Christmas flood (almost, luckily not)

 Rains fell, and fell. Our local creeks swelled, but we dodged a bullet. Whew!

After an inch and a half of rain

 Stoney Clove Creek swollen after the rains:

Three days before the rains

 Calm before the deluge:

Early autumn

 On Stoney Clove Creek:

Another snowstorm

 It has been a rough winter, so far. On Friday 2/25/2022, over half a foot of snow fell in our environs. The Daily Freeman published some photos:

Snowstorm in the Catskills

 Forecasts called for a foot of snow, maybe a foot and a half.

It was a massive storm:

And we did get a lot of snow:

Winter 2019-2020

A couple of pictures courtesy of Allan Hirsch:

Stoney Clove Creek:

Ashokan Trail, on Route 28:

Same day, different weather

 Tannersville, 2.40pm:

Chichester, 3.20pm:

No water shortage here, thanks to an atmospheric river

From a  story dated 24 July 2018 found on the website NewYorkUpstate.com:

 Almost 7 inches of rain fell Monday in the Catskills as a rainy week kicked off in Upstate New York.

A weather observer in Phoenicia, in Ulster County, measured 6.68 inches of rain, according to National Weather Service reports. That was the highest of more than 200 Upstate locations reported to the weather service.

More than 5 inches fell in neighboring Greene County as thunderstorms dumped torrential rain Monday. Farther to the north, Albany and Fulton counties had reports of more than 4 inches. 

The "atmospheric river" of Atlantic Ocean moisture was funneled through eastern New York and parts of the Southern Tier Monday. Much of Western New York and the North County got a half-inch or less.

Onteora school officials working to trim budget

Story in Daily Freeman on 10 February 2018.

Onteora school district trustees are reviewing a draft $56.21 million 2018-19 budget that would increase spending by $1.92 million, or 3.53 percent.

At a Board of Education meeting Tuesday, officials said they would either have to reduce spending or find more revenue for the budget to meet the 3.63 percent state tax levy limit.

Above that limit, voters would have to approve the spending plan by a supermajority of 60 percent of ballots cast.

Woodstock Brewing opens at Phoenicia Plaza

Story on Hudson Valley One from 14 January 2018.

Parabolic, Between Two Points, Permanent Midnight, Rhetoric, and Entropy are the heady names of the five beers, brewed on-site, that appeared on the taproom chalkboard at Woodstock Brewing on opening day, January 5. Despite its name, the microbrewery is located just east of Phoenicia on Route 28 at the Phoenicia Plaza, which is finally filled up after a fire damaged the stores two years ago.

website: Woodstock Brewing.
Facebook page: Woodstock Brewing

map location:

A story from Hudson Valley One discusses development of the Ashokan hiking/biking trail.

The county legislature on Tuesday, Nov. 14 voted 14-7 to remove some 11 miles of county-owned Ulster and Delaware rails and ties to make way for the construction of a hiking/biking trail around the northern end of the Ashokan Reservoir.

Project costs for the trail are estimated at some $9.3 million with about half being funded by the New York City Department of Environmental Preservation, which owns the reservoir.
Rail supporters had hoped to retain an 1.1 mile stretch of rail ending at the Glenford Dike in order to extend Catskill Mountain Railroad scenic rides to view the reservoir.


The legislation approved Tuesday night fulfills a December 2016 compromise which allowed CMRR to operate its tourist trains from Kingston to West Hurley while the county moved forward with plans to establish the Ashokan hiking/biking trail.

Will wonders ever cease?

Two weeks go Stoney Cove Lane was paved with several inches of blacktop; since then, the shoulders of the lane have been filled in, and we now have a pretty, smooth road.
  And the old Sachs house, the first on the left after one passed over the Stoney Clove Creek bridge, which was devastated by Hurricane Irene in 2011, was finally demolished.

from:

Phoenicia top-rated tourism spot

If you’ve got plans this summer to vacation in the queenly Cape May, N.J., or some other resort community in the Northeast, consider scrapping them. An even better destination is right here in Ulster County, according to Curbed New York, a real-estate and travel blog. Editors recently ranked Phoenicia, a hamlet in the town of Shandaken, as the No. 1 destination outside of New York City. The bohemian mountain community not only beat out the internationally known Victorian seaside resort, but Mystic, Conn., a historic seafaring village known widely for its tourism appeal.

Bohemian?

Story from Hudson Valley News Network on 6 June 2017: Phoenicia Ranked No. 1 as Tourist Spot

Catskill Mountain Railroad says it topped $1M in business in 2016

Article in the Daily Freeman.

The Catskill Mountain Railroad did more than $1 million in business in 2016 operating tourist trains on tracks in Shandaken, N.Y., and Kingston, N.Y., a company official says.

In fact, according to railroad President Ernie Hunt, the company has been doing over $1 million in annual business every year since 2014, a big jump from what he said had been annual revenue of about $150,000 a year through 2013.

Hunt said the railroad spent $700,000 over three years in litigation with Ulster County, the owner of the tracks on which the railroad operates, when the county tried to evict the company.


In a letter to volunteers and supporters, Hunt called 2016 the toughest year ever for the railroad, which offers scenic and themed train rides, but said he looks forward to 2017, which he expects will be better

Stony Clove Creek stabilization project

Daily Freeman story: Ashokan Watershed program completes Stony Clove Creek stabilization project

The Ashokan Watershed Stream Management Program completed a project to stabilize 1.5 acres of slumping hillslope bordering the Stony Clove Creek along state Route 214 and Wright Road.

[Wright Road is in Lanesville]

The project cost $1,237,162 to complete. The New York City Department of Environmental Protection provided the town of Hunter with a 25 percent local cost-share to match federal dollars from the Natural Resource Conservation Service’s Emergency Watershed Protection Program. The federal funding covered the remaining 75 percent of the cost.

Project Manager Adam Doan of the Ulster County Soil & Water Conservation District said there was a “surprising amount of groundwater moving through the hillslope. The stabilization was started after project managers saw the soggy slope moving over time toward the stream channel. Geotechnical engineers called to the site determined the problem would only get worse if not corrected.

Approximately 13 landowners benefitted from two years of work at the site to stabilize the channel and hillslope. The projects were designed to reduce the amount of fine sediment and coarse material eroding downstream where they might deposit and destabilize channels, or pollute New York City’s drinking water supply.

New dividing weir gates in place at Ashokan Reservoir

Story in Daily Freeman



OLIVEBRIDGE >> The Ashokan Reservoir’s dividing weir has been restored to full functionality with the replacement of four large cast-iron gates that control the flow of water between the reservoir’s two basins, the New York City Department of Environmental Protection said Friday.

Cooper Lake

One of the great spots in our neighborhood:

Off season

Stoney Clove Lane, October 10, 2015

Frog Road hill leading to CPOA grounds:

North Lake, November 7, 2015

also:

and Wilson State Park, November 8, 2015

*

Engineers recommend $10 million flood plan for Phoenicia

Story on DailyFreeman.com:

Engineers say replacing the Bridge Street Bridge and enhancing the floodplain around Phoenicia is the best way to reduce flooding in the hamlet.

The $10 million plan, however, would not eliminate flooding altogether and would not be painless.
Some buildings in Phoenicia, like the offices of Ruth Gale Realty, some parts of the Black Bear Campground on Bridge Street and some homes on Station Road, would have to go. In essence, the idea is to lower the ground on both sides of the Esopus Creek to give floodwater a place to go instead of up onto Main Street.

A fringe benefit would be there would also be new property available for recreation use, perhaps even for the Phoenicia Riverwalk, a plan discussed several years ago to energize the back side of the hamlet’s Main Street structures alongside the creek.

When all is said and done, engineers calculate that flooding on Main Street will drop by about a foot during major events like the one seen when Hurricane Irene hit in 2011.

At an Aug. 10 session held at the Phoenicia Parish Hall, Engineer Mark Carabetta walked those in attendance through his past 10 months of work on evaluating options for Phoenicia.

Dredging the Esopus, according to Carabetta, would not reduce flooding much at all. Nor would replacing the Woodland Valley Bridge with a wider span or modifying the Stony Clove Bridge.

Widening the span of the Bridge Street Bridge, he added, would not help much unless the floodplain area was increased.

Carabetta’s work is part of a Town effort to identify a plausible project that makes sense from a money standpoint. Federal level funding is available for flood projects, but only if proven to have a strong enough cost benefit.

This plan, Carabetta said, represents a $10.1 million benefit over a 50 year period. Because the benefit outweighs the cost, he added, this is a viable project.

“There’s a good chance it would be funded by a number of agencies,” he said.
Phoenicia resident Michelle Spark warned that, no matter what plan is put in place, the Esopus Creek remains a wild card. All this work could be done, she said, but then the creek could just shift to a new location.

But, doing nothing is not an option, said Town Supervisor Rob Stanley.

“With flooding, there’s no magic bullet,” he said. “There’s nothing we can do to stop flooding.”
Ric Ricciardella told Carabetta time is of the essence and now that there is a plan, it is time to get it done.

“I don’t care if you get 10 engineers,” Ricciardella said. “We’re waiting and waiting. This could have been done last fall and it would have been over by now.

“How long are we going to wait for another flood?”