Tag Archives: #catskillsny

Protecting our Water in the Catskills

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© Jenny Neal – Usage prohibited without consent

Water is ubiquitous in the Catskills, flowing along side us everywhere we go: rivers, streams, and creeks provide nature’s musical summer backdrop as we drive the roads and hike the mountains. Country homeowners – outside village municipal water supplies – are delivered this precious resource via wells and springs. Residents and business owners of the Catskills are tasked with protecting the water and sending it down to New York City as cleanly as possible.

Things you may not know about the Catskills when you move here: constant work is needed to protect our groundwater. The Catskills Watershed Corporation hosts conferences, events, and organizations like the Water Discovery Center in which you can educate yourself and help to protect the water.

Coming on June 7th is Groundwater in the Catskills: Challenges and Solutions, a one-day conference presented by the Catskill Water Discovery Center with the Margaretville Rotary Club, and Rotary District 7170 from 10 am to 3 pm in the auditorium of the Catskill Watershed Corporation, 669 Hwy 38, Arkville, NY 12406. Tickets are $10 including lunch, and are available at: Eventbrite directly or access Eventbrite through the Water Discovery Center’s website.

According to the CWDC: “Globally, groundwater is an essential drinking water source that is at risk in many places. Locally, residents in the Catskills, including those in the NYC watershed, encounter variable drinking water conditions via private wells or municipal systems, seemingly illogical given that the NYC’s surface water reservoir system provides exceptional drinking water to nine million people.”

The conference will explore the problems Catskills municipalities, and residents, farms and other users of groundwater, encounter – problems such as arsenic, sulfur, iron, lead, copper, chlorides, coliform/E Coli, nitrates and gasses including methane, and carbon dioxide. Speakers will examine where contaminants come from and how they can be addressed.

Featured speakers include representatives from the State’s Drinking Water Source Protection Program (DWSP2), led by NYSDEC and NYS DOH in collaboration with other state agencies.

Residents living within the NYC watershed, may benefit from measures put in place for protection of the surface water. A representative from NYC DEP will speak to those protections.

The afternoon panel session will include the morning’s speakers plus municipal leaders from Andes and Middletown and representatives from the Catskill Watershed Corporation, Watershed Agricultural Council, and the Delaware County Soil and Water Conservation District.

Daily Catskills: 09/21/23

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A chilly sunrise with overnight frost whitening the flora, and steaming mist rising into a crystal clear sky. A crisp day, with a high of 69F and the landscape looking like it’s slowly being sanded down. This is the penultimate day of summer.

© Jenny Neal 7.30am – Usage prohibited without consent

The Last Days of Summer

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© Jenny Neal – Usage prohibited without consent

A very rainy summer is coming to a dry, sunny end – well, fingers crossed, as summer’s not officially over until September 22nd this year. I have mostly been focused on my fine art studies at Andes Academy of Art. Every Wednesday, there is a figure drawing session with a live nude model, from 4pm-7pm at Streamside Yoga, 509 Main Street Andes that only stops during the darkest depths of a Catskills winter (and word is that we’re in for a bad winter). Local artists Lisbeth Firmin, Steven Burnett, Gary Mayer, Peter Mayer, William Duke, Sandy Finkenberg attend this class, and it’s been a thrill to be influenced by the best artists in the Catskills, and although my sketching is getting so much better, my watercolor is what sells.

This year I launched a print version of Upstate Dispatch – a magazine – that was well-received, but did not sell well. I’ve caught up with the retailers of the magazine who said that customers did not want to pay $20 for the magazine. I’ve mulled this over with booksellers and local artists, and we’ve come up with the theory that people see magazines as disposable and don’t want to pay for them. I collect some magazines, and all my artist colleagues – about 30 friends – all bought a copy of Upstate Dispatch because they see it as art.

This theory is proven by the fact that our sketch sale to benefit The Heart of the Catskills animal shelter at the Andes Academy of Art this week was mobbed by customers who were happy to pay $20 for a rough sketch or watercolor that took less than 20 minutes to draw in our figure drawing classes. The whole show of about a hundred works that were tacked up on the wall unframed, was almost sold out.

It really opened my eyes to what sells and what is valued. Art is, after all, a commodity. Periodicals, not so much.

This brings me to books. A local bookseller told me last night that nobody wants to buy books either! Journalists’ salaries have been in significant decline for decades, but do people really want all words to be free? How’s a writer supposed to live? Despite this, Upstate Dispatch celebrates its 9th birthday this year. Thank you to all who read regularly and, an extra thank you to a handful of you who contribute (through the donation page). Plans are in the works for an art studio and gallery. I hope you’ll come and visit.