Sam and the Cannonsville

Posted 8/21/12

Sam has learned an awful lot in the past two years reporting for Hancock’s weekly paper, The Hancock Herald. Reporting on planning board hearings and football games to house fires, giant hog weed …

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Sam and the Cannonsville

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Sam has learned an awful lot in the past two years reporting for Hancock’s weekly paper, The Hancock Herald. Reporting on planning board hearings and football games to house fires, giant hog weed and CheCheTheClown, he has gotten a great introduction into the workings of a community and what makes a good story.

This past summer Sam found himself fighting through thicket and briars, and running by “No Trespassing” signs in order to get to the dam of the Cannonsville Resevoir. His mission was to get photos of the murky water that started to flow into the Delaware River following a mishap that occurred when contractors were doing drill borings at the base of the dam. At first, some people were concerned that the dam might collapse even though the damage was quickly fixed.

The Cannonsville Resevoir is situated in the towns of Tompkins and Deposit in Delaware County. The reservoir is one of four in the system which provides New York City’s water supply. The Cannonsville can hold 95.7 billion gallons of water and has the largest drainage basin in the reservoir system, covering 455 square miles. The reservoir was put in service in 1964. The town of Cannonsville and settlements of Rock Rift, Rock Royal, Granton, and Beerston were inundated in order to build the reservoir. (My sister remembers the new kids who came to school in Hancock following the inundation of Cannonsville.)

What followed for Sam was a summer filled with a whirl-wind of meetings and writing as he reported on the New York City Department of Environmental Protection’s response to the problem, including the rapid drawdown of the reservoir in order to do repairs.

Then, this fall, Sam chose to remember his time atop the Cannonsville dam in his essay required to apply to college. He will start as a journalism major next fall at a school as yet to be determined.

As he worked on his essay, revising and honing it down to the word limit, I remembered yet another Cannonsville experience. Right after moving back here in 1998, we took a road trip to see the Cannonsville Reservoir. We took photos along the bank with our new baby, Sam. I remember that along the way we stopped so I could nurse him and then ended up eating pizza at Little Italy 1 in Deposit, NY. Fast-forward 17 years—and here he is getting ready for college.

As Sam’s mother, I take a risk writing this column. After all, what teenager wants to be near their mother, let alone have their mother write about them in the newspaper? Sam will have read this and edited it himself before it ever gets to TRR.

But I also remember being a young reporter. I can remember nearly crying at a meeting of the Jeffersonville water district. (I had no idea what they were talking about. Some sort of pipes under the street?) Then, finding the baby photo and the fact that Sam has been writing about the Cannonsville was just too good of a concurrence to pass up as a column topic. But what it really comes down to is Sam’s hard work and initiative. What I want to say, most of all is that we are proud of you, Sam.

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