Artist's rendering of a planned floating luxury casino to be located on the Ashokan Reservoir. Photo credit.
OLIVE, NY – The Tuscarora tribe has entered into a secret deal with Gov. Andrew Cuomo and New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg to build a floating luxury casino on the Ashokan Reservoir.
The Tuscarora, now based in Lewiston, New York, historically lay claim to land in Brown's Station, now submerged beneath the Ashokan reservoir.
Elaborate precautions will be taken to ensure that the casino, tentatively dubbed “Drowning Waters,” will not impact water quality.
Before being placed by helicopter into the reservoir, each piece of the casino's 50,000 square-foot floating foundation will be sprayed with a high-tech carbon nanofiber coating to prevent any particles from entering the water supply. The toilets in the building will feed into a $19 million Water Recycling Unit, the same technology used on the International Space Station.
Tribal leaders have reportedly consulted with Jeanneau Advanced Technologies, a British firm that designed some of the props in Kevin Costner's 1995 movie “Waterworld,” to design the floating structure.
Access to the casino will be tightly regulated to keep the Ashokan's water pristine, said DEP deputy commissioner Paul Rush, who issued a hasty press release about the project after rumors about it began swirling on Twitter.
“This is a win-win for New York City and its upstate watershed communities,” said Rush. “We are committed to encouraging tourism and economic activity without compromising the quality of the drinking water we provide to nine million New Yorkers. Mayor Bloomberg is committed to working with our upstate partners to create recreational and economic opportunities that are compatible with maintaining high water quality.”
An electrically-powered floatplane will make regular scheduled departures from the roof of the Trump Tower in Manhattan. The plane will be steam-sterilized before every departure, to ensure that no contaminants or invasive organisms enter the water supply.
A steep fee will be charged for passengers on the plane – $5,000 a head, most of which will go to fund the DEP's land acquisition program for buying and conserving land in the area of its upstate watershed.
A source close to the project, which has so far been surrounded by intense secrecy, told the Watershed Post that a party celebrating the deal was held last week at the Rainbow Room at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, with high-rolling Manhattan elites and city, state, and federal regulators in attendance.
“It was nuts,” the source said. “They had an ice luge shaped like Panther Mountain. They had Wyclef rapping to Ashokan Farewell. The DEP's lawyer was making out with an Olsen twin. It's a done deal, man.”
In case anybody was taken in by this: April Fools, folks. Even in New York State, some things are too preposterous to be true. --Ed.
