The contested owner of 28.5 acres of the western end of Yankeetown Pond is considering transferring it to the Town of Woodstock, opening it to the public and placing its stewardship under the control of town officials.
“The town has expressed interest, and has some of the resources needed to accomplish some of the things I wanted, like [removal of] the lily pads, so I’m seriously considering it,” said Erin Moran, who has ownership 28.5 acres of the pond, according to town and county records.
Moran has taken a step back from the drama at the pond, and even from public service. She resigned last week from her volunteer position as acting chair of the Woodstock Environmental Commission, She noted in her resignation that the email password for the WEC account was “th1sTownNeed$anEnema.”
If she succeeds in transferring the parcel to the town, Moran said she would enter an agreement with the town where the pond ownership of record would revert to her in two years if it is not maintained. The town could partner with an organization — like Cornell Cooperative Extension or the Catskill Watershed Corporation — which would have access to resources like a machine that can be used to remove the waterlilies that are choking off the pond.
Moran said she had a plan to restore the pond once the water-level problem has been definitively solved. There are programs to help reinforce the shoreline with native trees and plants, whose roots help stabilize it and help with flooding. “They cause shade,” Moran said. “It helps with water temperature. It’s a whole recipe, but they said you don’t qualify for the program and we’re not coming here until you fix that water level.”
In mid-August a water leveler was installed which keeps the pond at a set level while hiding the sound of water flow so the beavers don’t try to reinforce the dam.
The second step is controlling the waterlilies and the third a buffer program.
“I wanted to do a big deck, where people can walk out with little kiosks saying it’s a circumferential bog, just like you see at Omega [Institute], and just like you see at these other places,” Moran said. “I wanted to partner with OCS [the Onteora schools] and have them come and teach the kids. At certain times of the year, there’s just so much information. It’s such a gold mine.”
After an increasing amount of blowback from neighbors, Moran has concluded that town control might be the best option. “That is one of the biggest challenges that I faced is everybody thinks they know what’s best,” she said. “The kayakers want the level higher. Somebody else wants it lower, so somebody would come through and break the dam.”
The path to the quitclaim deed
The long saga started shortly after 2011, when Moran moved in with town judge Jason Lesko, who owns a home on Upper Pond Road. She had made frequent trips to the pond with her father as a child and was familiar with the area.
It was at one of many pond parties that some neighbors complained that the pond flooded a lot and needed to be maintained. That’s when Moran began to explore who owned that section of the pond.
“I asked the neighbors who the owner was. And I was told, we were all the owners, the town’s the owner, nobody’s the owner, some guy in Timbuktu is the owner,” she said. “First thing I did was I called the Town of Woodstock. I said, well, who pays taxes? I talked to [town assessor] Mark Plate at the time, and he goes, holy crap, nobody’s been paying taxes for 40 years.”
Plate had shown her the county online tool for looking up property ownership and tax records. “I’m so glad I took a screenshot. Nobody,” she said, showing the information for parcel 26.3-4-26, with a blank field where the propertyowner’s name is usually listed.
Moran said she researched the deed history in the Ulster County clerk’s office and discovered its owner was Sawyer Savings Bank. The bank at first they denied owning it, and then discovered they did, but didn’t want to because of liability problems.
Sawyer Savings offered to transfer it to Moran at no cost, she said.
The 28.5 acres, which is classified on town tax rolls as “muck” and on the Ulster County Parcel Viewer as “underwater land,” is the remainder of a housing development conceived in the 1970s, but never completely built. The development went belly-up during a real-estate recession in the 1980s. Sawyer Savings had been left with the task of selling off the remaining undeveloped lots to try to recoup its losses from unpaid mortgage obligations.
What was left, and eventually long forgotten, was a deed to a section of the pond.
Around that time, the New York City Department of Environmental Protection had plans to open up its end of the pond to hunting. The town eventually signed off on that plan.
Moran, not wanting the DEP to take the rest of the pond, said she talked to the neighbors about taking the underwater parcel from Sawyer Savings. None were interested, she said, so she took it in 2018.
Quite a pickle
Meanwhile, the residents on Pond Road thought they had a stake in ownership. Each of the homeowners on part of the original subdivision possessed a deed declaration that stated they shall “receive an undivided 1/29th interest in right of use in the aforesaid pond.” Some took that to mean ownership, which is where the harsh acrimony between residents and Moran began. Some 21 homeowners have access on the deed (It’s commonplace for developers to hold some for themselves).
Eventually, some neighbors told the town government that a land grab was going on, and that the new owner needed to be paying taxes. So the town assessed its value at $1000, the minimum value. The parcel was not developable, since it was underwater. It was in the New York City watershed, which brought other restrictions. Moran pays less than $10 in taxes.
What was intended by that declaration on everyone’s deed? Moran said she had a conversation with one of the principals, attorney Jerry Wapner, before he passed away in 2022. According to Moran, Wapner said the language was meant to trick the DEP out of restricting use on the rest of the pond. “He said, well, what we wanted to do was make it look like everyone owned it so DEP wouldn’t come after it,” Moran said. Pressed as to what he truly meant in the language, Wapner reportedly told Moran, “Well, I left you in quite a pickle.”
Don’t fence us in
This summer, some homeowners began gathering at the bottom of Pond Road each Saturday, placing a banner across a fence reading, “True Owners of Yankeetown Pond.” They gather and sit in lawn chairs to assert their ownership.
Pond Road is a dead end. Moran and Lesko have to face this banner and confrontations with neighbors regularly when they leave for town.
A fence, said Moran, was erected to keep people from parking cars at the entrance to the western end of the pond. The possibility of vehicles getting stuck had become an issue. Fluids from those vehicles could contaminate the wetlands of the pond.
The fence, she said, was never meant to keep the residents out of the pond and was positioned to allow foot traffic on either side.
In the early days of Moran taking ownership, that area had become a refuse heap, with people leaving trash, dirty diapers, and any number of things, she claimed.
A cross-country skier who frequented the pond in the winter had a bad habit of falling through the ice when it wasn’t thick enough. Moran said the fire department warned that it might have to start charging for its responses, so she decided to form a limited liability company, Moroles LLC to shield herself and to take out an insurance policy.
Up went No Trespassing signs, which would frequently disappear. Moran would call the police to try to recover the signs. Neighbors would show paperwork they said demonstrated their ownership. Moran would show hers.
Eventually, the police didn’t want to get involved.
Moran stopped replacing the signs.
“I’m so grateful for the occasional person who’s like, we don’t believe this shit, Erin. We know what you’re doing and why, and keep doing it. But it’s really hard, because now I take my dog for a walk, you know, and I run into someone, and I just turn around,” said Moran, who becomes emotional at times. “I live here. I chose to come back here and live and die. And it’s hard to get away from it when you live on a dead-end road. I can’t go anywhere.”
Woodstock town supervisor Bill McKenna accepted Moran’s resignation from her WEC post,. “It is shameful what is happening to our little town,” he wrote. “Your service or contributions over the years have been invaluable and will be missed. I hope someday you will find it in your heart to serve our community once again. I wish you the best in your future endeavors.”
“One-Dollar Erin”
Residents of Pond Road have not responded to numerous requests for comment, other than to say they are seeking legal representation. Some have taken to social media to contest Moran’s ownership.
One in particular, Stephanie Burke, owns three properties along the Yankeetown Pond shoreline. She calls Moran “One-Dollar Erin,” a reference to the acquisition of the 28.5 acres of the pond through the quitclaim deed Sawyer Savings had transferred to her for a symbolic dollar plus transaction costs amounting to a few hundred dollars.
Burke has alleged online that Moran has told her to “fuck off” in the presence of children, an allegation Moran denies.
Howard Harris, who claims to have 1/29th right to pond access, has stayed out of the fray for the most part. He said what had happened was a shame. While he was appreciative of being invited to participate in many meetings organized by the neighbors, he doesn’t believe these sessions will accomplish anything. “It needs to be settled in court,” Harris said.
He doesn’t believe a water leveler, or beaver deceiver as it is often called, was necessary. A deeper ditch could have accomplished the same goal of keeping Pond Road from flooding.
What about transferring the 28.5 acres of the pond to the town? Harris said he didn’t know how that could happen unless Moran could prove that she definitively owned the property.
If the rest of the neighbors are fine with a transfer to the town, he’d go along with it, Harris said. But ultimately the ownership matter needs to be settled before that happens.
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