The critical issues

By Daniel Stimpfle
HIGHLAND MILLS —A panel featuring local political activists and experts discussing some of the most pressing issues currently facing the area attracted about 40 people to a forum at Palaia Winery in Highland Mills Wednesday evening.
The forum, hosted by Jackie Hernandez of Protect Our Resources Hudson Valley, featured panelists Emily Convers of United Monroe, Calvin Wing, a graduate student at the University of Wisconsin studying sustainability, and environmental activist Sandra Kissam.
They spent the majority of time discussing two major issues facing southern Orange County. This included the Pilgrim Pipeline and a water withdrawal permit issued by the Department of Environmental Conservation last October which gave the Village of Kiryas Joel the ability to draw more water from existing wells and from one under construction in the hamlet of Mountainville.

The permit issued by the DEC and its connection to the land annexation issue in Monroe was the first item on the list. The withdrawal permit issued by the DEC allows for the Village of Kiryas Joel to draw more than 600,000 gallons of water per day from the Mountainville well and pump station currently being constructed along Route 32.
This decision by the DEC to issue the water withdrawal permit is currently the target of two Article 78 lawsuits which aim to prove that the DEC’s decision was both “arbitrary and capricious” and “not supported with substantial evidence.”
One of the lawsuits argued that the state environmental review for the permit failed to take into account the potential impact removing water would have on the Woodbury Creek (which also feeds the Moodna Creek, a locally important tributary of the Hudson River) .
Wing, the University of Wisconsin graduate student, argued that the rapid growth of the Village of Kiryas Joel could negatively affect members of the surrounding communities and environment.
According to Wing, the Village of Kiryas Joel has been experiencing “negative population growth,” which he said meant that the growth of the village has been outgrowing the local economy and environment, leaving the village without the funds or the space to supply those resources, forcing the village to reach beyond its borders for those resources.
Then Wing posed the question: “Are we creating an environment that will allow future generations to have access to the same amount of resources which we have today?”
Wing said that he doesn’t think so, mainly because the local water cannot continue to support growing populations in the area.
He quoted Orange County Planning Commissioner David Church, from a Times Herald-Record article, saying that continuously pumping the Mountainville Well would remove half or more of the flow of water from the Woodbury Creek for more than one month per year.
In the same article, the consultant for the Kiryas Joel pipeline said that pumping from the Mountainville Well could fully dry the Woodbury stream bed.
Wing said he did not believe that the local watershed could handle losing 600,000 gallons of water a day, arguing that “The national recharge rate does not allow for the Cornwall watershed to sustain itself pumping water to Kiryas Joel. Period.”
Such a loss also would affect local species and sensitive ecosystems which depend on the creek. “It’s the aggregate of all of these small resource reallocations that are destroying this planet,” he said.
Convers, one of the founders of United Monroe, pointed out how the issue of the well is tied to larger political issues and the annexation of land in Monroe.
She argued that the annexation of land from the unincorporated section of Monroe was part of a plan to pay back loans made by the Village of Kiryas Joel in order to pay for the pipeline in the Mountainville area and to fund future projects to connect to the Catskill Aqueduct and possibly establish a sewage pipeline which would connect to the Hudson River.
According to Convers, limited liability corporations who plan on developing land owned by the village have an agreement to pay the village $25,000 for each housing unit they build in order to pay a “water hookup fee.”
With this, Convers concluded that if the annexation of 507 acres was to pass, then 8,550 units would be built, giving the Kiryas Joel government $213,750,000.
“So the ability of Kiryas Joel to annex land is really important for paying off the pipeline loan”, she said.
Convers also warned against making any generalizations about people because of where they live. Convers said that there are many members of the Hasidic community in Kiryas Joel who do not agree with the village government and who have been in support of United Monroe.
“Its dangerous to paint all citizens of a community with the same brush,” she said. Convers then addressed some potentially damaging comments made online and in person.
“I heard words uttered on social media and at public meetings that is incredibly damaging to our cause, this language is used to prove anti-Semitism on legal documents,” she said.
Convers urged those in attendance to keep an eye out for United Hudson Valley, an organization which seeks to build upon the bloc voting successes of United Monroe.
The forum then addressed its opposition to the Pilgrim Pipeline.
Kissam, of Newburgh, highlighted what she said were the dangers presented by the pipeline. She called the proposed pipeline a “threat to water. It’s not a question of will the pipeline leak, but when will the pipelines leak.”
Kissam pointed out that there are three proposed pipelines, one called the Chesapeake, another scheduled to pass by the Indian Point power plant and the Pilgrim Pipeline.
According to Kissam, more than 80 percent of oil spills that occur nationally are from pipelines as opposed to barges, tanker trucks and railway cars.
To compound this danger, Kissam said, most leaks are reported by private citizens and not by oil companies who build and monitor the pipelines. She cited a case in California where a pipeline leak went undetected because technicians monitoring the pipeline thought changes in the pipeline flow were the result of pressure changes. This caused gallons of oil to spill into the ground.
A petition to oppose the pipeline was then passed around the room.