By HEATHER NELLIS

Recorder News Staff

CHARLESTON -- Marty Navojosky purchased farmland along the Schoharie Creek a year-and-a-half ago, his new 70-acre field enveloped by a private 25-acre forest.

When the creek became engorged and flooded his land during back-to-back tropical storms five months ago, those trees acted as a sieve to filter the 30,000 cubic acres of rocks that came to rest on the farmland, and the remains of destroyed downstream homes and other debris that coursed through the water are still stuck in the limbs of the surviving trees that managed to withstand the flood.

"Everything from baby dolls to roofs, windows and doors, propane and oil tanks, furniture. Everything from a house, everything there possibly could be," said Navojosky, describing the waste he's become responsible to remove from his land.

But the $34,000 he received from the Department of Agriculture's Natural Resources Conservation Service wasn't enough to remove the plowed rocks from the land, and two masses sit on the ravaged hay field, with the debris in the trees still untouched.

The debris that plagues the banks of the Schoharie Creek is one that prompted a day of guided observation led by Montgomery County Emergency Management Director Dwight Schwabrow, who showed a dozen areas of concern Thursday to a debris task force comprised of federal and state emergency management officials in hopes of securing funding to clean it up.

But criteria guidelines the state and federal agencies are required to follow are apparently not crafted for the problem Montgomery County faces, Schwabrow said, perhaps symptomatic of the effects created by a flood of historic proportions.

"FEMA's definitions and parameters don't fit the problem in our county, however, the potential for the problem still exists," Schwabrow said.

The criteria, which Schwabrow identified as "faulty," stipulates the debris must be in the creek bed and within so many feet of structures or residences, whereas the bulk of the county's debris is on the creek's banks, and not close enough to the nearby residences.

"The bottom line of the conversation, by their standards, was there is no imminent danger to either homes or the structures along the creek," Schwabrow said. "I disagree."

Schwabrow said because the debris is adjacent to the rushing waters, an incident of flooding like last summer's could again force the creek from its usual boundaries and take the debris with it.

And to couple that issue the climate's typical freezing temperatures and the creek's potential to create ice jams, it creates a recipe for disaster, Schwabrow said.

"The criteria doesn't take our climate into consideration. The potential for ice along the creek, any year except this year, is pretty great. I admit this year is an unusual year and we've had minimal amounts of ice along the creek, but that's not to say later this year the ice won't form, jam up, and get pushed downstream, taking the debris along with it."

Schwabrow said he fears the creek will move further out of its natural bounds in the same manner the Mohawk River did when it created a new channel outside of the Lock 11 dam at Cranesville. The dam became lodged with debris, so "the water found the path of least resistance and moved around the locks."

"Our fear is that will happen again, and in the populated areas like Fort Hunter, Fort Johnson and Amsterdam," he said.

Schwabrow said it was further determined by the debris task force that private property laden with debris is not eligible for funding, an issue Navojosky has been living with for months.

Navojosky said he had a binding agreement for the property two years ago, and closed the sale a year-and-a-half ago. He said he refinanced his home to purchase the land in Charleston with the intent to build a residence at the site, and he had a lease agreement to have the field used to raise beef cattle.

It wasn't being utilized for crops during the storm; rather, he was cutting hay, a factor he said cut his original $69,000 grant award from NRCS in half.

"I went to the town and county first, and then went through calling every agency and going through all types of grants they have. I've gone round, and round, and round in circles and still, the debris sits there. It's not that people aren't trying to help -- but I keep hearing words like 'gray area,' and 'policy,' and 'we don't have the money for that,' or 'we're waiting for the money.'"

The $34,000 he received from NRCS was attached to strings -- he could only clear the fields, Navojosky said.

"I was told I couldn't do stream-bank stabilization or debris removal," he said.

Schwabrow said that funding "didn't put a dent in the project," and Navojosky put up significantly more money than the grant awarded.

Navojosky said he's applied for grants, "but all these things keep coming up about me paying a 25 percent match. I can't pay 25 percent of hundreds of thousands of dollars. I've gotten sick a few nights over it. I just don't want to be held liable for it in the future. I can't pay to remove it. I could get loans, but I'm not going to take out loans to clean up garbage."

Funding is also an issue for the county, Schwabrow said, as it already paid out more than $600,000 to take care of the debris issue in Charleston's hamlet of Burtonsville.

"We can't afford to pay for a large public works program, with what we've already expended in hopes we will be reimbursed by FEMA," Schwabrow said.

County Senior Planner Doug Greene said he hopes to submit an application to the state Department of Environmental Conservation's Hurricane Irene/Tropical Storm Lee Flood Mitigation Grant Program, which will award a range of $300,000 to $500,000 for eligible projects in the counties where a federal disaster was declared.

Removal of flood debris is considered an eligible project, and though Schwabrow said he's grateful for Greene's work, he doesn't believe the $500,000 maximum award will be enough to rectify the problem.

Schwabrow also didn't appear confident a grant would be immediately awarded, rather expecting it would be given "years from now," and the problem needs immediate attention.

Like Navojosky, Schwabrow said he's not faulting the people involved, but believes the criteria for releasing funds needs to be reformed.

"The event we had last summer was a different kind of flooding from the kind we have in our memory. Everyone can argue it was a single historical event, or just a set of circumstances with unbelievable amounts of water, but the issue is it happened -- and if it happens once, it can happen again," Schwabrow said.

In the meantime, Schwabrow expects to approach the county Board of Supervisors Public Safety Committee at its meeting Feb. 14 to ask for an expansion of his authority.

He said he expects to put forth a resolution for authority to "intercede on behalf of the county and private landowners along the creek to seek remedy of the problem, which means I have to seek relief from other sources, whatever they may be."

U.S. Congressman Paul Tonko, D-Amsterdam, said while he's been able to secure disaster funding for the state, his role isn't to implement the expenditures.

"We fought for Emergency Water Protection Program, and the Emergency Conservation Program, which enabled us to clean up debris, remove debris, bring soils back to tillable, and redevelop our watershed," he said. "If the programs are not reaching people, we want to know why, and we want to hear from people so we can relay that to the source, which can fix the wrong, or at least explain the rules and what makes them exempt. Then we can determine our next steps, and perhaps move to make specific programmatic requirements."