Companion bills have been introduced in both houses of Congress that would help finance cleanup of the Susquehanna River, which originates in Otsego Lake near Cooperstown.  The upstate river contributes half the freshwater inflow to Chesapeake Bay as well as 20 percent of the phosphorous and 40 percent of the nitrogen entering the nation's largest freshwater estuary.   

Otsego Lake's watershed is the headwaters of the Susquehanna River Basin.Richard Coombe, a third-generation beef and crop farmer from Grahamsville in Sullivan County, authored a thoughtful OpEd on the subject in the Albany Times Union over the weekend.

Coombe argues that the Chesapeake Clean Water and Ecosystem Restoration Act (co-sponsored in the House by Reps. Paul Tonko and Maurice Hinchey) will be good for agriculture and water quality. Coombe, who chairs the Chesapeake Fund Advisory Committee, formerly served as chief executive officer of the Watershed Agricultural Council and as a regional assistant chief of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Natural Resources Conservation Service, East Region.

Protection of the entire Chesapeake Bay watershed is a priority of NYLCV. That's why we are a member of the Choose Clean Water coalition, which brings together people and more than 100 organizations from Pennsylvania, New York, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, West Virginia and the District of Columbia.