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CAYUGA LAKE Climate change, shore run-off lead to increase in harmful algal blooms

It’s that time of year again — harmful algal blooms are appearing in Cayuga Lake. Harmful algal blooms, or HABs, are caused by an increase in growth of cyanobacteria. According to Nate Launer, who heads up the HABs monitoring program at the Community Science Institute, cyanobacteria isn’t invasive, but a naturally occurring bacteria.

There isn’t one precise thing that causes cyanobacteria to grow to the point of HABs, but Launer said a lot of current research is pointing toward an increase in levels of phosphorus and nitrogen. The blooms may also be promoted by warmer water temperatures and prolonged periods of direct sunlight.

“Those have been the primary factors, but there’s even more than that,” Launer said. “There’s a whole host of factors.”

Dr. Hilary Lambert, the executive director of the Cayuga Lake Watershed Network, said the weather this year has been particularly conducive to blooms.

“Just imagine, it’s rained for a few days and everyone’s relieved when the sun comes out and the lake gets still, but then bingo, there’s all these blooms,” she said.

The heavy and frequent rains in July caused runoff into the lake from the shore, including nutrients from farms or sewers, which helped feed the cyanobacteria. Then, when the rain relents and the sun shines, the bacteria bloom.

Lambert said one way people can help prevent blooms is by being aware of their own shorelines. People who live on the waterfront should stop

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T a k e N o t e

▶ Vax clinics - The Tompkins County Health Department announced several upcoming COVID-19 vaccination clinics. Vaccine is readily available in Tompkins County, and TCHD urges all individuals aged 12+ to get vaccinated. On Friday, August 13 from 2-4 p.m., individuals 18 and older can visit the Ithaca Free Clinic with REACH Medical (appointments required) or the Ellis Hollow Apartments (walkins welcome). The Southside Community Center will host a clinic (walk-ins welcome) on Saturday, August 14 from 5:30–8 p.m. for individuals 18 years and older. On Wednesday, August 18 from 3-6 p.m., Newfield High School will have a clinic for individuals ages 12 and older, and an appointment is required. Individuals without computer and/or internet access may also call 2-1-1 (877-211-8667) during regular business hours 8:30a.m.5 p.m. to be registered over the phone. More Information about local clinics can be found on the TCHD website.

VOL.XLI / NO. 51 / August 11, 2021 Serving 47,125 readers weekly

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Business work individually to find the best way to keep people safe from COVID-19 Sports.........................................................10 Science ....................................................... 11 ‘A Wild Idea’�����������������������������������15 Ithaca author’s latest book explores the birth of the Adirondack Park Agency, and all the drama surrounding it Newsline ..................................................3-5 Opinion ........................................................6 Letters ........................................................7 ARTS&ENTERTAINMENT

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INQUIRING PHOTOGRAPHER

By Casey Martin

IT’S SUMMER BLOCKBUSTER SEASON…. WHAT’S THE FIRST MOVIE YOU REMEMBER SEEING IN THE A MOVIE THEATER?

“Brave! Saw it at my Grandma’s local theatre.”

-Brenna W.

“The first Spider Man.”

-Stevie S.

“Tarzan – in a small movie theatre in Orange County, California!”

-David N.

“Jurassic Park. I was probably a little to young…”

-Christy K.

“Let’s see here, it was probably 1950. I saw Broken Arrow starring Jimmy Stewart – at the STATE THEATRE”

COVID 0.2% of vaccinated residents in Tompkins County have gotten COVID-19

Despite a fairly dramatic uptick in recent COVID-19 cases, the Tompkins County Health Department maintains that vaccination remains the best tool to fight the new delta variant. Since January 2021, 0.2% of Tompkins County’s vaccinated population have been diagnosed with COVID. Currently, more than 67,000 residents have been fully vaccinated.

According to the Health Department and the CDC, vaccinated individuals continue to have very high levels of protection against severe disease, hospitalization and death from the virus. However, the recent increase of fully vaccinated individuals testing positive for COVID-19 mirrors national and state trends. The Health Department attributes local positive cases to indoor gatherings and domestic travel.

Since May, cases among vaccinated individuals have been found in 0.1% of the fully vaccinated population. Of the 315 new positive cases between May 1-July 30, 84 were in people who reported being fully vaccinated, or about 26.67% of cases.

According to the CDC, breakthrough cases of COVID in vaccinated individuals are to be expected, as no vaccines are 100% effective at preventing illness. It also states that there will be a small percentage of fully vaccinated people who still get sick, hospitalized or die from COVID-19. However, there is also evidence that shows vaccination makes illness less severe for those who are vaccinated and still get sick.

The best thing we can do to stop this pandemic and keep one another healthy and safe is to get vaccinated,” Dr. William Klepack, Tompkins County Health Department medical director, said. “The data we’ve shared, paired with our hospitalization data show that if you are fully vaccinated, you continue to have a very high degree of protection against severe disease and hospitalization. Positive cases in fully vaccinated individuals continue to be extremely uncommon; out of our entire vaccinated population, far less than one percent of individuals have tested positive for COVID-19. We are advising all residents to get vaccinated and wear a mask because we know those are the best tools to stop the disease from spreading. By doing what we know works, we can stop this pandemic and look forward to a return to normalcy.”

The CDC said variants of a virus are expected to occur as viruses change constantly through mutation. The delta variant spreads more quickly and causes more infections than other variants of the disease. All three vaccines available in the United States protect against delta and other known variants, according to the CDC.

All COVID-19 testing will work for variants, but they will not tell you which variant you have. The CDC maintains that the best way to slow the emergence of new variants is to reduce the spread of infection by taking measures to protect yourself, including getting the vaccine, wearing masks and practicing good hygiene.

The delta variant is currently the most predominant strain of the virus in the United States and is nearly twice as contagious as previous variants. The CDC said unvaccinated people remain the greatest concern as they pose the greatest risk of transmission.

For information on vaccination clinics in Tompkins County, visit https://tompkinscountyny.gov/health/covid19popup. -Tanner Harding

POLICE Reimagining Public Safety deadline extended as work begins

The Reimagining Public Safety working group won’t have recommendations ready by the proposed September deadline. The deadline, which was mostly chosen arbitrarily as a means to have an idea of needed funding heading into budget season, doesn’t provide enough time for the group to complete its work. Alderperson Ducson Nguyen, who is one of the Common Council members on the working group, told Council at its Aug. 4 meeting that the size of the project means they’ll need more time.

“One thing that came up was the scope of the work is enormous, and the number of things we have to consider are huge, so work extends beyond September which is when we had wanted to have an answer to what the new department will look like,” Nguyen said. “Due to the breadth of the work before us, that became quickly unrealistic.”

However, to keep things moving forward, Nguyen said the group expects to have estimates and cost benefit analyses by October so they can provide some placeholders for the mayor and controller to consider as part of the city budget. He compared it to when the city decided they wanted to hire a sustainability director and didn’t have specifics yet, but “knew we wanted someone to oversee that effort in city hall.”

The working group had a two-day onboarding program in mid-July that involved team building and leadership exercises, learning about the history of policing in Ithaca and hearing about the current state of policing in Tompkins County and Ithaca. The group thus far has also established a statement of work, goals and expectations, and are currently working on delineated call types.

According to Nguyen, delineated call types is the “piece that will determine success or failure with regard to using armed and unarmed officers.” Essentially, it’s the main essence of recommendation one, which calls for unarmed public safety workers to respond to certain types of calls in an effort to reduce the workload of armed officers. During the Reimagining Public Safety public outreach process in March, examples such as responding to calls to take reports for things like theft will go to unarmed workers, while any calls where there’s a non-zero chance of arrest will go to armed officers.

However, it’s worth noting those were the explanations given months ago, and not the actual solutions the working group has come up with. To better inform their work, the group recently had a call to learn exactly how dispatch works, and it will be working with myriad technical experts to consult with during the process.

Nguyen said at some point this month the group will also be launching a tool that will allow community members to submit ideas for recommendation one. Eventually, that tool will be expanded to include the subcommittees for the working group, which will include staffing, training and equipment, data analysis and budget committees.

However, call delineation is considered the root of the new public safety department from which everything else will grow.

“Contrary to past expectations, we must focus on call delineation first,” Nguyen said. “Everything that follows must be informed by an in-depth understanding of community needs and how those needs are responded to.”

He added that once they understand the new call delineation responsibilities, the group can organize staffing levels, shift assignments and beat designs. From there, it will proceed with naming conventions, job descriptions, titles. Everything else, from training to budget, will follow that.

The working group will continue to meet regularly and report to Common Council monthly. -Tanner Harding

BUSINESS A ‘jar’ cry from your average soap dispenser

Danila Apasov had an idea back in 2015 when he worked for the Freeville-based company (now located in Lakewood, Colorado) EcoJarz. He read somewhere about how companies launch new products based on reviews from customers on current products and wondered how he could apply this strategy to the products at EcoJarz. At the time, EcoJarz was developing products like stainless steel drinking lids for Mason jars.

“I was like, ‘Well, I wonder if we could apply something like that to Mason jar products? We’re already making these Mason jar lids,’” Apasov said. “I started looking and saw that Mason jar soap dispensers were pretty popular, but they all tended to be made out of tin or pot steel, which look really nice and people like the way they look, but they would rust after like a couple months.”

Apasov approached the other owners of EcoJarz and proposed the concept to them. While they said they did not want to spend the money on developing the dispenser, they encouraged Apasov to look into it on his own time, which he did. What he described as a “side project” ultimately developed into the first of Jarmazing Products’ line of rust-proof, stainless steel dispensers. “First we had a stainless steel one, then we had a black stainless steel one. Now we have four different colors,” Apasov said. “People were asking for a foaming soap dispenser, so we made a foaming Mason jar soap dispenser. Then we had the idea to do a toothbrush holder, so we made a special one that fit the bigger, wide mouth jars, and … we were always trying to find new ideas … based on trends and what people are interested in buying that doesn’t exist yet and create them and see if they sell.” Jarmazing sells its products on its website (jarmazingproducts.com) as well as its e-store on Amazon, where they have received hundreds to thousands of reviews — the majority earning four to five stars. At first, the company ran out of a rented building on Union Street in Freeville that was shared by EcoJarz and Weaver Wind Energy. However, once business grew, Apasov knew the company would need to find somewhere more spacious to run its operations. “I had the option to buy the building, but we would have had to add an addition on,” the company’s general manager said. “It seemed to make more sense to just build another building that would be more modern, more super efficient, have natural light and kind of solve some of the problems at our other space, because we do get quite a bit of truck traffic.” 18 Factory Street wound up being Jarmazing’s next, and current, home, which oddly enough used to be the property of a stained glass factory back in the 1890s.

The land had been vacant for the past century or so prior to Jarmazing purchasing and setting up shop on the property. “We didn’t find very many ruins or anything like that. Just a small brick wall and a ton of scattered glass all over the place; different colored

green and blue and purple, yellow glass,” Apasov said when recalling the construction of Jarmazing’s facility back in November 2019. “But it was kind of interesting at the time because we do a lot of stuff with glass and with jars, and at one point our plumber was working on digging something out to make the connection to the sewer, and he’s like, ‘Hey, check what I found,’ and he pulled out a blue Mason jar lid, a glass Mason jar. One of the like 1900s Mason jars. I thought that was pretty cool.” The building was constructed with the company’s goal in mind of being “sustainable by default” as it is insulated with mini split heat pumps that provide a boost in energy efficiency. In addition to the building’s insulation, the company uses compostable and recyclable materials for its shipments, such as biodegradable tape and cardboard packaging. The products themselves offer an environmentally friendly alternative for consumers. “A lot of our customDanila Apasov and example of mason Jar Soap dispenser below (Photo: Provided) ers are refill stores, so that’s stores that sell bulk soap,” Apasov said. “You just buy one of our jars with the dispenser and then fill it yourself from a bulk refill store, or if you buy a gallon of soap at a time. So the idea being that you do reduce some of your plastic waste that you generate.” Looking down the road, Jarmazing hopes to expand its operations further, such as selling more of its products in Canada. The company is also planning on developing and releasing a new product — a Mason jar dispenser for syrup, honey, and/or condiments to be used in cafes and bars — and has some other concepts on the backburner. “We definitely have some ideas. We try to keep the cards close to the chest while we do it,” Apasov said. “A lot of making new products is just testing things out and prototyping. It may take us up to two years to develop a new product fully between having the original idea and then working with our designers to make a 3D model and 3D print it to test it and see if it works, keep doing that … making changes and then ultimately launching the product.” -Andrew Sullivan

Ups Gov. Andrew Cuomo has resigned after a state investigation found he had sexually harrassed multiple women and “violated state law.” See ya. Downs Although active COVID-19 cases in Tompkins County have started to decrease in the past few days, active cases reached 78 as of August 9th.

HEARD&SEEN

Heard Fourth ward alderperson Steve Smith is resigning from Common Council, effective immediately, as his family moves to New York City so his wife can pursue her doctorate. Seen Treleaven Wines hosted the band Chasing Neon on Friday as part of its Garden Concert series. This Friday they will welcome Cruise Control to play live music, followed by more musicians throughout the rest of August and into September.

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QUESTION OF THE WEEK

What is the best ice cream flavor to treat yourself on a hot August day?

21.2% Vanilla 48.1% Mint Chip 13.5% Chocolate 5.8% Strawberry 11.5% Coffee

Next Week’s QuestioN: What is the best place to swim during the summer? (Ocean, lake, gorge, pool?)

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