CHEERS to volunteer organizations that look after causes important to the public, such as the Boquet River Association, known commonly by the acronym BRASS. BRASS involves itself in a lot of public-spirited and public-interest projects and activities that probably aren't well known to a lot of people around the North Country. In collaboration with Willsboro historian Ron Bruno, it organized a historic canoe paddle last year to commemorate the Champlain Quadricentennial, complete with commentary on historical and geographical points of interest. Along those lines, BRASS secured a $1,000 grant from the Natural Heritage Trust to create brochures trumpeting the Willsboro and Wadhams sections of the river. It is collaborating on a management plan for the river's watershed and planted more than 1,000 seedling varieties in Westport to help protect the water from runoff. It helped clean up the river's banks using a creative Trashy Art Day strategy, whereby musical "instruments" were fashioned out of junk collected during the cleanup. Volunteers such as these environmental stewards are our communities' greatest assets.
JEERS to property owners — particularly business property — who are non-shovelers, in the city and elsewhere. We receive Speakouts with disturbing frequency naming business owners who are derelict in this important responsibility. We haven't allowed the names of the businesses into print because we haven't been able to check them all to make sure the Speakouts are correct. It wouldn't be fair to rebuke them by name without ascertaining that they are indeed guilty of sloth as charged. If the trend seems to warrant it, though, we'll assign someone to drive around and check. Let's hope this serves as an adequate reminder that clearing sidewalks is important to the entire community.
CHEERS to Timothy Mihuc and Mark Malchoff of the Lake Champlain Research Institute at Plattsburgh State for the eagerness they have expressed to formally study whether the lake fishery is being damaged by multiple fishing tournaments during the year. Mihuc mentioned specifically the fact that fish are caught all over the lake and then typically returned in Cumberland Bay, which probably doesn't have the ecosystem to support the large influx. Do the fish eventually return to where they were caught — off Ticonderoga, let's say — or do they wind up competing for limited resources in Cumberland Bay? There are crucial questions such as this that must be answered, and we're fortunate to have an institute capable of finding answers so close at hand.
CHEERS to the three chambers of commerce in Franklin County for their efforts to break down barriers between them and begin working together. Saranac Lake Chamber Executive Director Sylvie Nelson and Tupper Lake Chamber Executive Director Marti Mozdzier recently visited Malone Chamber President Hugh Hill to discuss their similarities and differences as well as ways to share ideas and activities that promote not only their own business members and communities but Franklin County as a whole — according to the model established by the Plattsburgh-North Country Chamber. The communities will be enhanced by the cooperation, as the whole will be greater than the sum of its parts.
