Sullivan wins grant for major canal park improvements

By DAVID HULSE

WURTSBORO — Sullivan County has won a $670,000 federal transportation enhancement grant that will help combine existing pieces of county park land into the most extensive preserved section of the 19th century Delaware and Hudson Canal.

The project, extending north from Wurtsboro to Phillipsport, will provide historic interpretation and create a six-mile hiking and biking trail along the former canal towpath, said Sullivan County Department of Public Works (DPW) Parks Director Rich Caraluzzo.

Caraluzzo and DPW architect Joseph Fucci spent a year putting together some three inches of documentation that went into a federal grant application, which is administered by the New York State Department of Transportation (DOT). “They said it was the most comprehensive grant application they had ever seen,” Caraluzzo said.

The grant, which was the largest T-21 grant that the Binghamton Region 9 DOT office approved, provides for an 80-20, federal-local match. The county will provide its share in engineering and labor, DPW Commissioner Peter Lilholt said. “And this is all work that we do in the off-season, when we can’t do highway construction,” he added.

The project will improve on existing county-owned lands. Lilholt credited former county historian James Burbank with directing the county toward the canal in the late 1960’s. Sullivan added to modest holdings in the late 1980’s, purchasing four miles of canal right-of-way from Orange and Rockland Utilities and an additional 20 acres with $334,000 funded through the state Environmental Quality Bond Act. Other properties were acquired through tax sales.

The DPW has improved the property and made it accessible over the years, installing 59 bridges, of five to 20 feet in length, parking areas and a picnic pavilion.

The new money will go to three main areas:

• To provide a 70-foot-long biking bridge over a section of the Basha Kill near the Kohl’s Warehouse, where the towpath had been interrupted.

• In Summitville, at a canal section where the canal and old O&W Railroad bed converge, the towpath will be continued to the higher railroad bed. Handicapped access and a parking area will be added.

• The most ambitious part of the project will take place between Summitville and Phillipsport where DPW will stabilize the Boothroyd house, a circa-1850’s house which was the home of the owner of the former canal boat yard and dry dock located there.

The house will not be opened, but maintained as a “period piece,” adjoining a new museum and interpretive center to be built in period style in the area near the house, which is currently a summer kitchen. A breezeway link between the two structures would allow access to the house in the future, after a complete restoration.

The former canal lock #50 on the property will be restored, but will not be watered because of environmental restrictions on the classified trout stream, which would be needed to provide the water.

Some $420,000 of the grant funding will be required to complete this portion of the project.

The project could start as early as next spring and be completed by next fall. It will be the largest regional park devoted to the old canal, and could grow even more as the Town of Mamakating is considering linking a D&H trail from the southerly end, into and through the Village of Wurtsboro.