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Golfer of the Year

Nishant Lahiri

Year: Senior.

Parents: Santona Pal and Joydeep Lahiri.

Key accomplishments: Shot a one-over-par 72 at Soaring Eagles during sectionals.

Future plans: Attend MIT to study chemical engineering and play club golf.

Jacob Banks

Year: Senior.

Parents: Jason and Danielle Banks.

Key accomplishments: Second straight year making state tournament.

Future plans: Attend SUNY Oswego to continue golf career.

Dante Bertoni

Year: Junior.

Parents: Brian and Nicole Bertoni.

Key accomplishments: U-E won the Dinunzio, STAC and Section 4 Championships.

Future plans: Continue education and play golf at high level. Still undecided.

Blaise Brixner

Year: Freshman.

Parents: Andrew and Kimberly Brixner.

Key accomplishments: Shooting 79-76 in Section 4 Qualifier.

Future plans: Go to college and play golf.

Jack Creath

Year: Senior.

Parents: Sarah and Tom Creath.

Key accomplishments: Scoring average.

Future plans: University of Tennessee.

Brady Magliocca

Year: Junior.

Parents: Karie and Joe Magliocca.

Key accomplishments: Having 17 one-putts in total over two days at state qualifier.

Future plans: Attend a college in the south, focusing on golf course/PGA management.

Bennett Snyder

Year: Sophomore.

Parents: Patrick and Stacey Snyder.

Key accomplishments: Making it to states.

Future plans: Undecided

Coach of the Year

Chris Clark

Profession: Eighth-grade special ed teacher at C-PP.

Varsity coaching experience: Watkins Glen, three years girls varsity golf coach; Corning, five years varsity boys coach, two years varsity girls coach.

This article originally appeared on Elmira Star-Gazette: Elmira-Corning Elite 7 Golf Team for 2023

Special to the Elmira Star-Gazette

Elmirans used to eat more elegantly than today.

J.D. Iles asked me last month what kinds of foods Samuel Clemens (our Mark Twain) used to eat. That got me thinking. When Sam was in Elmira, he stayed with either his in-laws on North Main Street or at his sister-in-law Susan Crane’s house (Quarry Farm).

So, what was served? And when he went downtown to the two big restaurants, what did he order?

As far as eating at Quarry Farm, Susan Crane much preferred Miss Maria Parloa’s New Cook Book, printed in 1880. Apparently, Miss Parloa was much like today’s Chef Gordon Ramsay — a celebrity chef. Her books were in everyone’s home. Hotel restaurants modeled their menus after her recipes as well.

On July 18, 1891, Maxwell Haight, owner of the Rathbun House, Elmira’s premier hotel, served a banquet to the Elmira Board of Trade in his dining room. On the buffet table were Little Neck Clams, Imperial sherry, Green Turtle Soup, Boiled Halibut with Caper Sauce, Olives, Potatoes in Cream, Broiled Spring Chicken, French Fried Potatoes, French Peas, St. Estephe, Filet of Beef with Mushroom Sauce, Butter Beans, Asparagus, Lobster Salad, Potato Salad, wafer crackers, Roman punch, Squab on toast, Saratoga Potatoes, Neapolitan ice cream, Mumm’s, Roquefort cheese, toasted crackers, Coffee and Cigars.

Now, that is a buffet.

I know French fries. I had to google St. Estephe — it is a wine from the Bordeaux region. Roman punch, a famous cocktail of the 1800s, is a combination of citrus juice, champagne and rum, sugar and frothy meringue on top. Yes, this was in downtown Elmira. Saratoga potatoes are now known as potato chips.

On April 26, 1892, Fannie Strauss married Maurice Garson at the High Street Temple. After the ceremony, the 100 guests were driven in carriages to the Rathbun Hotel. Their dinner included Imperial Sherry, Blue Points on Shell, Purée a la Reine, Kennebeck Salmon with Hollandaise, Boiled New Potatoes, Queen Olives, Sweet Bread Patties Toulouse, Tenderloin of Beef with Mushrooms, Kempner Berg, Lobster Salad, Broiled Spring Chicken, Benedictine, French Peas, Stuffed Philadelphia Squab, French Fried Potatoes, Moët and Chandon, Strawberries with cream, Café Noir and assorted cakes.

On May 17, 1897 at the Langwell Hotel on State Street, a group of local physicians held their annual Medical Society meet to hear Dr. C.A. Murray’s paper “Blood Letting,” followed by a sumptuous banquet of Terrapin Soup, Boiled Chicken, Halibut with Shrimp Sauce, Parisienne Potatoes, Great Western (wine), Roasted Canvas-Back Ducks, New Browned Potatoes, Punch a la Reine, Broiled Lamb Chops, New Peas, Fresh Lobster Salad with Mayonnaise Dressing, Strawberry Shortcake with whipped cream, Walnut Layer Cake and Black coffee.

I’m guessing that Parisienne potatoes are French fries.

On the evening of June 22, 1899, the Elmira Free Academy graduating class of 1899 held their banquet at the Langwell Hotel. On their menu was Little Neck Clams, New Lettuce, Sliced Potatoes, Consommé Royale, Baked Bluefish, Robert Sauce, “Roast Spring Lamb ’99 with Green Mint Sauce,” New String Beans, New Bermuda Potatoes with Cream Sauce, Lemon Water Ice, Soft Shell Crabs on Toast, Asparagus, Braised Sweetbreads with New Peas, Fresh Lobster Salad with Mayonnaise, Neapolitan Ice cream, American Cheese and Café Noir. Yes, high-schoolers were served this menu.

Elmira’s City Club also served trés élegant food.

On the evening of July 13, 1900, a reception for Spencer Meade, superintendent of the Northern Central Railroad, who was leaving Elmira to take a job in Philadelphia taking charge of the Pennsylvania Railroad. They gave Spencer a good sendoff with 75 in attendance. Manager Gus Kuhn “was in charge of the spread and the service and cooking were perfect.”

It was a delicious dinner, and Kuhn received many compliments.

His menu included Champagne Punch, Anchovies on Toast, Mumm’s Extra Dry, Consommé City Club, Salted Pecans, Salted Almonds, Kennebeck Salmon with Sauce Hollandaise, Cucumbers with French Dressing, Sweet Bread Croquettes, Tomato Salad with Mayonnaise, Roquefort and Brie cheese and Coffee.

“The reception lasted until late in the evening. Friendships were renewed, toasts were drank, and it was an evening of rare enjoyment.”

Now the Elmira Country Club dinner menu was harder to find. In fact, I didn’t.

The Star-Gazette reported that on June 3, 1906, an “elaborate dinner was served after the (golf) match. Levi Holmes, the new club steward from New York City, had charge of the culinary arrangements and a most elaborate repast was provided. A number of colored waiters had been engaged from the city to serve but owning to difficulties and the steward and the waiters, they went on strike and prompt service was handicapped in consequence.”

Elmirans still enjoy buffet or banquet dinners. Many restaurants and hotels serve them on special occasions.

Diane Janowski is the Elmira city historian. Her column appears monthly.

More Elmira History:When it comes to pizza, it was love at first slice

More Elmira History:In 1919, an alligator got loose in the city. Or was it a crocodile?

Stopping food waste before it happens is the subject of a brand new guide being launched across North America on Thursday by the Commission for Environmental Co-operation.

The commission tapped experts from across Canada, the United States and Mexico, including the Elmira-based Enviro-Stewards, who recently helped an Ottawa brewery reclaim $700,000 worth of beer that they were pouring down the drain.

Now, that brewery has become an international case study on practical examples of how to prevent food waste.

On a tour of Beau's Brewery near Ottawa, Enviro-Stewards president Bruce Taylor heard the brewers talk about how they divert spent grains from the brewing process to cattle feed.

But there was no mention of how much beer from the brewery was going down the drain. Taylor did the math and found the brewery was losing 10 per cent of its product to the sewer.

It was a number that surprised Beau's co-founder and CEO Steve Beauchesne.

"Yeah, it's kind of scary to think of how much beer we were putting down the drain, and when we saw the results of the study, it was a little bit jaw dropping," he said.

Enviro-Stewards, an environmental and economic sustainability company, did a food loss assessment, and they found three ways to increase the yield of Beau's beer. That included improving the way the company transfers beer from tanks to packaging. Right now, a lot of beer gets left behind with the yeast used to make the beer, but a new process allows more of the beer to make it into bottles or kegs.

Beauchesne says they also improved the kegging process to prevent the loss of beer. Different procedures and equipment makes sure "the beer that goes into the keg stays in the keg," he said.

Hear the interview with Bruce Taylor:

More profit and reducing GHG emissions

Taylor said they were able to save the brewery about 395,000 litres, so the brewery now sees about three per cent of its beer go down the drain.

That's huge for a craft brewery. When they complete food loss assessments, Taylor says on average, they're able to find about $330,000 in savings for factories or facilities.

"Theirs is double that, so we're finding $720,000 per year of savings, which is essentially about to double their profit for that brewery because for the first 93%, that's where all your costs are for electricity, labour, grains. So the last seven per cent, without anymore ingredients, or energy or water or labour, that's just pure profit," Taylor said.

"It's going to have a very beneficial impact on this employee-owned brewery."

Beauchesne agrees it will be great financially, but being a "purpose-driven company," he's also excited about the greenhouse gas reductions it will mean.

"By reclaiming that beer, we're actually going to be able to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions by about 590 tonnes per year so all things put together, it's going to save us piles of money and it's going to be good for the environment," he said.

"We put so much effort into making great beer, that it's an awful thought to think that so much of it's currently going down the drain so the fact that more beer's going to get into people's mouths to me is a really wonderful outcome."

Practical guide to preventing food waste launched

That example of stopping food waste before it happens is being highlighted in a North American-wide practical guide for preventing food waste.

The guide launches Thursday in Mexico City and Taylor says the example of Beau's Brewery will be a case study within the guide to give a practical example of how to prevent food waste.

And that's important, he says, because companies are often focused on the wrong end of the problem.

"Almost all the effort is presently spent on how do you manage food waste — essentially how do you destroy food with a wastewater treatment plant, a bio-gas generator, composting," he said.

"There's almost no effort on how to avoid losing the food in the first place, which is actually the only place where you get that benefit back of the economics, food available for somebody, the greenhouse gas."

'We're missing some very small things that would help us'

As part of a program with CCFI and Provision Coalition, which is funded by the Walmart Foundation, they're conducting 50 food-loss prevention assessments across the country. Taylor has worked with companies including Campbell's, Maple Leaf Foods, and Byblos Bakery in Calgary.

It also includes more breweries, like Sleemans and Wellington Brewery in Guelph.

Marvin Dyck, the brewmaster at Wellington Brewery, said the assessment is still in the early stages, but already Enviro-Stewards has noted areas where they could save beer.

Right now, Dyck estimates his brewery loses about seven per cent from a tank of beer.

"It's not like we don't have all of the equipment, we're missing some very small things that would help us really improve that number and then end up retrieving that product. Being able to sell it, really is, at the end of the day, what we're hoping for," he said.

The brewery recently invested in expanding its brewhouse, and got state-of-the-art equipment for brewing and packaging, but Dyck says he knew there were still areas they could improve when it comes to their waste.

The advantage of working with Enviro-Stewards, Dyck said, is they work out the numbers and figure out what financial losses the company is seeing because of the food loss and then identifies areas to stop the food waste from happening.

"[Bruce] understands the business side, but he's also very environmental, too. There's an advantage to these things from both sides," he said. "It's not like you have to invest a whole lot just to be a better environmental steward, you can actually save money, so I think it's kind of cool."

(Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court on Wednesday ruled that an environmental group can press ahead with claims that a toxic chemical in a central California city's drinking-water system qualifies as "solid waste" under the federal Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA).

Overturning a lower court ruling, a split panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals found that the city of Vacaville can potentially be held liable under the RCRA for transporting in its water pipes the carcinogen hexavalent chromium, which an environmental group claims is the result of commercial pollution at a site where the city draws its water.

Curtis Paxton, Vacaville's director of utilities, said Wednesday that its water "meets all requirements of the state and federal Safe Drinking Water Acts, including those related to chromium." The city is represented by Meyers Nave.

Jack Silver, a lawyer for plaintiff California River Watch, called the litigation a waste of taxpayer money.

Hexavalent chromium was widely used from the early 1970s to the early 1980s to treat wood at now-shuttered wood-preservation facilities in nearby Elmira, the ruling says.

The location, dubbed the Wickes site, was identified in 1980 as a federal hazardous waste site. There, groundwater was found to have been contaminated with high levels of hexavalent chromium, the ruling says. River Watch says the substance polluted the groundwater by trickling into the ground.

River Watch sued Vacaville in Sacramento federal court in 2017. Its complaint says hexavalent chromium has migrated through groundwater to Vacaville's wells and surface water sources. The non-profit urged the court to order the city to filter out excess hexavalent chromium in the water it brings to the homes of Vacaville residents. It sued under the RCRA.

Vacaville said the hexavalent chromium was naturally occurring and therefore did not fall under the RCRA.

Chief U.S. District Judge Kimberly Mueller in Sacramento federal district court ruled last year that the claims failed because the chemical's presence in the city's potable water could not qualify as the type of "solid waste" the RCRA regulates.

Writing for the majority 9th Circuit panel, U.S. Circuit Court Judge Patrick Bumatay vacated her summary judgment.

Vacaville was potentially transporting a "solid waste" under the terms of the RCRA, the judge wrote, because solid waste under the statute encompasses "discarded material" such as the alleged discharges of hexavalent chromium from dripping wood at the wood-treatment facilities.

And Vacaville's pumping of the water through its water pipes may amount to "transporting" a dangerous waste – another requirement to establish potential RCRA liability, Bumatay wrote.

"Contrary to the district court's order, nothing in RCRA's text suggests that the 'transporter' of the solid waste must also play some role in 'discarding' the waste," the judge wrote.

"Thus, that the City may be innocent of the activity at the Wickes site does not preclude it from RCRA liability as a transporter," he added.

Bumatay was joined by U.S. District Judge Douglas Rayes, who sat by designation.

Senior U.S. Circuit Judge A. Wallace Tashima dissented, holding that under 9th Circuit precedent, Vacaville could not be held liable because it was not involved in the waste disposal process.

The case is California River Watch v. City of Vacaville, 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, No. 20-16605.

For California River Watch: Jack Silver

For City of Vacaville: Gregory Newmark and Shiraz Tangri of Meyers Nave

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Small green signs are popping up in Elmira grocery stores, letting shoppers know what items are currently needed by the local food bank.

"It's a reminder," said Lisa Martin, food bank co-ordinator with Woolwich Community Services. "When I'm picking up something, and it's something I'm purchasing for my family, and I see that the food bank can use it as well, it's easy to pick up, purchase and drop off."

The food bank started putting up green "Needed Item" signs on grocery shelves the last week in June, starting with the Food Basics on Arthur Street.

The food bank already publishes lists of items they need donated, and those are sometimes published in local church bulletins, but Martin said the new initiative is a way to remind people about what they can do to help the moment they take food off the shelf at the store.

Every week, Martin checks the store's flyer for items that they like to have on hand in the food bank. If an item is on sale, she'll go to the grocery store and put a green sign by that item.

If interested, needed items can then be purchased by a shopper and dropped in the donation bin at the front of the store.

When they first pitched the idea, Martin said the store's management was "totally on board right away."

"We're always looking for ways to support our local food bank," said Travis Restoule, who manages the Food Basics in Elmira.

In the past, he said the store has run funding drives and has collected food bags, but this year they wanted to do something different.

And even though the signs have only been up for a little more than a week, Restoule is ready to call it a success.

"I have noticed since the labels were put up that products that the labels are attached to have been selling a lot better than the norm. So, the labels are definitely having an impact."

Only a week after she started putting up signs at Food Basics, Martin said the program is already expanding to the Foodland location down the street.

While she's not actively looking for other grocery stores, she said that "if people want to join in, we would be glad to start something."