Press Release for immediate release June 8, 2026
Town of Colchester
After business hours on Thursday, June 4, 2026, the Town Supervisor was made aware of additional hazardous and dangerous debris in the East Branch of the Delaware River below the Covered Bridge in Downsville, N.Y. The conditions were deemed to be a serious threat to the health and safety of anyone using the river, either as a boater, swimmer, or fisherman.
Additional photo documentation was secured and on Friday morning the NYS DEC Permit Office in Stamford NY & Hazard Mitigation Office in Albany, NY were notified and information shared. The Town received correspondence from NYS DEC allowing the removal of metal and log debris, to be done from the bank of the river, and with other conditions.
On Monday morning, June 8, 2026, with permission from local landowners to utilize their property, the Town of Colchester removed, from a specific area, metal and log debris which constituted the threat to human safety. Per the letter of authorization, no machinery entered the streambed of the river. All work was performed from on top of the riverbank and extreme care was used not to cause turbidity or do damage to any part of the river system corridor. Now that the metal and wood debris is on land, it is being discarded properly.
Any questions or concerns should be directed to the Town of Colchester Supervisor's Office at 607-363-7906.

Town of Colchester will be holding a Pepacton Park Paddle Trail Development Meeting on June 11, 2026 10 am at the Town Hall 72 Tannery Road, Downsville, NY 13755

The Town of Colchester is seeking individuals to serve as Water Advisors for the Downsville Water District. Two or three advisors are being sought for each district. The Water Advisors will work with and assist the town board's Water District Committee members. Water Advisors shall be unpaid volunteers who are customers of each respective water district and will serve at the discretion of the Town Board.

Any individual interested in volunteering to serve as a Water Advisor should contact the Town Clerk with any questions and submit a written Letter of Interest to the Town Clerk.

DOWNSVILLE - In a town stitched together by 18th- and 19th-century burying grounds, Colchester’s cemeteries are both archive and altar - repositories of family lore, veterans’ service and settlement-era history. But their paper maps and weather-beaten stones are showing their age.
“It really needs an update,” said Colchester Historian Kay Parisi Hampel, describing a long-ago mapping effort, “and would be helpful for us, because a lot of the older cemeteries the stones have are disintegrating and not readable. It’d be nice to have a map of where the graves were.”
Parisi Hampel, who has spent the past year compiling and verifying burial data, says the town’s burial landscape is broader than many realize. “There’s at least 12, and I think maybe a couple of other small ones that they [town crews] take care of - 14 sounds right.” Her running inventory ranges from the Old Covered Bridge Cemetery - dated 1736 - to family plots like Phelps Cemetery (1788) above Gregorytown, to Wilson Hollow (first burial 1841), Telford Hollow (nine graves, one Civil War veteran), Long Flats Cemetery on state Route 30 (where two Revolutionary War veterans - Abraham Sprague and Elijah Thomas) are buried) and community grounds at Horton, Cooks Falls, Baxter Mountain and Gregorytown (laid out 1855).
That historical rescue is now visible at the Old Covered Bridge Cemetery, where three Revolutionary War veterans’ stones - William Holliday, William Horton and Nathan Elwood - were straightened and reset, and a fourth, Enoch Knapp, received a new brownstone marker after his original one disintegrated. The work, by stone carver Michael A. Angelicola of Bristol, Conn., was funded by a Delaware County Historical Association grant; veteran markers and flags will follow. Hampel said Angelicola also made repairs at cemeteries in Pepacton, Delhi, Bovina and Partridge Island under the same grant initiative.
Even as restorations advance, officials are confronting a more prosaic problem: the reliability of the maps that direct crews to open graves. At an Oct. 1 town council meeting, a resident asked whether Colchester had charts comparable to those used in nearby Beaver Kill Cemetery. The answer: yes - and no.
“We have multiple,” Supervisor Art Merrill said of cemetery maps, “and they need to be verified for what’s already been done.” He added, “They aren’t all complete, and they aren’t all accurate. Because sometimes… when the cemetery crew was up to do a burial, they find something there already. So we’re trying to get the maps more accurate. So that doesn’t happen.”
Inconsistencies, Merrill said, often trace back to years of handoffs and hand-drawn grids: “Sometimes I think they misread east from west or right from left… Those kinds of things. We’re trying to verify all that for the future.”
Parisi Hampel has a historian’s diagnosis for how things went sideways. “Before it became more consolidated and having a centralized town halls,” she said, “records were kept in people’s houses… so some of the records were lost as a person died… and they were cleaned out and thrown away.” She called the state’s push to digitize local records “helpful for the future, so that these mistakes don’t happen.”
Parisi Hampbel is pairing research with hands-on teaching. On Oct. 18–19, Colchester Historical Society will host a stone-wall building workshop at the Old Covered Bridge Cemetery, off Bridge Street, led by mason Pat Ryan. “We’re trying to involve students from the school,” Hampel said. Participants will learn the history and craft of dry stone and help restore about 30 feet of a collapsing wall near the flagpole. “We can use a few more people,” she added; Colchester residents are not charged a fee, and those from outside town are asked for a free-will donation. Volunteers should bring work boots, gloves, safety glasses—and, if they have them, a stone hammer or small level. To register call Parisi Hampel at 607-363-7303.
Parisi Hampel is also working with students on careful, approved cleaning methods for historic stones and on why it matters.
“Sometimes gravestones are the only record that the person existed,” she said. The documentation aids families, genealogists and applicants to lineage societies. It also revives public memory. “Paige Cemetery was considered a garden cemetery when it was laid out,” she noted - meant for walking, contemplation and paying respects.
Her hope is simple and durable: “I hope that we would continue to keep good care of our cemeteries… out of respect for our past generations,” she said. “Younger generations [should] learn of the importance and the value of having cemeteries that are well kept, and that memories can be reserved and history can be preserved.”
The Reporter, Lillian Browne

The Colchester Town Board meets on the 1st and 3rd Wednesday of each month at 5:00 PM.

The next scheduled meeting will be June 17, 2026. This meeting will be held at the Town Hall.