�One of the most picturesque places in the State is owned by Le Grand W. Botsford, at Sam�s Point, in the wilds of the Shawangunk Mountains,� began a Wednesday, June 10, 1894 New York Times article entitled, �Flocking To The Catskills: In Spite of the Weather City People Have Begun Their Vacations�. Botsford, who lived from 1860-1937, was a noted American artist of the Hudson River School. He built a hotel at Sam�s Point in 1902.

Cragsmoor resident and archaeologist Wendy Harris has been going to Lake Maratanza at the Sam�s Point Preserve for more than ten years in search of Botsford�s old hotel. The hotel�s foundations have been submerged in the lake for decades.

�I wade around in the water for the remains of the hotel that begin to emerge whenever the water is low,� says Harris, who serves as a local historian with the Nature Conservancy.

This summer, Harris finally found the foundation of the hotel.

�I�d never been able to see the foundation before. The water has never been so low,� says Harris.

�It is not a spring fed lake. It is completely dependent on rainfall,� says Harris, who is concerned that a trend has developed that may someday leave villages on both sides of �the Gunks� dry.

Other Cragsmoor residents who, according to Dianne Wiebe, �have been investigating the availability of water on the mountain and are concerned that a proposed retreat center will put a strain on the aquifer,� have echoed concerns about a drought.

Wiebe, a Cragmoor resident, wrote an article for the October 4 edition of the Daily Freeman, which described the 170-acre watershed of Lake Maratanza as �down about 10 feet,� according to Michael Avery, the Ellenville Water Department foreman.

Paul Huth, director of research at the Mohonk Preserve, told Wiebe, by comparison, that Mohonk Lake is down about 3 feet. Huth also said he would not call the situation a �drought.�

But the real cause of concern may lie in the fact that Lake Maratanza is owned by Ellenville and is used as a backup water supply for the village.

Ellenville Manager Elliott Auerbach attributes the low water levels at Maratanza to a variety of factors, not just village water usage.

�That has always been our secondary and in some cases our first source of water. In the summer, during high water usage, we bring the water down from the mountain and filter it through our filtration plant on the top of Mountain Avenue where it meets Route 52 and then send the water off into our system.�

The summer�s heat and the draw of additional water from leaks were compounded by the lack of rainfall this year.

�There were a series of dramatic leaks throughout the village that were discovered by bringing in an independent company that specializes in finding leaks, called New York Leak Detectors. They came in the middle of the night when the water usage is generally low,� added Auerbach

With the use of sounding devices and other measuring tools, New York Leak Detectors located, �three or four major leaks, at a loss to our system of hundreds of thousands of gallons of water,� says Auerbach.

But Avery told Dianne Wiebe that no more water had been drawn from the lake this year than in the past three years. Wiebe thinks this is a �discrepancy� that should be further investigated. Avery could not be reached for further comment.

A drought emergency has not been called because Ellenville gets its water from many sources, collected in three large water tanks located within the community, according to Auerbach.

But Wiebe says, �The question that needs to be answered is the one that Heidi Wagner, who manages Sam�s Point for The Nature Conservancy, asked in my article, �What�s happening?� and how will it affect us in the future?��

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