Sing Sing Kill Greenway Wins Award from NY Planners

OSSINING, NY — The Village of Ossining was recently awarded an award from the New York Planning Federation for the innovative Sing Sing Kill Greenway. The Greenway gives access for the first time in decades inside the ravine that the Kill Brook carved over millennia in its headlong journey from the Ossining hills to the Hudson River.

Mayor Victoria Gearity accepted the award at a luncheon in Saratoga Spring March 27.

"This Greenway is the most glorious use of a municipal sewer fund ever!" she said at the event. "Who would have thought that a sanitary sewer project could become a public walkway meandering through the gorge of a major Hudson River tributary, right in the heart of downtown Ossining?"

She went on to invite the ballroom full of planners and municipal officials from across New York State to visit Ossining and take a walk along the Sing Sing Kill Greenway.

Turning the ravine into a public park had been a longtime dream of Ossining officials and environmentalists, specially after the village's Department of Public Works moved from its old facility at the base of the gorge on Water Street. Finding money for the project seemed out of reach. But then the state mandated that the village repair a ruptured sewage pipe that ran down the center of the gorge.

This is the first time the project has earned recognition by a statewide organization. Last year the Greenway took top honors from the Westchester Municipal Planning Federation.

The Greenway was nominated for the Heissenbuttel Award by Joseph Cermele, PE, the project manager who led the civil engineering and planning team of consultants from Kellard Sessions that partnered with the Village on the project.

PHOTO: Mayor Victoria Gearity, Planner Jan Johannessen, AICP, Civil Engineer Joseph Cermele, PE, and Civil Engineer Brian Hildenbrand, PE.

SEE ALSO: Ossining Opens New Greenway in the Sing Sing Kill