Boondocks No. 69

Snowmobile Clubs May Get Swept Funds Restored.

Syracuse Channel 9 WSYR reports that the so-called excess funds from the snowmobile trail fund swept in the 2008 budget are likely to be returned under a bill in the legislature:

They're still out a million dollars but it's looking better for snowmobilers fighting to get back the money taken from the state trail fund in April.

Identical bills are making their way through the Assembly and Senate directing the state comptroller to restore that money to the fund.

As those bills progress, snowmobilers plan to keep up the heat on Albany.

In early April, the budget office was given the authority to sweep money out of every state account, including one million dollars from the snowmobile trail fund. But it didn't escape the nearly 100,000 sledders in New York State who pay into the fund by way of their registration; not a dime is tax money - and they weren't about to be silent about it.

See more about this previous sweep in my previous blog, Boondocks No. 66 which took a look at the $1 million dollar sweep of the snowmobile fund to the general fund.

Essentially, snowmobilers paid into this fund for trail maintenance, and because there was unspent funds due to a lack of reimbursable trail millage, the state took it back to balance it's budget, rather then pass a crack tax or other fee on convicted criminals.

The bill that makes the proposed restoration of the trail fund is A.11009 Destito and S.8144 Griffo. The Assembly bill has yet to be considered by Assemblyman Englebright's tourism committee, but was quickly advanced out of Senator DeFransico's tourism committee and is now in Senate finance, and will likely be moved to the floor and passed by the State Senate this week.

I hope Assemblyman Englebright makes this fund restoration a priority for his committee, but I wouldn't hold my breath on it. Englebright has some of Joe Morelle's old staff in that will likely push for it, but who knows about Englebright. Yet, we all know Englebright's probably more interested in finding historical ruins somewhere buried in Albany or renting more slumlord apartments then snowmobiles.

And who knows what the Assembly finance people think about restoring snowmobile funds in a tough budget year—they'd probably prefer to give it downstate hospitals and teachers.

The entire Senate Majority from Upstate is co-sponsoring the Senate bill. Rochester's Joe Morelle and former tourism chair, Francine DelMonte of Niagara County, and ag-chairman Bill Magee, are on the Desitito bill. They all face a tough re-election this year (except for Morelle), so let's hope they do the right thing.

You can't blame Joe for getting promoted, but it's tough losing such an passionate advocate for outdoor recreation and tourism including snowmobiles.

Read Snowmobile clubs getting closer to getting their funding restored on NewsChannel 9 WSYR.

Paterson's Gun Control Bill.

He announced it this morning at a press conference:

Governor David A. Paterson today proposed legislation designed to reduce gun violence without infringing on the rights of law-abiding gun owners. The proposed legislation would increase public safety by providing law enforcement officials with more complete information to ensure guns are purchased legally. The legislation also includes proposals in response to the Virginia Tech shooting last year.

In particular, the bill: (1) allows relevant mental health records to be included in the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS); (2) improves the use of the State's Combined Ballistic Identification System (CoBIS) in solving serious gun crimes; (3) updates and clarifies the State's gun licensing laws; and (4) provides for increased security at gun shops, including requirements for licensing and training of employees who handle guns.

Read Governor Paterson Announces Gun Control Legislation Press Release.

Patterson’s 4 Point Gun Control Plan.

Jacob over at NYRPA describes it as:

Being in Louisville does not mean being out of touch. Governor Paterson will be sending up a program bill on Monday, April 19 addressing the following areas:

Permitting the Office of Mental Health to provide information to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) regarding persons involuntarily committed to mental health facilities. This is not the Lentol bill, A-8700B, but has the same objective.

Requiring ballistic evidence found at murder and attempted murder crime scenes to be sent to the State Police Ballistic Database (COBIS).

Updating of current laws on handgun licensing, including a requirement that all applicants for a license must take a safety course and that licensees’ names and addresses are to be confidential.

Authorizing State Police to enact regulations concerning safety practices by gun dealers, including a requirement that employees of a dealer must undergo background checks and be licensed.

Read Patterson’s 4 point plan on Gun Legislation & Politics in New York blog.

Press Republican on the Burn Ban.

Not surprisingly the paper is overjoyed about the prospect of the state banning trash and all other outdoor burning permanently.

The state is proposing changes to rules to control most open burning statewide. The Press-Repubican has written many times that this initiative will help clear the environment, restore free breathing to neighborhoods and save volunteer firefighters aggravation and risk to their health and even lives.

The Department of Environmental Conservation will hold legislative public hearings on these changes. This is the formal title of the initiative: Part 215, Open Fires, Part 191, Forest Fire Prevention and Part 621, Uniform Procedures, pursuant to Environmental Conservation Law, Sections 1-0101, 3-0301, 19-0105, 19-1103, 19-0103, 19-0105, 19-0301, 19-0303, 19-0305, 70-0707, 71-2103 and 71-2105.

Part 215 is being revised to ban most open burning statewide. It is currently banned only in cities and villages and in towns with populations greater than 20,000.

In addition, the revised rule will limit agricultural burning to naturally grown products, such as vines, branches, leaves and stubble. It will also specifically allow certain exceptions: fire training, small cooking and campfires, and ceremonial fires, such as for the proper disposal of an American flag.

...The Department invites all persons, organizations, corporations and government agencies that may be affected by the proposed revisions to attend the hearings. We encourage the many people who have a stake in this vital rule to attend and be heard. Anyone may address the hearing, but DEC asks that oral statements also be submitted in writing. The Department says it will give equal weight to written and oral statements.

...This is a burning issue in both senses of the term. We have emphasized many times the extreme discomfort to which neighbors and passers-by are exposed by open burning. We've been told of people with respiratory diseases whose lives are actually threatened by it. Toxic materials are introduced into the atmosphere, in addition to the agonizing effects of the choking smoke, itself.

It's time for action, and attending the DEC hearing or submitting written statements is a critical first step.

We hope the DEC hears substantial opinion in support of the proposed ban. Various towns have enacted a ban, but enforcement is a problem.

Let the state enact a rule and then enforce it.

That's nice to say. Of course, I doubt they asked farmers and other rural people why they burn and the costs to the alternatives.

In an era of $4 gallon gas, high food prices, and so many other troublesome things, I'm sure that not every person who lives in Beekmantown or otherwise outside of Plattsburgh has $450 dollars burning a hole in their pocket to give to the regulators of the state of New York.

Remember, I used to bike all around Beekmantown, Chazy, the "Town" of P'Burgh, and even Peru. I don't think I particularly minded backyard burning or manure on the roads, even though both was happening. It's just part of rural life—and pretty much harmless and without nuisance, particularly on the large dairy farms that dot the valley.

Read State moving on open burning editorial in the Press Republican.

Toxins in solid waste are a real problem for sure. Things like PVC, lead, and cadmium should be used spearingly and not be everywhere in our society. You put a toxin in a material, and it's going to get released out into the environment in some form or another.

Landfills can slow the release of some of the toxins into the environment, but even modern ones leak toxins through gas collection and lechate (liquid nutrient) management systems. Municipal incinerators send toxins up their stacks and into their ash.

Toxins are a real problem no matter how waste is disposed off. While backyard burning is particularly uncontrolled, any pollutants are far more dilute then what comes off of any mass waste disposal system, people can choose to limit burning to less toxic things like paper and cardboard waste. Just burning paper and cardboard can dramatically reduce how much trash a rural homestead has to take a distant landfill or recycling center.

Driving to a recycling center or landfill has not only economic impacts to poor people but also environmental effects. Figure extra miles driven in cars hauling trash to transfer stations, then hauling that trash to landfills hundreds of miles away.

Smoke from backyard burning, wood stoves, or other things can cause an asthma attack. So can automobile and power plant pollution, and hot summer days when ozone pollution is most troublesome.

So stay away from smoke. Ask your neighbors not to burn their trash or brush in their backyard. Move to the suburbs where they don't allow you burn trash or move somewhere you don't have obnoxious neighbors.

No major environmental group has made passing a ban on open burning a priority. Indeed, while Koon's burn barrel ban was a super bill several years back, the state environmental lobby groups lost interest and haven't been pushing it the past year.

I also don't see the Sierra Club or Greenpeace pushing for a backyard trash burning ban in New York State, much less other states out west like Montana or Oklahoma, where in rural areas is at least as prevalent if not more so.

— Comment By nycowboy

EVERYONE should be responsible for their own trash. If it costs farmers money to safely and appropriately deal w/their trash, so be it. We have had numerous terrible experiences w/neighbors and farmers burning trash. Both my husband and my son have/had asthma and these "backyard burnings" do cause flare-ups. But it's not just us. Plenty of people are suffering the effects of pollution caused by trash burning. Why would farmers, who are supposed to be stewards of the land, want to pollute the air? We all should be responsible citizens when it comes to our output, farmers shouldn't be any different. If you create trash, you should properly deal w/it. I say make regulations that force all people to consider the trash they make! Maybe the farmers should change the materials they use to something that doesn't create poison when it's burned!

— Comment By be responsible

Open Burning Ban May Be Stopped By State Legislators.

The Ithaca Journal report this last week that some legislators are less then happy with the state DEC sticking their fingers into the open burning issue and not letting the legislature decide whether or not to pass David Koon's burn barrel ban bill.

Key state lawmakers said Monday they're considering whether to try to block a state plan to ban farmers from burning plastic trash in fires on their properties.

“We have a lot of concern about what (the new regulations) would do to rural communities,” said Senate Agriculture Committee Chairwoman Kathy Young, R-Olean, Cattaraugus County. “In many rural areas, transfer stations are 20 miles or more away from some farms.”

“These should be local decisions,” said Assembly Agriculture Committee Chairman William Magee, D-Nelson, Madison County.

The state Department of Environmental Conservation is collecting public comment on a proposed regulation change that would extend the ban on open burning statewide.

The regulation is supported by health advocates and firefighters and opposed by the New York Farm Bureau.

The Senate Chairman of the Legislative Commission on Rural Resources had this to say about the issue:

State Sen. George Winner, R-Elmira and chairman of the Legislative Commission on Rural Resources, said the regulation change has not yet been well publicized, so he's only received a small amount of feedback, some for and some against the ban.

“Some people just feel that they live out in the middle of quote nowhere unquote and ought to be able to do whatever they want,” Winner said. “And others say that they're tired of smelling the smoke from the neighbors' barrel next door and would like to see it changed.”

Winner said he's still collecting information on the regulation change but that, “overall I certainly don't think that restricting this is a bad idea.”

“I certainly wouldn't want them burning this stuff next door to me.”

But Young said lawmakers could block any changes.

“We have to wait and see that they come up with,” she said. “We need to protect the environment but also have to put in policies that are practical and use common sense.”

Read Anti-burning legislation to face hurdles in state Senate in The Ithaca Journal.

Daily Freeman Editorial.

This ran yesterday in their paper:

The state Department of Environmental Conservation wants to ban nearly all open burning across the state.

Good. The move is long overdue.

It's now more than 40 years since the birth of the modern environmental movement and the modern trash stream long ago became more complex than backyard fires could safely consume.

Open burning has been prohibited by the state since 1972 within cities and villages and any town with a population of more than 20,000.

Read Ban burning editorial in the Daily Freeman.

Magee's Wine Ice Cream Bill Passes Assembly.

Legislation to allow wineries in New York to sell ice-cream containing wine as a new promotional item recently passed the Assembly and is likely to do soon in the Senate.

This is the justification for the bill from the Sponsor's Memo:

There is no doubt that New York agriculture is steam-rolling ahead withthe creation, production and marketing of splendid and scrumptious newagrigoodies from maple syrup cotton candy to wine flavored ice cream allof which are agrilicious. Ice cream made with wine is a relatively newfood product manufactured in New York State which should be regulated ina manner similar to confectionery that contains alcohol. This bill seeksto accomplish that purpose. As with confectionery, this bill would limitthe percentage of alcohol in ice cream to not more than five per centumof alcohol by volume, prohibit its sale to persons under twenty-oneyears of age and requires product labeling and warning statements simi-lar to those established for confectionery that contains alcohol. Byclarifying the conditions under which ice cream made with wine can bemanufactured and sold in New York State, this will help manufacturers,distributors, food retailers and restaurants to meet the increasingconsumer demand for this new and innovative product. There is no doubtthat with the passage of this bill there will be no more whining forwine ice cream.

See bill A.10132 Magee and S.7168 Griffo.

Trash burning ban draws fire.

The Daily Gazette this morning looks at the opposition of the farm bureau and other organizations to the proposed ban on all outdoor fires.

While environmentalists are supporting the state’s proposed ban on household trash burning, the New York Farm Bureau is opposed and legislators from agricultural areas are raising objections.

Earlier this month, the Department of Environmental Conservation announced the proposed ban, saying: “Once considered harmless, open burning has been found to release more dangerous chemicals into the air than thought generations ago,” including dioxin. The DEC proposal would extend to rural areas a ban on open burning of residential wastes that has been in effect in cities, villages and towns with populations of 20,000 or more since 1972.

The ban would exempt burning of agricultural wastes, not including plastic. Nevertheless, Farm Bureau spokesman Peter Gregg said it would create a hardship for farms located a long way from a landfill or transfer station, especially now with gas prices at record highs.

Read Trash burning ban draws fire in the Daily Gazette.

Prices Rising for Southern-Tier Farm Land.

Now that farmers can make money off of natural gas contracts in the southern-tier, many are less interested in selling of land to keep their farms profitable.

Buyers looking for tracts of rural land in Broome County will have to look longer and harder as tantalizing prospects for natural gas deals have made owners reluctant to sell.Advertisement

Many farmers, including Jim Worden of Windsor, have recently taken land off the market as they form coalitions to negotiate leasing deals with energy companies.

A $90 million deal between XTO Energy, of Fort Worth, Texas, with 300 landowners in eastern Broome and western Delaware counties has upped the ante. The parties are scheduled to sign an agreement on May 29-30 at the Binghamton Regency.

Originally, Worden hoped to sell developers 30 acres of his 260-acre farm on Route 79 so he could "pay bills and stay in farming," he said. Now, he likes his chances of reaching a contract similar to the one in the Deposit area, where XTO is paying $2,411 per acre and 15 percent royalties for access to about 37,000 acres.

Read Prices rise for local farm land and Experts: Tier natural gas rush has only begun in the Press & Sun-Bulletin.

The Buffalo News Editorializes on Large Farms and Dying Rural Communities.

The Buffalo News looks at the Pew foundation report and suggests a much more active role for government.

Many formerly healthy rural towns have died, or been converted to labor pools for massive slaughterhouses that emit oppressive odors and provide jobs that are among the most disgusting and dangerous in the world.

The solutions may not be easy to realize, but they are easy enough to understand. Factory farms must be treated as the factories they are, not allowed to hide behind the rural image they do not deserve. Anti-pollution regulations routinely applied to municipal waste treatment plants and other forms of factories must be brought to bear on these protein production plants.

Anti-trust laws that should have forbidden the monopolistic nature of modern meat production must be updated and enforced. Antibiotics must be reserved for sick creatures, animal and human. Animal welfare laws, if toughened and enforced, would help people as much as animals by cleaning up the environment in which our food is produced.

The way meat is produced in America today is not cheap. It’s just that you don’t pay the grocer the whole cost. You pay the tax man. The doctor. And the funeral director.

The problem is that how do you keep government on target, going after the right people and not hitting everybody else with new mandates and paperwork? How do you ensure integrity in government officials to sure anti-trust acts benefit the public, and aren't just based on campaign contributions?

Read Control the factory farms editorial in Buffalo News.

Rural America v. Urban America.

Some of my blog readers have been questioning my opposition to the burn ban among other things.

Why would I—so the so called environmentalist be opposing something that some would consider so important to our environment?

Yup, it's a philosophic thing. Y'all better sit down.

Think about it this way. You have a two acre hilly pasture. You stick one cow on it. The pasture survives most of the summer although it is somewhat chewed down and roughed up. Alternatively, you stick 15 cows on it. You end up with a mud lot in a couple of weeks.

I don't drive anywheres in the city except for a few specific trips like to the laundrymat or to buy a big heavy item at Walmart or an department store. I may drive 5 or 10 miles at most a week in the city. I take the bus or my bike everywheres else. Why? I hate the traffic. I'm concerned about global warming.

Compare that to when I lived out in the country. I sometimes rode my bike for pleasure, but I still drived in excess of 150 miles a week back and forth to work and everywheres else. I did all kinds of stuff in my backyard that would be illegal in the suburbs, and indeed would be noxious and sickening it the 35,000 other people who live in this big suburb did the same.

They say 60% of New York is forested. 10% is water bodies. 25% is farmed. Then there is the other 10%—of that 1% is commerical property, 1% is industrialized, and 8% of that make up the sprawling suburbs and all other residential uses.

About 55% of the American population live in the suburbs. 25% live in cities, while only 20% live in rural areas. As they like to say, 80% of America's land lies outside of metropolitian counties and 55 million Americans live in those counties. I suspect in New York State, with it's particularly dense urban population, it's closer to 40% urban, 45% suburban, 15% rural.

I honestly think having ATV trails and allowing people to burn trash is just a question of rural freedom. It's a classic case of those evil DEC bureaucrats sitting in their Mahattan office, trying to do what is right for the environment.

Did I mention, I like playing with matches?

Franseens Find Dairy Goats Work Well With Beef.

From the article:

John and Deb Franseen don’t kid around when it comes to raising goats. It’s a serious and integral enterprise of the diversified farm they operate southeast of Stratford. It’s also obvious, though, this Marathon County couple is enjoying milking goats, though they admit to feeling somewhat isolated in the middle of dairy-cow country.

John is a life-long farmer who grew up on a dairy farm in northern Illinois, near Clinton. His nephew, Jeremy Franseen, is milking goats on that farm and inspired the Franseens to give goats a try. They’ll have been at it four years in June.

Their doe numbers are climbing rapidly. Their goat herd started kidding in January and will continue into July, so while they’re milking over 135 at present, by July, they anticipate being up to 200. Their goal is to be milking between 200 and 250 steady, year-round.

John purchased the farm he runs fulltime in northcentral Wisconsin in 1989, after renting farms with his first wife near his home in northern Illinois. They were milking 55 Holstein cows and raising a family of three when his wife passed away. “I sold the cows after my first wife died and drifted a few years there,” says the lanky, soft-spoken farmer of that tough time in his life.

Read Franseens Find Dairy Goats Work Well With Beef on Agri-View: Your Premier Agricultural News Source.

Agriculture Prevails as Supreme Court Protects Cranberry Grower’s Right to Farm.

From the article:

The Wisconsin Farm Bureau Federation is extremely pleased to learn that the Wisconsin Supreme Court has refused to review a nuisance lawsuit filed against a Sawyer County cranberry grower by his out-of-state neighbors.

“Wisconsin farmers should not be subjected to years of drawn-out, meritless litigation, and forced to incur hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees, to protect their right to lawfully farm,” said Bill Bruins, president of the Wisconsin Farm Bureau Federation. “Therefore, we could not be happier to have this lawsuit finally resolved.”

“This case has historic implications to all of Wisconsin’s diverse $51 billion agriculture industry, and I am very proud that the Farm Bureau, other ag organizations and Rural Mutual Insurance Company have stood behind the Zawistowski cranberry operation throughout this case,” Bruins said. “We have never wavered from our commitment to protecting all Wisconsin farmers from nuisance lawsuits and preserving their right to farm.”

On Tuesday, the Supreme Court officially denied the plaintiffs’ petition for review of the nuisance lawsuit they first filed in 2004 with the support of former Attorney General Peg Lautenschlager. The plaintiffs had hoped the Supreme Court would hear the case after the Court of Appeals in February unanimously upheld an earlier circuit court’s ruling in favor of William Zawistowski.

Read Agriculture Prevails as Supreme Court Protects Cranberry Grower’s Right to Farm on Agri-View: Your Premier Agricultural News Source.

The Story of a Lamb.

The Times Union has an interesting article called Farm to Market that has pictures of lamb's life from birth to slaughter to dinner.

Elihu Farm Lamb No. 2735, one of the estimated 10 billion animals destined to become part of the American food chain every year, was born around 4 a.m. last June 6. Within an hour the spindly legged 8-pounder and his 7-pound twin sister were unsteadily following their mother through a verdant Washington County meadow, and by late morning they alternately napped and nursed while curled up in long grasses, warmed by brilliant late-spring sun.

Ten months and 120 pounds later, Lamb No. 2735 became the centerpiece of a Passover dinner for an extended family of 10 and contributed to four restaurant meals. This is his story.

Read Farm to Market in the Times Union.

Congress Re-Passes Farm Bill After Fixing Flaw.

From the article:

In following the legislative trail of the $307 billion farm bill, it is good to remember that the American system of checks and balances is not really designed for speed.

With most House Democrats and quite a few Republicans supporting it, the bill was approved on Thursday by 306 to 110. The Senate quickly followed suit, by 82 to 13. The votes in both chambers were far more than enough to defeat the veto that President Bush cast on Wednesday.

But wait. Didn’t the House already vote, by 316 to 108 on Wednesday, to override the veto? Well, yes. Sort of.

Lawmakers discovered on Wednesday evening that a 34-page section of the 673-page bill was missing from the package that was sent to President Bush, who executed his veto after calling the measure bloated and wasteful. The version that the House voted for on Wednesday was also missing that section, which pertains to trade programs and foreign food aid.

Thursday’s revote in the House was on all 673 pages, which embrace subsidies for farmers, food stamps, land conservation and various other items too attractive for most lawmakers to shun.

The mix-up “shows that they can even screw up spending the taxpayers’ money unwisely,” the president’s spokeswoman, Dana Perino, said Thursday.

Read Congress Passes Farm Bill After Fixing Flaw in the NY Times.

Farmland Preservation Study Begins.

From the article:

CHARLTON — Work has started on a state-funded plan to study things the town can do to support farming and preserve farmland and open space.

A new agriculture task force held its first meeting recently with Behan Planning Associates of Saratoga Springs, the firm hired to write the town’s first farmland protection plan. The work is expected to take about a year.

The goal is to preserve land even as the local agricultural scene changes and open land continues to be under development pressure.

Read Farmland Preservation Study Begins.