Pay for play

To the editor:

Cheers to supervisor Daniel Sturm, councilman Dick Crumley and councilwoman Vicky Simpson of the town board of Bethel.

In this day and age, with people struggling and a poor economy, they have the guts to deny a performance increase to one judge who they feel is not doing his job. If they say he doesn’t deserve it, I’m sure they have a good reason. They have always been fair and open, but tough when necessary. They made a decision in our best interest and they stood by it.

Good work. Keep it up.

L.J. Mason

Assessment corroborates concerns

To the editor:

I spent much of yesterday reading the entire Hasen and Sawyer Final Impact Assessment of Natural Gas Production in the New York City Water Supply Watershed that was conducted for the New York City Department of Environmental Protection. Based on this unbiased scientific study, the city has now called for a ban on gas drilling with hydraulic fracturing in its watershed. What a relief. For almost two years, we have gathered and disseminated information from various sources, always expecting that it would be proved accurate when comprehensive studies were finally made. Nevertheless, we were accused of being environmental radicals using scare tactics to prevent economic development in our region.

What impressed me most about this impact assessment is how completely it supports all the warnings and information that we shared with the public because of our deep concern that an avoidable environmental disaster was in the making. The only surprises in it were warnings of even greater threats that some of us were unaware of in the beginning, such as radioactive water waste and the danger that impermeable geologic layers that currently prevent natural toxic substances and non potable water from migrating upward into aquifers could be so shattered by hydraulic fracturing that they would no longer present a barrier, allowing all those toxins to make it into our drinking water.

In the face of this report, it would be extremely irresponsible for any agency to permit gas drilling in or near a watershed and I fail to see how one watershed deserves more protection than another, so the whole Delaware River Basin should be off limits. There are many alternative fuels but there are no alternatives to life giving clean water and air.

Comment on the draft SGEIS

To the editor:

The Carantouan Greenway submits the following comments on the draft Supplemental Generic Environmental Impact Statement (SGEIS):

All words such as “could” and “should” must be replaced with “shall.”

Best management practices must be required.

Cumulative impacts must be taken into account.

Toxic soluble organic compounds (SOCs) must be removed.

Toxic volatile organic compounds (VOCs) must be removed.

Not only should the cumulative impacts of each SOC and VOC be considered, but also, more importantly, the synergistic effects of multiple sub-lethal exposures must be taken into account. These are real threats to the human health of Twin Tier residents.

Thank you for this opportunity to participate in the process.

Thanks for the community bounty

To the editor:

As 2009 comes to an end, I am reminded of the generosity that this community has once again shown to the St. Francis Xavier Outreach Program and the Narrowsburg Ecumenical Food Pantry. Your support this year has been overwhelming. I feel sincerely blessed to live in a community where neighbors help one another anonymously and with such charity.

Both the food pantry and the outreach program have seen their needs triple in the last five years. We are now serving anywhere between 50 and 60 families. With the growing need, there is a growing need for our community’s support. You, my community, have stepped up to the plate and you have truly made a difference in someone’s life.

If you are interested in helping, by either volunteering or donating, or you know someone who needs some assistance, please contact me at 845/252-3224. Everything is confidential.

What’s needed for a viable healthcare bill

To the editor:

Congress is now trying to reconcile the differences between the senate and house health care bills. While I think they were backward in not adopting the simple single-payer bill, as proposed long ago by Dennis Kucinich (similar to what is used in the civilized world), they have done something amazing by producing two bills to address health care.

Now, please tell Congress to:

• Make sure that a truly public option remains in the final bill, providing greater choice and lower costs through competition.

• Fund healthcare more equitably by using the house version that places a small surcharge on the wealthiest citizens, rather than the senate’s version, that includes taxing lower-income families’ health benefits.

• Cut out the restrictions on women’s reproductive health care. That is dangerous and simply not fair.

• Make sure that the house version’s removal of insurance company exemptions from laws designed to prevent monopolies and price gouging is kept in the bill.

Eventually, we must join most of the rest of the world that enjoys health care that is not driven by a profit motive. Let us hope this is only a stepping stone to that end.

SpringBoard to nowhere

To the editor:

The community is in an uproar over the new SpringBoard curriculum at the Delaware Valley (DV) schools.

Before this major education policy change was made, the district should have taken more input from its stakeholders: parents, students and teachers. Instead, those stakeholders are now reacting to SpringBoard—and it isn’t pretty.

SpringBoard is a curriculum sold by the College Board to prepare students for its advanced placement (AP) tests.

The College Board is a “non-profit” organization that pushes the agenda of “college for everyone,” which, let’s be honest, really just means tens-of-thousands-of-dollars-in-debt-and-four-years-of-summer-camp-and-frat-parties for everyone—a $160,000 slip of paper that can’t guarantee a graduate a job with a salary that is more than the tuition rate their parents paid for four years.

That digression aside, what the College Board doesn’t publicize is where your taxes, which fund SpringBoard, are going: its CEO’s $830,000 salary and the organization’s half a billion dollars in profit every year. Some “non” profit, huh?

And if the College Board’s unsatisfactory record with the Better Business Bureau doesn’t make SpringBoard look bad enough, the students, parents and teachers hate it.

DV apparently communicated poorly with its stakeholders while planning and implementing SpringBoard. Parents and students are complaining at school board meetings, in the newspapers, even on Facebook.

Some of the district’s best teachers say off the record they felt left out of the process—that they weren’t asked to evaluate the curriculum they’re now forced to teach. Springboard is harming the children in our community, they say. Some top teachers say the administration is suppressing their opposition, and they don’t want to put up with the nonsense.

The administration and school board need to seriously take their stakeholders’ opinions into consideration—especially its teachers.

Hopefully, those in power can clean things up before our best teachers get fed up and before our students’ education is put in more jeopardy.