Noble (podium): “… working with our partners …”
KINGSTON – State environmental officials Thursday announced the completion of a brownfield cleanup at a Kingston industrial site, located at a blighted area along the Rondout Creek waterfront. The work took just over a year and over 30,000 man-hours to finish.
Formerly a manufactured gas production facility, the property, located on Front Street behind the old Millen’s scrapyard, currently serves as a gas regulator facility for the utility.
Christopher Capone, CFO of Central Hudson, which owns the site, said
the project was very important, both to his company, and also the surrounding
community.
“It’s something we are very proud of,” Capone said, adding that the utility takes safety very seriously. There were no reported injuries handling the material.
Mayor Steven Noble said the site has a long and hidden legacy. “Most people didn’t know that this site existed, but Central Hudson did, and they didn’t forget about it,” Noble noted. The mayor observed that Central Hudson went above and beyond what was required – going so far as to remove an abandoned ship from the shore.
Noble said he looks forward to future public use of the open space, to benefit the waterfront district, and continue economic development opportunities being that it is in a prime location.
“You can see the beautiful lighthouse and the Hudson River and the Rondout Creek,” the mayor said. “I am looking forward to working with our partners at Central Hudson to see how we can best work together to utilize this site in the future and to see what could really be in store, just for the kayakers, and the folks that do fishing and the folks who come to look at birds. The fact that this site no longer has petroleum contamination on it and old balls of tar, it’s really good for the environment and good for the Hudson River and it’s good for the water quality on the Rondout Creek.”
Central Hudson reached out to remedial engineer O’Brien & Gere
and contractor Land Remediation, Inc. , onse specially suited in tackling
the daunting cleanup. “It’s much more effective, a critical
step to make sure it was a successful project,” Capone said.
“It was rather extraordinary, the amount of work that was going on at any given time; there were things going on at virtually all hours of the day, a level of accomplishment we are very thankful for, and appreciate,” Capone said.
DEC Regional Director Kelly Turturro said that over 300 brownfield sites have been remediated since the state brownfield program was launched. “This is just an example in the City of Kingston to clean up those sites throughout New York,” she said.
