One of the old factories along the Fishkill Creek

BEACON – The Fishkill Creek runs through Beacon and during the manufacturing age factories along the creek were powered by its running water.

Mayor Steven Gold would like to explore what it would take to develop hydro-power for new businesses in the future. Now is the time to explore that possibility, he said.

“In many of the locations where it’s opportune for hydro-power there isn’t any development right now and there is interest for development to take place,” he said. “So along the lines we are thinking about affordable housing and to provide sustainable building requirements and quality of life issues that we want to put in place before the next round of development takes place, one of the main components we want to look at would be is there an opportunity for the city to use hydro-electric power on the creek and if there is, what steps do we have to do to secure those properties.”

The city is in the early stages of investigating the possibility of hydro-power.