Cohoes fined for dumping violation
COHOES, N.Y. » After recently being fined $3,000 by the Department of Environmental Conservation, Mayor Shawn Morse has vowed that his administration will move swiftly when it comes to cleaning up an old illegal dump site on Division Street.
Morse said he made a commitment during his campaign over a year ago that he would try to stop people from dumping things illegally there such as grass bags and yard debris. The clean fill dump site is in a residential neighborhood just north of Vliet Street.
Even though Morse said the city put in new “No Dumping” signs--which also state that violators will be prosecuted and fined up to $250--along with other new signage and road block equipment, people still find a way around and continue to dump illegal items there.
Morse who is a lifelong city resident, says that he recalls people dumping items on the Division Street site since he was a little boy.
“Since I was a kid, I can’t even remember how long back, it was always a place where, it’s my understanding, that the city and others were allowed to drop clean fill and over the years it built up so that they would have a larger space for people to park up on that street, that had really no parking,” explained Morse.
Morse went on the say how he learned during his campaign time that he residents were concerned about other non clean fill items were being dumped there.
“Within my first three weeks in office, I put a chain across it and put signs all over and wouldn’t let anybody dump anything there, including clean fill,” said Morse. “But as luck would have it, people continue to dump gar-
bage. We would clean it up like how we do everywhere else in the city, but unfortunately somehow DEC stopped by and saw grass bags that were from places like Home Depot and there was other kind of debris, like construction debris. And people were throwing wood down there, so
they fined the city for that, even though we took all the precautions to stop people from dumping in there.”
Morse said after the city was able to knock down its fine from $5,000 to $3,000, that city officials and DEC officials talked about what his administration has done so far to attempt to stop people from dumping anything there and talked about what steps can be taken next by the city.
“They were happy that
when I became the mayor, I put the chain and the no dumping signs up there, but unfortunately the city is still responsible when people dump there, so we worked out a deal and they cut the fine down to $3,000 and we’re going to go up there and take out as much as we can from up there,” said Morse.
City officials are anticipating investing upwards of $25,000 in order to fully clean up the Division Street
dump site.
“We’re going to clean out as much as we can that is visible, we’re going to cover it with dirt, grass, and I’m going to put up a big fence with a security camera,” Morse said. “We’re going to do all the work ourselves and it could be up to $25,000 worth of labor, equipment, the fence and camera, but we’re going to try to make 95 percent of that up by using our own workers.”