Verifiable truth around what I deem the reckless endangerment of Yankeetown Pond is difficult to establish. Both sides of a highly contentious dispute present contradictory legal documents, one of the more recent declaring Kathleen Erin Moran the “owner of record” of 28.34 acres nearest the egress of Yankeetown Pond [YTP], Woodstock’s beloved mile-long lake in the watershed which falls under the jurisdiction of both the NYDEC and the NYCDEP.
The document in question is a quitclaim deed verifying, for one dollar, Moran’s legal purchase of mostly underwater lands, including a freshly rearranged beaver dam which controls the water level of the entirety. But a quitclaim deed simply guarantees the transfer of “present”ownership (specifically the Sawyer Saving Bank to Moran) while remaining vulnerable to past owners coming out of the woodwork.
Predictably enough, a group calling themselves “the true owners of Yankeetown Pond” have done just that. They come waving prior deeds attenuated with deeded rights and covenants ensuring enjoyment and shared ownership of this now highly contested property.
It’s a hugely complicated mess, made messier still with unsubstantiated claims made in past Ulster Publishing articles, regrettably written by me, one entitled “Yankeetown Pond bought for a dollar!”
Nevertheless, although celebrated in last week’s HV1 with an in-depth introduction to one “clever contraption,” it was the surprise installation of this water-leveling “beaver deceiver” which today has the neighborhood and concerned nature-lovers united in opposition to the disputed property’s newest owner of record: the LLC “Mororles,” understood to be a duo-run corporation consisting of Erin Moran and her husband, Woodstock town justice Jason Lesko.
If the new water leveler were controllable and set at half its present depth, I for one would approve a far more environmentally aware installation. Why? Because YTP does need its increasingly high water reduced. And it does need to control its lily-pad infestation.
Four years ago, when I first wrote about YTP, I was Erin Moran’s champion. We were both excited by the nearby use of a hydro-thresher which selectively harvests lily-pad overgrowth. Nevertheless YTP’s present installation is a rinky-dink operation resting on a couple of ugly concrete half-blocks vulnerable to the mighty expansion of winter ice.
Worse still, neither of the 50-foot tubes constituting the majority of this “clever contraption” are equipped with a valve to control the “leveler” should shifting occur. And it will.
While at present? The full-throated bullfrog chorus at sundown is silent. Fetid pools invite the influx of mosquito-borne disease. Fish and wildlife are exposed to predators at bewilderingly low water levels. And summer’s geese are already fled as a stench-ridden wasteland stretches around the pond’s perimeter.
But let me close on a happier note. I learned this morning from a fearless opponent of Mororles who actually agrees with Moran on a key point I had flat-out wrong. I was convinced that a siphoning action created by water rushing through the two 50-foot tubes would continue to suck down to mud through the dual deceivers at Yankeetown Pond’s deepest location, thus draining the lake. I was wrong. But for the leak in the dam, the lowering will cease at the end height of the tubes, 18 or so inches below the previous height.
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