
Ben Coon, 10, on the “mound,” practiced his pitching on Tuesday, March 4, in the Webutuck Elementary School gym, with Coach Colby Dunlop, left, giving pointers.
Photo by John Coston
Ben Coon, 10, on the “mound,” practiced his pitching on Tuesday, March 4, in the Webutuck Elementary School gym, with Coach Colby Dunlop, left, giving pointers.
AMENIA — The 2025 Webutuck Little League season is around the corner and the League said players are still needed to fill out teams for games to be played in Millerton and Amenia.
Registration remains open for T-ball, majors, minors, seniors and girls’ softball teams. Some scholarships are available to cover costs.
League President Matt Deister said the League is planning tryouts to be held on Saturday, March 15, and on Thursday, March 20, at Webutuck high school and middle school gyms. Exact times will be announced but the expectation is that March 15 tryout will be in the morning and that the March 20 event will be in the early evening.
Volunteers and parent coaches are also welcomed for teams that range from 4-6 years of age to seniors at 13-16 years.
The start of the season is targeted to be mid-April, though an exact date has not been set. Teams play in Millerton at the Eddie Collins Memorial Park field and at Beekman Park in Amenia.
The Webutuck Little League season is bookended with an Opening Day celebration that amounts to a party for players and parents and a celebration at the end of the season when play is wrapped up and players receive trophies and more hot dogs and hamburgers.
At an organizational meeting on Tuesday, March 4, at the Webutuck Elementary School gym, where pitching practice was underway for players already signed up, the Webutuck Little League Board discussed plans for sponsorships, tryouts, safety training for coaches and other events planned for the spring.
Besides Deister, other officers include Eric Eschbach, vice president; Judy Moran, treasurer; and Jessica Deister, secretary. The next Board meeting is March 18 at 6:30 p.m. at the Webutuck Elementary School gym.
For more information about registration or volunteering, email webutucklittleleague@gmail.com.
The League’s Facebook page is WebutuckLittleLeague.
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Town of Cornwall Hiring Land Use Administrator:The Town of Cornwall is hiring a Land Use Administrator. For more details and to apply, contact First Selectmen’s office 860-672-4959.
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PUBLISHER’S NOTICE: Equal Housing Opportunity. All real estate advertised in this newspaper is subject to the Federal Fair Housing Act of 1966 revised March 12, 1989 which makes it illegal to advertise any preference, limitation, or discrimination based on race, color religion, sex, handicap or familial status or national origin or intention to make any such preference, limitation or discrimination. All residential property advertised in the State of Connecticut General Statutes 46a-64c which prohibit the making, printing or publishing or causing to be made, printed or published any notice, statement or advertisement with respect to the sale or rental of a dwelling that indicates any preference, limitation or discrimination based on race, creed, color, national origin, ancestry, sex, marital status, age, lawful source of income, familial status, physical or mental disability or an intention to make any such preference, limitation or discrimination.
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A detail of a whorl of hydrilla pulled from the shallow waters at O’Hara’s Landing Marina in fall of 2024.
SALISBURY — The Twin Lakes Association is taking an earlier and more aggressive approach to fighting the spread of invasive hydrilla in East Twin Lake by dosing the whole northeast bay, from May through October, with low-level herbicide treatments instead of spot treatments.
The goal, said Russ Conklin, the TLA’s vice president of lake management, is to sustain herbicide concentration over the 2025 growing season.
That plan of attack will continue over a period of 60 to 90 days beginning May 21, Conklin explained during the association’s April 30 membership meeting via Zoom which drew 60 attendees.
TLA officials were encouraged by the chance to stop the spread and hopefully destroy the thick mats of the unyielding invasive plant hydrilla verticillata, referred to as the Connecticut River variant, after two years of chasing new growth around the lake’s north bay.
Dense patches were first discovered in the summer of 2023 in shallow waters around O’Hara’s Landing Marina and the nearby state boat launch and the plant has since migrated further into East Twin, following a pattern of boat traffic.
Past treatment efforts were hampered by delayed permits from the state Department of Energy and Environmental Protection to treat the hydrilla with herbicides in an area where a rare plant had been identified.
This year, the TLA was granted an exception by DEEP, said Conklin, as any protected plant species in the path of hydrilla would likely not survive anyway.
“It is not dead now, but it is going to be if we don’t do something about the hydrilla.”
“This is a big year for us,” Conklin said. “Hydrilla is a real threat to the lake, and we did treat it this past year, but the permits only applied to the plant, so we spot treated it … and were always chasing it.”
The course of action this year, he said, is to treat the entire northeast bay with the herbicide Sonar in both liquid and crystal form at a very low levels so that the herbicide’s contact time with hydrilla will be extended for a longer period over 60 to 90 days.
“We know from past experience that it is much easier to kill the plant when it’s small,” Conklin explained. The goal, he said, is to attack the stringy, green weed before August when it crowns and splits into numerous growing points that are capable of growing at the rate of an inch a day.
During the hour-long meeting, discussion also focused on a pilot program for enhanced cyanobacteria monitoring at Twin Lakes to be headed by TLA director Jessica Swartz, a resident of West Twin Lake and biotech executive with Pfizer.
“It’s very visibly challenging to identify cyanobacteria blooms,” Swartz explained, as it can easily be confused with pollen on the surface of the water, dead vegetation or different types of algae.
Cyanobacteria, also known as blue-green algae, are natural, important phytoplankton in lake ecosystems. Dense blooms, which release toxins, occur when there is an abundance of sunlight, elevated phosphorus levels and warm temperatures.
Given the current escalation in overly-nutrient rich waterbodies and rising temperatures due to global climate change, the frequency of cyanobacteria blooms is increasing, said Swartz, and Twin Lakes has occasionally experienced localized blooms.
As a result, the association will be implementing a pilot testing program with greater frequency and at more locations than currently conducted by the TLA’s limnologist, George Knoecklein. The goal of the pilot program is to work out the process of collecting reliable data over time that helps inform whether cyanobacteria blooms are occurring, where they are most frequently found, and assess the level of risk.
Sample test kits have been ordered for five or six testing sites across East and West Twin, including at the private Salisbury School.
TLA president Gant Bogle invited Swartz to give an update at the association’s upcoming June 14 membership meeting at Camp Isola Bella.
Despite rising lake management costs projected at $500,000 this year, Bogle reported that the TLA is in strong shape financially heading into the 2025 season, as it received another $75,000 grant from DEEP and $25,000 from the Bates Foundation to support the Watershed Study.
Also, the town of Salisbury has earmarked $75,000 for Twin Lakes this season, said Bogle, and the TLA membership has “responded generously” contributing more than $300,000 since August 2024 when the group started its 2025 fundraising campaign.
Bogle also encouraged members to attend the May 12 public meeting of the Salisbury Inland Wetlands & Watercourses Commission, which is expected to address proposed changes to the Upland Review Area encompassing the town’s lakes.
Olivia Wickwire, no. 2, tags out a runner at first base. The Webutuck Warriors varsity softball team beat the Germantown Clippers 14-7 at home Friday, April 25.
AMENIA — Webutuck girls varsity softball beat visiting Germantown 14-7 Friday, April 25.
Yelling from the dugout is apparently just as important to the game as throwing. Webutuck players cheered and shouted at their teammates on the field the whole afternoon. Photo by Nathan Miller
The game started off with an early lead from Germantown. The Clippers scored three runs in the first inning.
The Warriors responded in kind with a run of their own in the bottom of the first. The real magic started to come in the second inning, when Webutuck held Germantown with no runs and managed to rack up five in the bottom, brining the score to 6-1 at by the end of the second inning.
Abby Keefer, no. 8, waits at third base for an opportunity to run to home plate. Photo by Nathan Miller
On the mound, Webutuck pitcher Madison Kruger, no. 10, showed great skill dispensing of batters. Kruger struck out 16 batters through the game.
In the fifth inning, Germantown’s batters managed three more runs, spurring the Warriors back into action in the batters box. Webutuck responded with six more runs in the bottom of the fifth.
Germantown managed another run in the sixth, but Webutuck scored two more, brining the score to 14-7 going into the top of the seventh.
Webutuck Warriors pitcher Madison Kruger, no. 10, racked up 16 strikeouts during the game.Photo by Nathan Miller
A few hundred feet away the varsity baseball squad played against the boys from Germantown.
The Warriors won that matchup 4-3 after a tie-breaking run in the bottom of the seventh inning.
Webutuck pitcher Troy Brazee led in strikeouts with six. Zach Latrell had two and Pearse Williams had one.
Tim Middlebrook, President of the Columbia Mid-Hudson Valley chapter of the Sons of the American Revolution, left, Amenia Town Supervisor Leo Blackman, center, and Amenia Historical Society President Betsy Strauss unveiled a new historical marker at the Old Amenia Burying Ground on Saturday, April 26. The marker commemorates revolutionary war veterans buried at the cemetery where the Red Meeting House once stood on Mygatt Road.
AMENIA — Tim Middlebrook of the Sons of the American Revolution and Amenia Historical Society President Betsy Strauss unveiled a new historical marker honoring Revolutionary War vets in the Amenia Burying Ground.
Rain all morning had threatened the event, but historical society members, lovers of history and sons of the revolution persisted and the rain let up just in time.
The gathering at the old burying ground on Saturday, April 26, began with Middlebrook, president of the Columbia Mid-Hudson Valley chapter of the Sons of the American Revolution, talking about the process of acquiring the sign from the Pomeroy foundation. He thanked the Burke family, longtime neighbors of the burying ground, for the work they and their father, Bill Burke, had done with the cemetery.
Bill’s son, Stephen, said he and his father spent a lot of time mapping and cleaning the burying ground. “Putting the stones back up,” he said. “Putting them back up again.”
Stephen said his father had completed a map of the burying ground with the identifiable plots. That was part of Bill Burke and Betsy Strauss’s work with the historical society to find revolutionary war veterans and attain historical recognition for the cemetery.
“It’s pretty impressive, it’s all this poster board that he put together,” Stephen said. “When I first saw it I said ‘wow.’ Then my sister Karen said ‘Oh we’eve already translated all that and into this.’ I thought I had found a hidden gem.”
Tim Middlebrook of the Sons of the American Revolution and Amenia Historical Society President Betsy Strauss told the crowd of neighbors and historical society members about the centuries-long history of the Old Amenia Burying Ground and listed the names of the known Revolutionary War veterans in the cemetery. Photo by Nathan Miller
After Middlebrook’s remarks, the crowd moved into the burying ground for snacks and mingling, where the graves of revolutionary war veterans had been marked with American flags.
Betsy Strauss had lists of the names for visitors:
Col. William Barker
1740-1820
Daniel Bartlett
1755-1837
John Bates
1756-1801
Maj. Simeon Cook
1726-1811
Maj. Robert Freeman
1727-1798
John Garnsey
1734-1799
Robert Hebard
1737-1798
Capt. Job Mead Sr.
1735-1819
Job Mead Jr.
1761-1838
Capt. Abiah Palmer
1758-1834
Capt. Elijah Park
1744-1795
Capt. David Parsons
1748-1812
David Rundall
1757-1848
Samuel St. John
1752-1785