It's just that he is always so incredibly negative and depressing and placing a damper on anything pro-active, that it is sometimes quite difficult to know when he may have a point. I usually just don't listen to him. He'll be gone in a few months anyways.
When the INSANE are running the ASYLUM In individuals, insanity is rare; but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule. -- Friedrich Nietzsche
“How fortunate for those in power that people never think.” Adolph Hitler
It's just that he is always so incredibly negative and depressing and placing a damper on anything pro-active, that it is sometimes quite difficult to know when he may have a point. I usually just don't listen to him. He'll be gone in a few months anyways.
Unless he's representing you at the county level...
ROTTERDAM American Indian group staging major fundraiser BY MICHAEL LAMENDOLA Gazette Reporter Reach Gazette reporter Michael Lamendola at 395-3114 or lamend@dailygazette.com.
Keepers of the Circle will hold a major fundraiser Saturday and Sunday at its Route 5S site in Rotterdam Junction. Keepers, a nonprofit organization formed in 1991 in Albany to promote American Indian culture, is hoping to raise enough money through the event to keep afloat as it continues to build membership and expand its programs. Keepers has held numerous small events to raise money. The weekend fundraiser, however, is its first major event since a new board of directors assumed leadership this year, said adviser Tim Christian. The event will feature drumming, dancing, singing, storytelling, flute music and native foods. Vendors have been invited, and the Keepers will offer tours. The Mohegan Tribe and Nation is sponsoring the event, Christian said, helping to defray costs. “We are doing the best we can,” Christian said. “It’s like climbing a hill. We won’t stop ’til we get to the top and plant our flag.” The new board revamped Keepers, which had been riven by infighting for years, and quickly mended relations with the Schenectady County Historical Society, owner of the neighboring Mabee Farm, and with the county. The county purchased the 29-acre parcel on Route 5S for $171,000 in 2000 but gave Keepers control over it. Keepers was supposed to develop and offer programs to promote American Indian culture and the historical aspects of the Mohawk River. None of this occurred due to infighting within the group. Earlier this year, the county agreed to give Keepers 2.6 acres and the Bradt farmhouse in Rotterdam Junction and to sell the remaining 27 acres to the historical society for $180,000. The closing has yet to occur, but historical society President Edwin Reilly Jr. expects that to happen in August. Christian said Keepers of the Circle only needs a small piece of property to fulfill its mission. “We want to be a Native American multicultural center. We want to teach all cultures here, and we want to learn all cultures here,” he said. Since February, Keepers has repainted and insulated the Bradt House, restocked the museum with American Indian artifacts and curios and provided local school children with several educational programs. Keepers also received permission from the Albany Food Pantry to begin providing emergency food at the site. “We will do outreach from Rotterdam Junction to Route 30,” Christian said. The food pantry will distribute food two days a week, he said. Keepers will assume full financial responsibility for the Bradt House and property from the county once the land transfer is completed. The county pays annual utility costs, totaling about $9,000. Keepers is a registered nonprofi t organization with the state and accepts donations, Christian said. Membership is open to anyone; dues are $25 annually. Keepers applied for a county tourism grant this year but was turned down. Grant Director Wendy Hosking Glasser said Keepers’ application failed to score well because the organization had to show that it had existing community support in terms of membership, subscribers and attendance, that it was working in collaboration with other organizations and that it was generating additional private or other funds. She said Keepers can apply for another grant in the next funding cycle. Reilly said the historical society is standing by its pledge to provide financial and in-kind support to Keepers during its first year of operation. The society purchased 40 tickets for the July 21-22 event and promises more assistance once the land transfer is completed. The society needs the additional land for its proposed George E. Franchere Educational Center. The center will straddle the 9-acre Mabee Farm parcel and the soon-to-be acquired Keepers property. “We have to complete our design and bring it to the Rotterdam Planning Board. We have our zoning permits,” Reilly said. “Next spring is when you will see a structure rising there. We are still raising money to finish the project.” He said the society has collected three-fourths of the estimated $2 million cost of the center.
ROTTERDAM JUNCTION Keepers of Circle celebrate ‘peace, harmony, balance’ BY JUSTIN MASON Gazette Reporter Reach Gazette reporter Justin Mason at 395-3113 or jmason@dailygazette.net.
When Tim Christian saw eagles flying overhead at the Bradt farmhouse this weekend, he knew peace had at last come to the Keepers of the Circle. The advisor and mediator of the Keepers gazed across the recently acquired property as sunshine bathed a procession of American Indian dancers and artists gathered there this weekend. The essence of burning cedar wafted on a cool breeze, as a lone drummer pounded on a drum Sunday. “It shows peace in the valley,” he said during the Keepers’ fi rst major fundraiser since the group reorganized. “Peace, harmony and balance.” The nonprofit organization was formed in 1991 to promote American Indian culture, but had fallen into turmoil in recent years. The group revamped its leadership and then orchestrated a deal with Schenectady County and the Historical Society in which they obtained the historic farm house and 2.6 acres of land. Previously, they had maintained control over a 29-acre countyowned parcel off land along Route 5S. Under the deal, the county sold about 27 acres of this land to the historical society, giving the remaining parcel and house to the Keepers. Christian said the group is now renovating the home, which will serve as a museum and learning center for American Indian culture. He said events such as the gathering this weekend will help fund such endeavors. “It’s a good outreach program for the community,” he said. As a measure of good faith, the Schenectady County Historical Society donated $200 to the Keepers. Christian said the historical society has also indicated a willingness to help the Keepers during their fi rst year owning the property. Christian said the group hopes to raise about $40,000 a year to offer programs on the property. By next fall, he said the group plans to contact area school districts to gauge interest in their educational programs. The group is also seeking placement on a national list of pow wows. Christian said such a designation could bring droves of people to the property. “This could be three or four times this size,” he said of the event’s modest turnout. Stephen Shepard, also known as Grandfather Eagle Bear, said the weekend event shows the keepers have mended their group after years of neglect. He said the group is now showing dedication to its true purpose: keeping American Indian heritage and tradition alive among the youth. “We’re here to help the children,” he said. Attending the event this weekend was Moigu Standing Bear, chief of the Mohegan Tribe and Nation, which sponsored the gathering. Standing Bear lauded the Keepers for re-energizing their group. “This organization like any organization has had its ups and downs,” he said, “Right now, they’re here to make this organization as strong as it possibly can be.” Bryant Miller, a longtime member of the group, said he’s watched the Keepers rise from tumult before. Donning a Mohawk Indian headdress, he said the Keepers’ fi rst large gathering was another sign that peace had finally reached the group. “Today is a day of peace,” he said. PETER R. BARBER/GAZETTE PHOTOGRAPHER Members of Girl Scout Troop 277 of Cohoes learn how to keep the beat on a drum made from a tortoise shell with Zelda Hotaling, of Castleton, who was teaching the scouts how to make rattles and dance sticks during the Native American Indian Festival at Keepers of the Circle in Rotterdam Junction on Sunday.
EARLY TECHNOLOGY ROTTERDAM JUNCTION — The Mabee Farm Historical Site, 1080 Main St., will present “Early Technologies Day” from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 4. The event will explain fire starting, leather tanning, quillwork, powder horn engraving, tinsmithing, blacksmithing, and more. There will be a hands-on flint knapping workshop and atlatl throwing with Barry Keegan. Representatives of The Van Epps Hartley Chapter of the New York State Archaeology Association will help identify native artifacts.
OUTBOARD MOTOR SWAP ROTTERDAM JUNCTION — The Mabee Farm Historic Site, 1080 Main St., will host an antique outboard motor swap meet from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday, Aug. 18. Participants are invited to buy, sell or trade motors and parts. There will also be a display of antique motors. The event is sponsored by the Mohawk Hudson Chapter of the Antique Outboard Motor Club, Inc
HISTORIC CRAFTS ROTTERDAM JUNCTION — The Mabee Farm Historic Site, Route 5S, will offer a workshop on making gourd birdhouses from 1 to 4 p.m. Saturday . Instructor Pam Bucci will show participants how to decorate a dried bottle gourd using woodburning techniques, paints and stains. The fee for this program is $35.
CAR SHOW ROTTERDAM JUNCTION — The Schenectady East Rotary will present “Patriot’s Day” antique and classic car show from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday at the Mabee Farm Historic Site on route 5S. Along with the classics and antiques, there will be muscle cars, trucks and motorcycles. Judging for pre-1987 cars will begin at 1 p.m., with trophies awarded at 3 p.m. There will also be music, food and games. Admission is free.
HISTORY FAIR ROTTERDAM JUNCTION — The Mabee Farm Historic Site, Route 5S, will present a history fair from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday. Participants will meet “Joseph Yates,” the governor of New York in 1822, and “Samuel Meredith,” treasurer of the U.S. under George Washington. Other guest speakers will include historians Lion Miles, Emily Tarbell, Ona Curran and Al Sterling. Don Rittner, Schenectady County historian, will be available to videotape and record the memories of seniors in Schenectady County.
ROTTERDAM Kiwanis Park grant will improve toilets and other amenities BY JUSTIN MASON Gazette Reporter
Ask Joe Nicolella what part of Rotterdam’s Kiwanis Park is most in need of improvement and it doesn’t take him long to find an answer. Like many visitors to the rolling green space along the Mohawk River, the Schenectady resident and member of Northern New York Paddlers canoe club has taken issue with the small cinder block and concrete outhouse near the entrance to the park. “Boy, they’re disgusting,” he said Monday from the park. “No one can use them.” Calling the facilities fetid is mild. With its stench and uncleanliness, the outhouse seems drastically out of place in the scenic grove of the town’s only waterfront park But with a $40,000 state grant secured, town officials are planning improvements, the foremost to include flush toilets. The town also anticipates renovating the park boat launch, paving the parking area, installing a drinking water source and improving the existing dock. “It’s one of the first amenities you see coming in from [Thruway] Exit 26 into Rotterdam Junction,” Supervisor Steve Tommasone said of the park. “It’s important that we have a showpiece there.” Originally constructed by the Rotterdam Kiwanis Club during the 1980s, the park off Route 5S rests on land owned by both the town and the state Canal Corporation. The park is heavily used by both boaters SCHENECTADY — An overon the Mohawk and people using the nearby bike-hike trail. Town officials first received the matching grant for the improvements from the state Office of Parks, Recreation and Historical Preservation in July 2005. However, vague land records on the site prevented the town from moving forward with any improvements. “The records from when the state took over the land were so convoluted that certain title companies were uncomfortable with it,” said Gerard Parisi, the town’s attorney. With these issues now resolved, Tommasone said work is expected to begin early next month and carry on through the winter. Rotterdam’s highway department will complete most of the work, using town materials and equipment whenever possible. Tommasone said the labor and materials will represent Rotterdam’s share of the grant. Tommasone also envisions other improvements to the park that aren’t likely to be covered under the grant. For instance, there probably isn’t enough grant money to replace a trailer now used as a dock. “The $40,000 will go a long way for us, but we are probably going to request some additional funding [from the town],” he said. For area residents using the park Monday, word of the impending improvements was welcome news. Both Nicolella and fellow paddler Ray Smith lauded the idea of sprucing up the park they frequent almost every week. “It’s a small park, but it gets a lot of use,” Smith said.
Written by: Jessica Harding, Schenectady County Reporter email: hardingj@spotlightnews.com
Rotterdam has received a $40,000 grant from the state office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation for improvements to Kiwanis Park in the western part of town.
The project will start this fall and include renovation of the boat launch, paving of the lawer parking area, dock improvements, upgraded restroom facilities, potable water, better signage and a handicap fishing area.
MARC SCHULTZ/GAZETTE PHOTOGRAPHER Lower Rotterdam Junction resident Dan Dedrick says the smoke from idling trains hangs over the bike/hike trails, infiltrates his neighborhood and at times makes it unpleasant to be outdoors. At the nearby train yard, trains sometimes sit for days with engines running. ROTTERDAM JUNCTION Residents sound off over idling engines BY JUSTIN MASON Gazette Reporter
On some days, Dan Dedrick can see a haze hovering above the waters of East and West ponds near the old Erie Canal towpath. The two man-made pools are surrounded by 78 acres of lush vegetation and provide an ideal spot for outdoor recreation during the summer months. With its abundance of good fishing and hiking trails, the town-owned property has long been viewed as a good place to establish a park on the west edge of Rotterdam. That is, unless it happens to be a weekend. On Friday afternoons, railroad workers typically park the freight trains on Pan Am Railways tracks adjacent to the ponds, lock up the engines, then leave with them still idling. Noxious fumes from the diesel exhaust quickly fill the earthen bowl, often rendering the spot inhospitable for hours and even days on end. On some days, the emissions are so dense they create a thin blue haze over the water’s surface of the water “It’s like a haze,” Dedrick said, surveying the two ponds as a pair of engines idled nearby. “It’s just like a fog settling in here.” The fumes also envelope the nearby bike/hike trail and waft into a residential area bordering the property, where Dedrick lives. He said a cluster of engines idled through the Labor Day weekend this year, inundating his Gardinier Street neighborhood with fumes that forced him to keep his windows closed. “When the wind is blowing right, those fumes will keep you in your house,” he said. Locomotive idling is common among freight railroad operations, as engineers must sometimes wait for hours to have cars switched or for another train to clear a section of tracks. While there are some practical purposes for the idling, it is also frequently done out of habit, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. During winter, diesel engines are almost always left running because they can be difficult to start in cold weather, and certain engines can sustain damage when started in the extreme cold. In other instances, the engines are left running to maintain critical functions such as air pressure for brakes and battery charge. In Rotterdam Junction, residential complaints about idling trains are nothing new. In 2003, Dedrick and a group of more than two dozen neighbors successfully petitioned the town to enact an ordinance prohibiting locomotive idling at the western terminus for the former Guilford Rail System. Under the local law, train companies are subject to a $1,000 fi ne or up to a year in jail, if an engine is left idling for more than a half hour between March and December. Since the law was enacted in 2003, Rotterdam Police have handed out tickets to Guilford locomotive engineers on several occasions, Lt. Michael Brown confirmed. LOCAL VS. FEDERAL LAW But the summonses make little difference when they are preempted by federal law, explained Pat Saccocio, the town’s attorney. The cases that have gone before the town court have all been adjourned in the contemplation of dismissal because the freight rail industry is regulated by interstate commerce law. “There would be a serious constitutional challenge to [Rotterdam’s] statute,” he said. “You could imagine what would occur if a railroad had to deal with a local law in every municipality they crossed through.” During the last case he litigated about a year ago, Saccocio requested the Massachusetts-based company — now known as Pan Am Railways — limit the amount of time spent idling in Rotterdam out of courtesy to the town. In response, company officials only reiterated their concerns with shutting down the locomotives and the significant protocol they must follow each time. “There are some problems the town government just can’t solve,” Saccocio said. “In my opinion, this is one of them.” David Fink, president of Pan Am, failed to return numerous calls placed over a three-week period. Attempts to solicit any comment from the company’s headquarters in Billerica, Mass., were unsuccessful. While communities around the Capital Region have enacted similarly unenforceable ordinances, some have had a greater degree of success in getting rail companies to remedy offensive idling. In Stillwater, town officials devised a train idling ordinance in 2001, after voicing safety concerns over both the unattended locomotives and the diesel fumes they spewed into a track side neighborhood of nearly 500 residents. About a year later, Saratoga County Sheriff’s deputies arrested a pair of Guilford railroad workers as they waited in the idling locomotive parked in Stillwater. The arrests were the first from such laws, which were also enacted in Ballston Spa and Clifton Park. Company officials challenged the constitutionality of the charge, which was later dismissed. Guilford lawyers agreed to move the idling trains away from the areas where they were posing a nuisance. Since that time, Stillwater hasn’t experienced a problem with the company, Supervisor Greg Connors said. Pan Am provided him with a contact he could report a problem train to have them promptly moved elsewhere. Although the local law remains in place, Connors said there has been no need to enforce it since the initial citations five years ago. He said the last call to Pan Am came about six months ago and the company complied without incident. “The railroad is really conscientious about it,” he said. “They move the trains right away.” The Rotterdam Junction were exacerbated around the same time the idling problems in Stillwater were resolved. Dedrick said the fumes weren’t a problem when he first moved into his home about 12 years ago. But for the past five years or so, Dedrick said, the problem has gotten worse. He said waterfowl no longer frequent East and West ponds, something he blames on the declining air quality around them. “We aren’t worried about them moving the trains or blowing their horns,” he said. “We’re worried about them idling.” FINDING SOLUTIONS Rotterdam Supervisor Steve Tommasone said the idling will become increasingly problematic as the town seeks to establish a passive-use park around the ponds. Once a plan for the park is developed, he said the town will try to convince Pan Am to find a different place to park their idling engines. Tommasone said finding a suitable location could be difficult given the proximity of Rotterdam’s residential neighborhood to the tracks. Ultimately, he said, it may fall to state and federal officials to find a long-term solution. “The biggest roadblock to successfully resolving this issue is the federal government,” he said. “We have to change the laws at the federal level.” In an effort to curb air pollution resulting from diesel locomotives, the EPA has in place a number of requirements to regulate emissions. This year, the agency proposed new regulations aimed at reducing “particulate matter emissions” from these engines by 90 percent and nitrogen oxides emissions by 80 percent over the next seven years. The regulations also tighten emission standards for existing locomotives when they are remanufactured, according to the EPA. Other provisions include measures to reduce unnecessary locomotive idling, such as voluntary agreements by the major railroads to cut emissions levels beyond the ones mandated by the law. However, such standards may take a while to affect the locomotive fleets from smaller rail companies such as Pan Am, said Ray Warner, a regional chief for the EPA’s air branch. These companies often rely on older locomotives that emit far more toxic fumes than newer or rebuilt models. “There are pollution issues surrounding these railroads because they don’t have the deep pockets of larger railroads,” he said. Warner said there are relatively inexpensive solutions the EPA has proposed. For instance, he said the engines can be outfitted with heating filaments powered with electricity, or small diesel-powered generators that can keep the engines warm during cold weather. These devices run between $5,000 and $20,000, an expense the EPA estimates the railroads would recoup in fuel-cost savings after three years. In certain cases, Warner said, the EPA can even work to secure grants to fund the equipment purchase. “There are potential fixes, but it depends on whether Pan Am is interested in pursuing those fixes,” he said. MARC SCHULTZ/GAZETTE PHOTOGRAPHER Smoke billows from an idling train parked near East and West ponds and the old Erie Canal tow path. Rotterdam Junction resident Dan Dedrick is battling against the trains idling near his home. Despite efforts to get the railroads to stop idling the engines, which casts a haze over the neighborhood, it is still a problem. MARC SCHULTZ/ GAZETTE PHOTOGRAPHER
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