitalist developers with their Gotham-created political machines.

It must be remembered that an angry, continuing dispute among the concerned citizenry should be prompted on whether the sharp increase in car, bus and commercial traffic is necessary for its economy or will destroy its long-living character.

This will surely result in a very serious environmental impact on the land which will diminish under the increasing encroachment of human activity with casinos breeding corruptions.

Note the examples set in Atlantic City to attract the outsiders. Instead of being transformed into a new community, the old resort remains essentially what it was—a glorified dump.

Who and why were the jurisdictions and others given a credit authorization to institute gambling in casinos. The hoi polloi should undeniably have the constitutional right to decide on the gambling, or other issues, once and for all.

And why are the rights of the people still being infringed upon by denying them the rightful self-determination?

There could hardly be a more flagrant example of man’s ingenuity working to the detriment of mankind in this misleading or deceptive goal.