ROCHESTER, N.Y. – News10NBC got an exclusive look at the progress being made on the new High Falls State Park in Rochester.
The park will offer visitors a close-up view of the falls, with access to areas that have been off-limits for decades.
“I spent 45 years here I’ve lived here and never once got to be that close to the falls,” said Adam Bello, Monroe County Executive. “So I can tell you from first hand experience just the awe and wonder and beauty that we’re all going to get to experience when this park is complete.”
The first step in creating the park was cleaning up the land in the gorge, which was the site of a manufactured gas plant operated by RG&E over 120 years ago.
“As I mentioned, in the 1900’s there was a manufactured gas site which was common across upstate New York,” said Patricia Nilsen, President and CEO of NYSEG and RG&E. “That was how people powered their communities. So that site has been completely remediated.”
The cleanup was a joint effort between RG&E and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC).
“So we’ve got this first phase over here that’s been cleaned up. That’s going to be now transformed into the park,” said Amanda Lefton, Commissioner of the DEC.
High Falls will be the 5th state park located within a city in New York. It will extend from the falls to north of the Driving Park Bridge. Some renderings show plans for access to the water, though the area is currently off-limits to the public.
The park will open in stages over the next several years, starting with the area around the falls.
During the press conference announcing the cleanup, Mayor Malik Evans joked about avoiding a repeat of an incident from 2022 when he, along with News10NBC’s Berkeley Brean and Vinnie Esposito from the governor’s office, were attacked by geese while in the gorge.
“We didn’t repeat the last time, we didn’t get attacked by geese this time, so. We stayed away from their habitat,” said Mayor Evans.
When asked about plans for the geese in the future park, Esposito said, “One of the main themes of the park is to restore the ecology of what’s in the gorge below include the vegetation and the plants and animals that go along with that. So the geese will be a part of the future of the park as will the deer that are down there as will the many species of birds that haven’t gone here for a while because we’re going to be restoring that.”
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RG&E, DEC complete cleanup of former manufactured gas plant site for new High Falls State Park WHEC.com.
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