Happy Friday (the 13th), here's you Trail Mix:
Upstate's starting to feel the pain of a month without any rain.
Heading to Lake Erie for relief from the heat? You might want to reconsider.
And what to do with Kodak's Eastman Business Park?
Water
Albany's city government is using 4,000 gallons of water a day to keep its parks green as "abnormally dry" conditions have reached upstate New York. The area hasn't seen major rainfall since June 12, but there could be storms on the way for overnight Saturday (Bryan Fitzgerald, Times-Union).
If you're thinking of visiting Woodlawn Beach State Park on the shores of Lake Erie, you might want to stick to sunbathing on the shore. The National Resources Defense Council has labeled its water one of the 19 worst beaches in the country because of continuously poor water quality (Barbara O'Brien, Buffalo News).
Economy
E-ZPass users are finding unexpected jumps in account withdrawals (Rick Karlin, Times-Union).
The Democrat and Chronicle takes a look at what might happen with Kodak's Eastman Business Park.
Challenges to the federal farm bill are holding up aid to at least 60 rural towns in upstate New York (Brian Tumulty, Gannett).
Odds and ends
Business Insider ranked Rensselaer Polytechnic 4th among U.S. engineering schools and Cornell 7th. (Eric Anderson, Times-Union).
September's flooding in the Southern Tier may have washed away PCB's from a shuttered coal-fired power plant in the Town of Union (Steve Reilly, Press-Sun Bulletin).
The U.S. ranks 9th for energy efficiency among the world's 12 largest economies (New York Times).
With the backdrop of a heated labor dispute, ConEd gave $250,000 to Governor Cuomo-aligned Committee to Save NY (JacobGershman, Wall Street Journal).
According to a Thursday report, as few as 20 Asian carp could lead to the invasive species spreading throughout the five Great Lakes (Jerry Zremski, Buffalo News).
