CIVIL WAR TALK DUANESBURG — The Duanesburg Historical Society will meet at 7 p.m. Monday in Bishop Scully Hall, Delanson. The program will be “A Life of a Civil War Soldier,” presented by Matt George, a retired social students teacher from Draper Middle School. The public is welcome.
Duanesburg, DEC in talks about landfill Friday, August 21, 2009 By Justin Mason (Contact) Gazette Reporter
DUANESBURG — Tests conducted by the state Department of Environmental Conservation last month revealed no contamination in the Normans Kill resulting from the defunct Duanesburg landfill, according to town officials. Supervisor Rene Merrihew said the agency did its preliminary testing in July and found no environmental issues that would support the findings of a student-led study into possible creek pollution. The finding backs skepticism initially voiced by a DEC researcher, who questioned whether the students’ methodology had produced accurate results. “They found there is no impact to the creek or wildlife in the creek,” Merrihew said during a recent Town Board meeting. But the lack of pollutants in the creek doesn’t mean that the town won’t need to take corrective action of sorts. Merrihew said the town is negotiating a consent order aimed at correcting a leachate seepage violation identified by the DEC while it was testing the creek.................>>>>..................>>>>...................http://www.dailygazette.com/news/2009/aug/21/0821_landfill/
Editorial wrong about Duanesburg graduation ceremony
I am writing to you in response to an Aug. 8 editorial, “Honor vote to move Duanesburg graduation.” You responded to Duanesburg residents’ protest of the holding of the Class of 2010 graduation at Proctors. Boy, did you miss the mark on this one, and have succeeded in giving the public information that is incorrect. Let me first respond to your statement that the students who didn’t bother to respond to the poll can be presumed as having no preference. Did you know that those students did not get an e-mail to respond? The class adviser did not have a complete class e-mail list when the question was put to the class. Second, your statement that a parent suggested that the money could make a difference in the effort to get a new auditorium built is laughable. That was not what was said, but instead that the board support the grass-roots effort in town for a auditorium. Not financial support, but to back these people in their effort. What a twist you put on that! It was suggested at the board meeting that the board spend money to purchase a monitor in the gym so those in the back can see better. And that the ceremony be condensed so it’s not so long to sit through, by having the senior awards ceremony on a different night. If there are complaints, spend money at home to fix the problem until money can be raised to build our own auditorium. The board spent money on air conditioning and sound-system repairs already, so why now spend money in Schenectady? As for the graduation at our high school being a tradition, you bet it is, and a good tradition. For 57 years the Duanesburg graduates have walked down the center of our gym, being feet away from their parents as they go by. They sit on stage in a place where they have been to basketball games, award ceremonies, holiday concerts and school drama productions. So, please tell me how that tradition isn’t a good one. A small school district with a board that has cut programs for the kids that cost less than the $3,000-plus they want to spend to take the graduation ceremony to Proctors has no right to spend that money on an event that the residents seem to oppose. Why weren’t the taxpaying parents polled, not the 16-year-old students?
Editorial: Plug Duanesburg landfill leak now Friday, August 28, 2009
Duanesburg Supervisor Rene Merrihew said last week that recent water tests of the Normans Kill conducted by the state Department of Environmental Conservation confirmed the existence of runoff into the stream from the leach field of the town’s long-closed landfill, but that it hasn’t caused any contamination. If so — and DEC won’t comment since it’s negotiating with the town to eliminate the runoff — it should be considered good news on two counts. The first is that the water quality of the creek, which empties into the Watervliet Reservoir, hasn’t been affected by whatever it was that a group of area high school students saw flowing into the stream near the old dump site last fall. (The students reported the seepage being orange in color and foul-smelling. They subsequently conducted water tests at the site and got more suspicious when they found dramatically lower insect counts. Then they found town records of groundwater tests which indicated excessive chemical levels near the creek.) The reservoir supplies drinking water to thousands of Capital Region residents. The second cause for relief is that the DEC — in apparently confirming leachate seepage near the landfill and forcing the town to address it — has lessened the likelihood any contamination will take place sometime in the future. Groundwater that may be clean today could bear toxic pollutants tomorrow; that’s why DEC maintains a zero-tolerance policy for leachate seepage. If Merrihew’s assessment of the situation pans out, it means that the serious problem feared by the students in the Schoharie River Center project didn’t exist. But it also means there was the potential. With the town and DEC addressing the issue, that potential has been diminished.
I’ll be graduating in 2010 at Duanesburg, and I’m writing this in response to the Aug. 21 letter you printed about the graduation. This whole issue has dragged on far enough, and I felt if anyone’s opinion mattered, it would be from the students who are actually graduating — like me. First, I’d like to point out the issue of the incomplete e-mail list. Students who failed to meet the deadline of signing up didn’t get put on the list. The class adviser went around to students toward the end of the year to ask if they would like to have the ceremony held at Proctors, so most students did get to vote. Second, leaving the vote on this issue up to taxpayers is absurd. The vote is up to the students, since they are the affected group. Finally, the whole tradition of graduating at Duanesburg hasn’t been altered permanently, the next graduating class will get to choose as well. Seriously, all this commotion over not having the graduation at the school? The location doesn’t matter, it’s the moment that’s really important.
So the taxpayers are not affected by the added cost?
"While Foreign Terrorists were plotting to murder and maim using homemade bombs in Boston, Democrap officials in Washington DC, Albany and here were busy watching ME and other law abiding American Citizens who are gun owners and taxpayers, in an effort to blame the nation's lack of security on US so that they could have a political scapegoat."
That's the one thing that I saw that I disagreed with that letter. They would absolutely be affected, unless the students are going to come up with the money (which would possibly come from the parents of said students, which, just happen to be the taxpayers again).
DUANESBURG Blaze destroys barn but cows uninjured BY KATHLEEN MOORE Gazette Reporter
A dairy farm barn burned to the ground Monday afternoon, but as luck would have it, all the cows were out grazing when the fire ignited. The owners of the farm, at 1104 Route 30, weren’t home when the fire began, Esperance Fire Chief Tim Deffer said. A passerby saw the flames around 4 p.m. and called for help. It was Deffer’s first fire as chief, and it was not an easy one: the fi re, fueled by hay, burned for nearly four hours before fi refighters got it under control Monday night. They had to set up a portable pond to douse the flames. In the end, the barn was destroyed, Deffer said. Vehicles stored in and around the building were also lost, Schoharie Fire Coordinator Matt Brisley said. ........................>>>>.....................>>>>.................http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....r01003&AppName=1
Kathleen has gone up in the reporting world. From reporting on the jackasses in the City of Schenectady, to reporting on the near demise of cows in Duanesburg.
Kathleen has gone up in the reporting world. From reporting on the jackasses in the City of Schenectady, to reporting on the near demise of cows in Duanesburg.
THIS IS IMPORTANT NEWS FOR PEOPLE WITH CHILDREN IN THE DUANSBURG VILLAGE AND TOWN WITH THE HEALTH AFFECTS FROM THE SMOKE WHAT ARE YOU CRAZY? THEY NEED TO KNOW NOW. YOU MUST NOT HAVE KIDS YOU LOVE OR GRANDKIDS THAT ARE YOUNG AND COULD BE AFFECTED BY THAT SMOKE AND POLUTTION WHO HAVE THE ASHTMA OR OTHER THINGS GOING ON ALLERGYS IE. RIGHT WING NUTS WANT TO RUIN US
DUANESBURG Girl aims to meet equine namesake Rachel Alexandra writes to filly’s trainer BY JUSTIN MASON Gazette Reporter
Rachel Alexandra isn’t in this weekend’s Woodward Stakes, but she plans to watch from the rail at Saratoga Race Course. And if the stars are aligned properly, the 17-year-old horse aficionado and Duanesburg High School honor student hopes for a chance to meet her thoroughbred namesake. In a last-ditch effort to meet the filly, Rachel Alexandra Mikrut wrote a letter to trainer Steve Asmussen Tuesday, asking for an opportunity to get a photograph with the 3-year-old filly before the horse leaves this year’s racing meet. “I don’t know if anything will happen from the letter,” she admitted. “I hope it does, because that would mean the world to me.” Since early August, Mikrut and her family have been trying to meet up with this year’s Preakness Stakes winner that shares her fi rst and middle names. Officials with the New York Racing Association tried to arrange a meeting on Travers Day, but the effort never came to fruition, leaving Mikrut and her family to try for a glimpse of Rachel Alexandra at the filly’s dawn workouts. On one occasion, she and her mother, Kathy, made the 46-mile journey to Saratoga Springs, only to miss the filly’s run after being directed to the wrong exercise track. Then on Monday they made another attempt, only to arrive just a few minutes after the horse had finished running for the morning. ..................>>>>........................>>>>...................http://www.dailygazette.net/De.....1&Continuation=1
The Duanesburg Central school administration has obviously sent the wrong message to its students by asking if they would like a change of location for their graduation. As evidenced in the Aug. 28 letter [“Much ado over location of Duanesburg graduation”] by a member of the Class of 2010, there appears to be no understanding of the taxpayers’ involvement in the fi rst 13 years of everyone’s education. The taxpayers are indeed “affected” by every dollar the school district spends, including the extra money for the venue change. As I opened and paid our school tax bill this morning (it always goes up, never down), it occurred to me that the graduating class should pay the extra money for the luxury of having its graduation at Proctors. The school calendar shows many fundraising activities throughout the school year for the senior class; perhaps if the class gave up a few senior perks, it would better understand what the average taxpayer has given up over the past 12 years. Wouldn’t that send a better message?
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