EPA awards $2.8M in brownfields grants to region | The Daily Gazette
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GLOVERSVILLE & MONTGOMERY COUNTY – The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday announced a $300,000 Brownfields Program assessment grant for properties in Fulton County and an $800,000 multipurpose grant for the Greater Mohawk Valley Land Bank.
The grants are part of $66.5 million worth of EPA grants awarded to 151 communities nationwide for the purpose of assessing and cleaning up contaminated properties under the EPA’s Brownfields Program.
The Mohawk Valley and the Capital Region received a total of $2.8 million worth of Brownsfield Program grants Wednesday, with the largest grant, $800,000, going to the Greater Mohawk Valley Land Bank targeting a 20-mile stretch of land along the Erie Canal Corridor that includes the villages of Canajoharie and Fort Plain and the city of Little Falls. The multipurpose grant will be used to update a brownfields site inventory, select sites for i
Focus on History: 1918’s pandemic, local graveyards and other 2020 history highlights | The Daily Gazette
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In 2020 it has been hard not to frequently look back to compare COVID 19 to the influenza pandemic of 1918. There were 176 deaths in Amsterdam in 1918 from influenza or pneumonia which often followed the flu.
Many of the victims were young. Joseph Bryk, 25, of James Street had come to Amsterdam in 1918 and met Appolonia Bogdan. They were to have been married the day Bryk died.
In 2020, this column introduced readers to area residents who have taken it upon themselves to research and preserve old graveyards.
A retired Saratoga Springs science teacher, Joanne Blaaubour, has a home in Fish House, a hamlet on the Great Sacandaga Lake in the town of Northampton. Blaaubour has focused on a graveyard next to the former Fish House Presbyterian Church. Abraham Beecher, buried there, was a church deacon who died in 1845. He was the cousin of Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of
Stirling & Glasgow, Scotland. Est. 1878
That the stash is so well preserved is not surprising: Each bottle was sheathed in the original Old Smuggler tissue-paper, reading, “The Produce of the Heather Hills of Scotland,” then painstakingly cloaked in long, hardened sticks of straw. The bundles were stuffed with loose straw, then wrapped together in multiple, heavy layers of brown packaging paper. Like a cherished Christmas present, the bulky parcels are tied and knotted tightly, several times over and crossways, with sturdy white string.
The bottles were also fitted with what Drummond believes was an early version of a nonrefillable cap. A spirits expert at one of the auction houses Drummond consulted told him the cap was most likely created to prevent counterfeiters from using established brand labels and bottles.