WJFF - Close to Home with Leif Johansen

What exactly happens behind the scenes for clean, safe drinking water to come out of your kitchen faucet? It turns out, there are marvels of engineering and health science right under our feet, but much of our water and sewer infrastructure in the U.S. is outdated—sometimes dangerously so. In this episode, we hear from University of Rochester Professor Morris Pierce on the history of American water works and Town of Liberty Supervisor Frank DeMayo on how our local drinking water and wastewater systems work, and what the most pressing issues are with them that need to be addressed sooner rather than later.

Name a multi billion-dollar New York State industry that has grown five-fold in the last decade. (Not much of a quiz question when you can see the title of the episode, but work with me here.) Craft brewing is in its prime across the U.S., and upstate New York is one of the great epicenters of it. In this episode, we talk to New York State Brewers' Association President Paul Leone and Big Eddy Brewing Co. owners Jacob and Alison Johnson about the state of the industry, and we learn from the experts about how to make beer and how to build a brewery from the ground up. (Spoiler: it takes more than a little elbow grease.)

After a shake up in the composition of the Sullivan County Legislature after last November's elections, the nine-person governing body is looking younger than ever. In this episode, we catch up with two of the new, younger members of the legislature to get an inside look at what it's like to navigate the challenges and opportunities of local governance.

This is the full interview with John Conway for our episode in May 2024 on local aviation and the Sullivan County Airport. In it, John talks about how he goes about conducting local history research, what the best books on Catskills and Sullivan County history are, aviation, Borscht Belt hotels, and a splash of government corruption.

In this episode, we hear from the new Sullivan County Airport Superintendent, Julian Motola, on the ongoing development of a brand new terminal at the Sullivan County International Airport, supported by an $18.5 million grant from New York State. We also learn about the storied history of aviation in the Catskills, and how the Sullivan County International Airport came into existence in the first place as an unusually large publicly owned and operated facility for a rural community. (And we'll finally get an answer to why it's an "international" airport!)

There's a 50-mile biking/walking path being built that will span the entire length of Sullivan County, north to south. It's a feat of design and community cooperation, and it's (slowly) moving closer to becoming a reality. But that's just part of a larger, regional project that may transform the way we think about accessibility and recreation in our rural area. This episode is an update to our piece in early 2021 on the O&W Rail Trail project, and it features Heather Brown, Sullivan County's Commissioner of Planning, Community Development & Environmental Management; Heather Jacksy, Sullivan County's Chief Planner; Annie Bergelin, Design and Capital Projects Manager at the Open Space Institute; and Tatum Justice, Northeast Land Project Manager at the Open Space Institute.

Have you noticed geese flying back recently? Or robins plucking worms and berries from your snow-less yard in the middle of the winter? Locally and globally, bird populations and migration patterns are changing. Today, we're asking why. (Spoiler: your house cat knows.) In this episode, we're joined by Dr. Andrew Farnsworth, Senior Research Associate in the Center for Avian Population Studies at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology; Mark Dedea, President of the John Burrows Natural History Society, and Wendy Tocci, Regional Coordinator for the Third New York State Breeding Bird Atlas.

How do all of those public school meals get made every day? What regulations govern what food can and can't be served to K-12 students? This week, we sit down with Sullivan West Central School District Food Services Director Dara Smith to get the inside scoop on what happens behind the school lunch counter.

What's the status of rural food insecurity in (sort of) post-COVID rural America? "A Single Bite" Executive Director Audrey Garro drops in to talk about the current state of food insecurity in the Catskills and to share some exciting news about the burgeoning local nonprofit. We also ponder what impact Dollar General and transit systems like "Move Sullivan" have on rural access to nutrition.

In 2021, overdose death rates in Sullivan County were 108% higher than the New York State average. How did we get here? Are our efforts to fight this epidemic keeping things from getting even worse, or are we missing the mark? What policies actually make a difference? Dr. Patricia Strach from the Rockefeller Institute of Government at SUNY Albany and Dr. Katherine Zuber from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice have been working to answer these big questions since 2017 when their team launched the "Stories from Sullivan" project, which seeks to develop a better understanding of how our communities respond to the opioid crisis through a mix of quantitative data analysis and 200+ on-the-ground interviews with local stakeholders.