September Meeting – This month’s meeting of the Catskill Mountain TU Chapter will take place at 7:00 PM on Wed., September 17th at the Gander Mountain store in Kingston. The agenda for this month is to create an action plan for the coming year. If you have suggestions for speakers, chapter projects or general concerns about the state of our local coldwater fisheries please attend this meeting.

Chapter Activities – Tributary Openings, Esopus Creek, Saturday, October 4th, 10 AM, Onteora High School   With the fall brown trout spawning season just around the corner volunteers are needed to clear rocks and debris that is blocking the mouths of a number of small streams that flow into the Esopus Creek. If you come along to help out, be sure to bring your fly rod for an afternoon of fishing. Pat Mulligan will be organizing this activity. He can be reached at 246-4824 or at pmulligan@hvc.rr.com.  Pat and a number of other chapter members have reported that the Esopus has been yielding 12-14” rainbows throughout this season and that there have been prolific Isonychia hatches this past week.

44th Annual Conservation Banquet- Mark your calendar now for our annual fundraising banquet that will take place on Saturday, October 25th at the Skytop Steak House Restaurant in Kingston. The cash bar will open at 6:00 and dinner will be served at 7:00. The banquet committee has once again collected a wide variety of gifts and prizes for the raffles. Reserve you table now with Chapter President Frank Baker at fbaker3@hvc.rr.com
Or the Request form which can be found Here

Chapter Officers Needed – Volunteers are needed to fill the following chapter vacancies, Chapter Secretary, Treasurer and Director.

Esopus Creek Article 78 Ruling- In August, the NYS Supreme Court ruled in our favor that the NYS DEC acted improperly when it issued a SPEDES permit to the NYCDEP that allowed them to continue discharging turbid water into the Esopus Creek. At issue in this ruling was the absence of evidence on the part of the NYDEP as to whether it is possible to reduce turbidity and the failure of the DEC to include public comment and participation in the process. One needs a very long memory to keep track of this ongoing legal battle but essentially what has happened is that after winning our case in the US Supreme Court our very own NYSDEC wrote a SPEDES discharge permit that for the most part allowed the NYCDEP to continue to discharge muddy water from the Shandaken Tunnel pretty much as they have always done over the course of the last few decades. To add insult to injury they did not allow us any say in the matter. After loosing the US Supreme Court ruling the NYDEP also went to the Bush Administration EPA and asked for and got a regulatory ruling that exempts water transfers from one reservoir to another from Federal Clean Water Act regulations ( SPEDES permits) (This issue has not been fully resolved and could easily be reversed with a new administration in Washington) For the moment, the NYSDEC will now have to rewrite the SPEDES Permit, weighing whether a multilevel intake chamber will in fact be effective in regulating turbidity and they will also have to include us in the process. Once again we need to extend a huge thank you to the Pace Environmental Law Clinic that has represented us in this case

Esopus Leaf Pack Study -The leaf packs for year two of the study were removed successfully from the Esopus on Saturday, August 23rd. Ben Murdock from the Catskill Center was assisted by Tony Cocozza from the AP Chapter and Pat Mulligan, Roy Hochburg and Norman Turner from the CMTU Chapter. Twelve samples were prepared in alcohol and will be picked up for identification by Kelly Nolan, who will be paid from our Embrace-a-Stream grant. Participants noted with interest that packs removed from DEC site 4, below and nearest to the portal, contained a lot of mud and very few bugs. Year three will require further funding for identification if the study is to continue. The more data we have, the more definitive the results will be.