All Roads Lead to Cornithaca

“NYSDEC Water Quality Management”

“Muddying the waters – with no intention of cleaning them.” My upcoming book: “Tompkins County and Tammany Hall” will document and expose the actions of the NYSDEC at some length – so I will speak to a recent development in New York State: the passing of an Environmental Rights Amendment that declares: “Each person shall have the right to clean air and water, and a healthful environment.” Agricultural groups, the biggest polluters of the state’s lakes and waterways, [and political overlords of the state’s poor rural communities] strongly opposed this Amendment. • The New York State Farm Bureau President made the kind of statement to voters that could only be made when there is no one to challenge it. Hot buttons like “vague Green Amendment,” and “protect family farms from nuisance lawsuits” were freely used – but there’s a world of rural pain and suffering behind the “Berlin Wall” agricultural media: when the toxic fumes of farming practices cause brain damage in one neighboring child, and required the removal of eyelids of an elderly man: “right-to-farm” laws protected the farmer from this “nuisance lawsuit.” That’s just one glimpse behind the wall — a wall the Environmental Rights Amendment threatens to tear down.