NEWBURGH – Amidst SUNY Orange students celebrating Earth Day at the Newburgh campus, on Wednesday area leaders convened to discuss ways to design and install green infrastructure to advance community resilience, including watershed restoration.
Paul Beyer, the state director of smart growth, told members of the Hudson
Valley Regional Council the administration supports the concept.
“Governor Cuomo is a big proponent collaborative interdisciplinary governance and when we address resiliency, we can’t address it in a silo,” Beyer said. “We have to consider the economic, the fiscal, the environmental and the social aspects of resiliency all at once. That’s a challenge, but that’s the way business is now being done in Albany.”
The conference examined ways to foster smart growth and community hazard resiliency, delving into topics like coastal planning for climate change in Kingston and efforts to green Newburgh, such as through enhanced naturalistic designs to protect Lake Washington. The city’s main reservoir is situated in Quassaick Creek Watershed and is located primarily in the Town of New Windsor adjacent to State Route 300 and the town’s Planned Industrial Zone.
Also discussed was a study of the potential to use green infrastructure to cost-effectively correct combined sewer overflows (CSOs).
In 2013, the state Department of Environmental Conservation awarded Newburgh $47,000 to explore potential to use green methods to improve CSOs in the city that discharged into the Hudson River.
Asked to identify how smart growth and resiliency planning tie into community economic development, Newburgh Mayor Kennedy noted that it is necessary to think through approaches, care for resources and plan for future generations.
Mayor Kennedy addresses the conference
The Hudson Valley Regional Council is preparing a new Comprehensive Economic Development Strategy for the region and is the steward of the 2013 Mid-Hudson Region Sustainability Plan. The council serves governments in Dutchess, Orange, Putnam, Rockland, Sullivan, Ulster and Westchester counties, providing regional perspective, and supplying planning, education& outreach, and advocacy for communities it serves.
