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ROTTERDAM JUNCTION
Keepers of the Circle host powwow
Event showcases customs, crafts of various native tribes
BY MICHAEL GOOT Gazette Reporter

D. Salvatore Timberwolf Lamia of Bayport dances for those who have gone before him.
“It fills me with the spirit of my ancestors and the respect for my ancestors,” said Lamia, who is a member of the Shinnecock Indian Nation and Paukatuck Eastern Pequot tribes.
    Lamia, who was bare-chested and dressed in full regalia with a headdress, bone necklace, yellow pants and wearing a turtle crest on his arm, led others around a fire pit.
    The Keepers of the Circle hosted the two-day event on Saturday and Sunday at their 2.6-acre site on Route 5S, which featured traditional dancing and Native American crafts. Hundreds of people attended.
    Lamia said he had fallen away from Native American customs for a long while but returned to his roots in 1990 after moving to Houston and being invited to join an intertribal council. His customs helped get him through a bout with cancer and other health problems, he said.
    His health improved to the point where he could compete in trackand-field events at the International World Games in Sydney, Australia. Now he is a master dancer.
    The dancing was a family affair for Crystal Marion of Wilton. Her children — 14-year-old Nakia, 11-year-old Anisha and 9-year-old Skye — were all participating. She is from the Abenaki tribe and her husband has Abenaki and Ojibway blood.
    “This is our way of trying to teach the kids the culture,” she said.
    In addition to dancing, there were also crafts.
    Eric Marczak of Knox showed off some handmade flutes and guitars. Marczak has been designing fl utes for almost 20 years. He studied the customs of the Navajo flute-making and shared them with other tribes. It has become a lost custom for some tribes.
    “I can make a flute in three hours,” he said, adding that does not count the time for glue to dry.
    He has opened a guitar and woodworking instrument shop on Jay Street with two other partners.
    There was also jewelry for sale. John Sevilla of Clermont, Fla., was showing off handmade opal, black onyx and silver jewelry from the Hopi, Navajo and Zuni tribes. The Navajo like to incorporate a squash blossom pattern in their work.
    He said he has been doing powwows for more than 20 years and enjoys meeting people and answering their questions about where the jewelry comes from and how it is made.
    Spirit Hawk, a Cherokee from Brookfield, Mass., said she enjoys the spiritual connection to these powwows. “I’m very proud to be what I am,” she said.
    Tim Christian, president of the Keepers of the Circle, said this was the second year for the event, but the first year it was part of the official American Indian Pow Wow calendar.
    “It brings you closer to Mother Earth and the heart,” he said.
    The powwow was also the organization’s major fundraiser for the year.
respective menus. The improvements were among $1.1 million NYRA invested into the track this year. “It’s like an investment we’re making into the fan experience,” he said.
    Kevin Acton of Saratoga Springs brought his 16-month-old son, Conner, to the track for the first time. They were taking a break from the festivities to catch a glimpse at the track’s luxury suites.
    Acton said the open house gives him a chance to see areas of the roof and deck.
    The group originally had control over the entire 29-acre parcel. Last year, the county agreed to sell the remaining 27 acres to the Schenectady County Historical Society, which wants to build a year-round educational center on the adjacent Mabee Farm.
    The festival was made possible from a grant from Schenectady County and sponsorship from the Bank of America.
    “The community is starting to open their hearts back up to the Keepers,” he said.
    The Keepers also run a food pantry on Tuesdays and Wednesdays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. The Keepers’ property is open Tuesdays through Saturdays from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

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Delay sends cost of water project soaring

    Foot-dragging by Rotterdam Supervisor Steve Tommasone and the Rotterdam Town Board will add at least $500,000 to the cost of the Rotterdam Junction water tower project.
    Last Oct. 24, Tommasone sent out a letter out saying that we would have a community meeting to address the issue in early November. December, January, February, March, and April passed. Finally there was a meeting in May. In October the proposed cost of the tower was $1.68 million. By May, it had risen to over $2 million. With increasing costs for steel and fiberglass, the final cost of the tower may be over $500,000 higher.
    Now, some five years after the initial determination of need, Tommasone is urging the project move forward expeditiously and has awarded a hefty contract to the engineering firm of Barton and Logudice to provide engineering oversight to the project. Despite the supervisor’s public pronouncements regarding siting of the water tower on property donated by Schenectady International Group, the SIG board of directors was not scheduled to approve the land deal until June.
    The facts of the matter stand: There has been a good sum of taxpayer money invested in three different engineering studies on this project. Were we building another Grand Coulee Dam or merely augmenting the cash flow of the local engineering community? Tommasone’s plan would have a replacement tank with capacity of 500,000 gallons or 520,000 gallons, depending upon what source one uses — far above current usage and reasonable future projections. But it is based upon “projections of future growth.” The sheer size of this behemoth considerably narrowed siting opportunities.
    The good news is the much-overdue replacement of the water tank will proceed. The bad news is that when it will proceed is at yet some undetermined point in the future. Supervisor Tommasone thought sometime next spring, 2009; unfortunately in 2007 he thought it would be sometime in the spring of 2008. The really bad news is for the taxpayers in the two water districts served by the tower who will have to foot the bill.
    EUGENE SZYMANSKI
    Rotterdam Junction

I'm seeing a pattern of delay, study, do another study, hire an engineering firm, and maybe some day the project will be completed. Masullo Estates 4 years waiting and still counting and that's with 3 studies done already. The town is too big not to have it's own engineer to study the problems in this town.

Steve Tomossone....What has he really accomplished....lots of talk and lots of spending...

see how you must do the acting Stevie and less of the studying? The people are getting agita over the cost now! You could have gone for a lot less and saved but you waited and studied too much.

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ROTTERDAM JUNCTION
Residents near canal cleaning up
BY JUSTIN MASON Gazette Reporter

    The old Erie Canal once carried prosperity through Rotterdam Junction.
    But today, residents living by the relic of New York’s canal history fear the stagnant basin could one day wash away their property along Isabella Street and Scrafford Lane. Heavy downpours on Wednesday and Thursday caused a 500-foot stretch of the canal near historic Lock 25 to cascade over the old towpath and into their yards.
    As a result, many of the houses ended up with flooded basements and pools of stagnant, muddy water covering their lawns. Even worse was the damage the flooding did to the towpath, which is the only berm preventing the canal waters from draining onto their properties.
    “This is a major concern if we have another flash flood,” said Dave Orologio while inspecting the berm Friday. “If that goes, we’re going to have all that water coming in here.”
    With the added rainwater and nowhere to drain, the canal water rose over the berm and inundated Orologio’s vegetable garden, garage and basement. Next door, David Hladik and Keri Pratico’s house was damaged by the nearly waist-deep water that filled their backyard.
    Hladik was at work when Pratico needed to save their cat, stranded on a wood pallet. Pratico said the water was rushing in so fast that she could barely get through it.
    “It was like I was trying to walk through a brick wall of water,” she said.
    Residents of the neighborhood contend the flooding problem could have been avoided had there been a working culvert beneath Pan Am Railways’ freight yard by Scrafford Lane. With a culvert, Hladik said, water collecting in the old canal would have flowed toward a wider stretch of the basin along the Mohawk Hudson Bike-Hike Trail, which is outfitted with concrete drains that empty into a wooded area far from their homes.
    “This wouldn’t be here now, “ he said.
    Yet nobody seems to know who is responsible for maintaining the culvert. Orologio said he’s had no luck asking Pan Am — the Massachusetts-based company formerly known as Guilford Rail System — or the town of Rotterdam.
    “You’d think at least one person would have a map and know what the hell was going on there,” he said.
    Calls placed to Pan Am President David Fink were not returned Friday.
HISTORY OF TROUBLE
    Rotterdam Town Historian Dick Whalen, who lives in Rotterdam Junction, said the old canal has often posed problems for nearby residences. During the 1930s, he said, one resident used to alleviate flooding near Lock 25 by using dynamite charges to blast holes through a section of the towpath where the bike-hike trail now runs.
    Whalen also recalled his father dumping a truckload of rock by the towpath adjacent to the old lock in order to reinforce the berm. But he wasn’t sure who was responsible for clearing out the culvert.
    “Nobody seems to know who owns that,” he said.
    Schenectady County was recently negotiating with Rotterdam Septic to buy the old Lock 25 property as part of a six-mile expansion of the bike-hike trail. Plans for the extension were put on hold this summer after state funding for the project was instead devoted to fixing the barge canal.
    Rotterdam Septic owner Larry Ross Jr. said Pan Am now owns an easement in the area where the culvert exists. He said flooding over the old towpath has been a problem over the years.
    “It’s been an issue off and on for as long as I can remember,” he said.
    Pan Am was contending with flooding issues of its own Friday. Runoff from a small creek near the historic lock undermined the tracks, causing a boxcar to derail.
    Crews from the company were on hand attempting to dredge an area running beneath a small rail bridge a short distance away from Iroquois Lane. Workers were also trying to shore up segments of the track undermined by the flood.
    A foreman at the site declined to comment.
    Elsewhere in the area, state Department of Transportation crews continued to work on Route 160 into the evening and late Friday it was reopened.
    DOT spokesman Peter Van Keuren said the sheer volume of runoff caused the road culverts to load up with debris. He said the damage was unavoidable.
    “It was just a case of a large amount of water in a short period of time.”
    Flood waters also prompted the indefinite closure of Muselbeck Road. Most other county roads were restored to service Friday, said Engineering Director G. Latimer Schmidt.
    “We’ve got most of the roads open,” he said.

Railway workers use a frontend loader to dredge a creek filled with mud, rocks and debris in Rotterdam Junction on Friday. This week’s heavy rain washed away a stretch of train tracks in the area. PETER R. BARBER/ GAZETTE PHOTOGRAPHER

I sense another study coming to try to solve this flooding problem.

Quoted from Shadow

I sense another study coming to try to solve this flooding problem.

I think I will register as StudyGroup Inc........my pockets are aweful light here......anyone else need a job???? NYS makes false employment numbers for a bunch of smoke up our butts at our expense.....and it comes from the top down(we all know it rolls downhill) and in Rotterdam it come from the bottom(must be from the missing sewers).........

Does anyone know if there are any plans to clean up the Junction ??? Sidewalks lighting...so much history aand it looks like a dump. I thought there were pans for a clean up...

Does anyone know if there are any plans to clean up the Junction ??? Sidewalks lighting...so much history aand it looks like a dump. I thought there were pans for a clean up...

The town doesn't have the money to fix anything properly they just have enough money to do studies.

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ROTTERDAM JUNCTION
Hamlet’s fortunes rose, fell along the rails Once-booming area now gets overlooked
BY JUSTIN MASON Gazette Reporter

    Technically, Dick Whalen is Rotterdam’s historian.
    In actuality, he’s a walking encyclopedia of everything Rotterdam Junction, with an annotated appendix about the rest of the town’s lore. He grew up in the western hamlet during the Great Depression and only left it briefly during the Korean War, when he was a prisoner of war.
    In the basement of his Main Street residence, Whalen stores door-sized displays of old photos and rail maps of what many locals simply refer to as the Junction. He can point to overgrown areas of the Junction and give a detailed history about the buildings that once stood there.
    He pulls out a photo of the old Fitchburg Railroad grain elevator, which once loomed more than six stories over the old Erie Canal. Before it burned during the early 1900s, the towering structure could hold up to 484,000 bushels of grain moving between the east and west.
    “The foundation is still up there,” he said, gesturing toward a wooded area near Turnbull Lane. “You can sometimes still see it during the winter.”
    For nearly a half-century, Rotterdam Junction grew and buzzed with the industrial-era traffic that traveled along the canal and nearly three-dozen rail lines. But today, there’s a palpable divide between the hamlet and the rest of Rotterdam.
    The only direct route to the town’s government buildings is along Interstate 890, which corrals the southeastern end of the hamlet between the Thruway and Mohawk River. Both Town Hall and the highway garage are nearly 8 miles away from lower Rotterdam Junction, while the police station sits roughly six miles away from the hamlet’s eastern-most portions.
    For some residents, the Junction offers a balance between the best elements of rural and urban living. But others contend that this dichotomy sometimes results in the hamlet being overlooked and under-represented when it comes to town services.
    “We’re the tail end of the dog,” said Dick Karp, a member of the town Planning Commission and the only Junction resident serving in town office. “And we certainly don’t wag the dog.”
    Rotterdam Junction was never incorporated as a separate municipality, but not because of its lack of importance, said Don Rittner, Schenectady County’s historian. The area served as the natural break between the Adirondack and Allegheny highlands, making it a gateway to the west from the time the Mabee Farm served as an outpost during the late 17th century through the age of the railroads during the early 20th century.
RAILROAD BOOM
    The first settlements of what would become the Junction sprouted from banks of the old Erie Canal shortly after the waterway opened in 1825.
    Both Lock 24 and Lock 25 carried barges through the western edges of Schenectady County, prompting a small settlement to rise from the otherwise agricultural countryside.
    It wasn’t until the late 19th century that the Junction earned its name. In 1884, the so-called West Shore line opened, connecting the fledgling settlement with the New York Central Railroad, New England and all points west.
    “Reminiscent of Western towns that mushroomed almost overnight during the days of the gold rush, Rotterdam Junction was transformed from a placid farmland region into a flourishing, hustling village when singled out as the ideal location for a rail shipment center,” states an article published in the Schenectady Union-Star in 1948.
    Shortly after the rail passage west opened, the Fitchburg Railroad was absorbed by the Boston and Maine Railroad, which then created a sprawling 30-track rail yard extending from near the Mabee Farm to the area that is now Route 5S.
    During its heyday, the hamlet gave rise to a roundhouse, a passenger station, a tavern, a slaughterhouse, a school district, several hotels and even its own short-lived newspaper.
    But prosperity was fleeting for the Junction. In 1916, the state Canal Corp. completed the county’s first “Western Gateway Bridge” and Lock 9 of the new barge canal, which led to the closure and eventual draining of the old Erie basin.
    The big blow for the Junction came in 1931, when Boston and Maine announced it would transfer its rail yard and nearly all of its 550 workers to Mechanicville in Saratoga County. The announcement sparked fury among the hamlet’s residents, who petitioned to overturn the company’s decision and filled the local fire hall one evening to voice their disgust.
    “They went home in the empty silent night,” states the Union-Star article. “Gone were the hum of rolling box cars, the din of drawbar striking drawbar, the snorting of yard dogs and all the familiar clamor which for half a century had been an integral part of the community’s life.”
DEVOTION AMID DECLINE
    By 1935, trains from the New York Central passed through the Junction without stopping. Three years later, the roundhouse was shut down and crews began tearing up the abandoned stretches of tracks in the old rail yard.
    “It popped up overnight, and it died overnight, too,” Rittner said.
    Despite its precipitous decline during the mid-20th century, the Junction has remained home to a devoted population — less than 5 percent of the total town population of roughly 29,000 — that cherishes the hamlet’s unique identity apart from the suburban sprawl of Rotterdam.
    “It’s definitely like its own little town,” said Dave Orologio, a lifelong resident of Isabella Street.
    The perception among most residents isn’t that the town ignores Rotterdam Junction but that it just takes longer to get anything done. Brush collection doesn’t seem as frequent, highway patrols are sparse and it often takes persistent complaints to get small things fixed.
    “Sometimes it’s not so bad to get left alone,” said Scrafford Lane resident Dan Hladik, who grew up in the Junction and recently moved back from Schenectady. “Other times it’s public safety that is at risk.”
    But Rotterdam Supervisor Steve Tommasone said he’s made it his own mission to ensure that Junction residents are afforded the same services as anywhere else in town.
    Having had a pair of grandparents who lived in the Junction years ago, he feels personally vested in helping the hamlet flourish again.
    “This is part of our community that means a lot to me,” he said.
WATER TANK HOLDUP
    Many Junction residents point to the ongoing issue over the Junction’s aging water tank off Leggeiro Lane as evidence of the town’s generally cavalier attitude toward conditions in the hamlet. The 200,000-gallon tank was fi rst identified for replacement in 2003, after a town study determined that it had been in poor condition for more than two decades.
    Officials from the Rotterdam Junction Volunteer Fire Department also cited the inadequacy of the tank, which has just enough capacity to service the 577 users in water districts 3 and 4. They fear that any massive fire could rapidly deplete the tank and place the hamlet at risk.
    The town has proposed building a 520,000-gallon tank on the SI Group property in the Junction and is expected to conduct public hearings on the $2 million water district-funded project sometime in the next two months.
    But many question why the project lingered for more than fi ve years in the first place.
    “The price tag is not going to go down,” said Karp. “That’s a burden that is going to be shared by only a few folks.”
    Tommasone said the water tank issue was not tackled by previous administrations. But he said that since he took office in 2005, the project has been at the forefront of the town’s concerns and has only been held back by needed engineering studies.
    “It’s unfortunate, but things like this take time,” he said.
FEELING IGNORED
    Others say there’s a lack of police presence in the Junction. Patrols through the hamlet are infrequent, causing some to wonder if offi cers ever make rounds to the area.
    Calls placed to Police Chief James Hamilton were not returned last week.
    Ambulance response can sometimes lag in comparison to other areas of the town. Rotterdam Junction Fire Chief Shawn Taylor said the hamlet’s distance from the nearest ambulance dispatch point can sometimes lead to long response times.
    “They’re a fair ways away, and it does take a while to get out here,” he said. “Unfortunately, living a little more rurally, obviously it’s going to take a bit longer.”
    Not all gripes are aimed at the town. Sometimes it’s big business that seems to ignore the plight of the west-enders.
    At the end of Scrafford Lane, a clogged culvert running beneath the Pan Am Railways’ freight yard has left a segment of the old Erie Canal flooded with algae-covered water.
    Absent the drainage, runoff collects behind a stretch of homes off Isabella Street instead of fl owing to a wider stretch of the basin along the Mohawk-Hudson Bike-Hike Trail that is outfitted with concrete drains.
    Several residents have asked for the railroad to clear the culvert, but it remains clogged. When the area received nearly four inches of rain over a two-day period, water from the canal crested over the old towpath and inundated a half-dozen properties.
    Residents along the Pan Am tracks also contend with fumes from the trains that sometimes idle along the tracks for days on end. As with the culvert, complaints about the practice haven’t prevented it from occurring with any less frequency.
SITUATION LOOKING UP
    Still Karp, the Planning Board member, said things are starting to improve in the Junction. Over the past five years, he said town leaders have taken a greater interest in bringing improved services to the Junction; the snow removal is prompt, and the streets are kept swept.
    Over the past two years, the highway department has paved nearly a dozen town roads in the Junction area; it was the first time Karp could recall such improvements.
    The Town Board also schedules at least one meeting a year at the Junction, bringing Rotterdam’s government to the hamlet’s residents for a change.
    Tommasone said he’s made a concerted effort to try and bring the Junction back into the fold of both town services and prominence. Under his administration, the town secured a $150,000 brownfield improvement grant through the state Department of Environmental Conservation to develop a land use strategy for 570 acres near the vicinity of the Mabee Farm and the Mohawk-Hudson Bike-Hike Trail.
    The town also recently completed an Exit 26 and Interstate 890 land-use and transportation study. Town and state officials are hoping to use the study to develop guidelines and generate improvement ideas for the lower Rotterdam Junction area.
    Tommasone anticipates that the grant and study will prompt new interest in the hamlet. He envisions everything from new sidewalks to creating a passive-use park along the old Erie Canal basin.
    “You’re going to see a lot more improvements up there,” he said. “We recognize that area of our community holds tremendous value.”

BARRY SLOAN/FOR THE DAILY GAZETTE
Rotterdam Historian Dick Whalen stands with a display of old photographs showing many of the train tracks that once carved through the hamlet of Rotterdam Junction.

BARRY SLOAN/FOR THE DAILY GAZETTE An abandoned section of the Erie Canal, seen from Leggiero Lane, adds to Rotterdam Junction’s scenic charm.

Tommosone...Talk Talk Talk Talk....do NOTHING !!!

Steve is a politician, try to make everyone happy while trying not to make any enemies, sometimes that strategy can blow up in your face. People will only tolerate this for so long.