Today in your Trail Mix: jobs for flood victims.
Pennsylvania shakes up how it handles its drilling bureaucracy.
Bill Clinton headlines an economic development conference.
Plus: do you know your regional councils?
Flooding
Governor Cuomo is creating a temporary work program for fooding victims, giving about 800 folks 20 weeks of work at an average of $15 an hour (Joseph Spector, Gannett).
A poll on storm preparedness, conducted by Siena College Research Institute, finds that 60 percent of New Yorkers aren't more prepared than they were before the flooding of earlier this month (Bryan Fitzgerald, Times Union).
The Canal Corporation still doesn't know when the canal will reopen, following massive flooding that shut it down to trade and tourism traffic downstate (Jimmy Vielkind, Capitol Confidential).
It's going to "be a decade before things return to normal" in flooded-wracked Gilboa, where 55 students local students are homeless (Scott Waldman, Times Union).
FEMA is set to set up disaster recovering centers in Broome, Tioga and Chenango counties in the coming weeks, to help distribute aid to flood victims (Jennifer Fusco, Press & Sun-Bulletin).
Students in the Binghamton area are also disrupted by floods, with hundreds of students shifted to new schools by closed facilities (George Basler, Press & Sun-Bulletin).
Natural gas
Pennsylvania is restructuring the way it handles gas drilling, shaking up its Department of Environmental Protection to create an Oil and Gas Bureau as a separate organization (Don Hopey, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette).
The state's environmental commissioner says the state isn't proposing to protect Syracuse and New York City's watersheds from fracking because of the potential for chemical contamination - rather, he says it's to protect them from having to undergo an environmental review and infrastructure update (Cara Matthews, Vote Up!).
The commissioner also says that whether or not a town can ban drilling within its borders is a "murky area" (Nick Reisman, State of Politics).
State Impact Pennsylvania has begun to answer the "burning questions" that users submitted. First up: "the who, what, where, when and why of water testing." We answered a similar question last year in our "Ask a Trail Guide" series, about well water.
Tech
A bankrupt research institute in Albany is selling lab equipment - and researchers - to the University of Florida (Larry Rulison, Times Union).
The harbor in Oswego is testing its ability to detect and block the shipment of radioactive material today (Post-Standard).
Technology helps a blind New Yorker navigate her day (Gillian Reagan, Capital New York).
Jobs and economic development
Bill Clinton will be the speaker at a conference of the regional councils next week in Albany (Adam Sichko, Business Review).
A former developer at the stuttering Destiny USA mall project is suing the principal developer, Robert Congel, for $27 million. He claims a breach of contract (Rick Moriarty, Post-Standard).
Senator Schumer is "optimistic" that work will pick up at Ford's stamping plant in Buffalo - despite a recent spate of layoffs (Jerry Zremski, Buffalo News).
Yesterday the governor didn't seem to endorse the president's millionaire tax (Nick Reisman, State of Politics).
And then he did (Azi Paybarah, Capital New York).
Here's an odd quiz that popped up in my Google alerts: name the regional councils. Stuck on the answers? In the words of Will Shortz, "it's your quiz," so if you want a little help, check out our profiles of all of the members of the regional councils.
Want Trail Mix delivered fresh to your reader, every day? Subscribe to the feed.
