BY ANDY GARDNER
North Country This Week

CANTON – County legislators have given the county attorney a go-ahead to help the City of Ogdensburg with efforts to clean up four environmentally contaminated properties.

The Board of Legislators took the action during their Monday, March 1 meeting.

The four lots in question are the Shade Roller site, 541 Covington St.; MCYC site, 502 Riverside Ave.; the Kiwanis site, Riverside Avenue; and the Sybron site, also on Riverside Avenue.

They’ll be cleaned up through a partnership with the state and county that has so far cleaned up over 50 contaminated lots here. The motion notes that the city on Feb. 9 reached out to the county for assistance with getting the waterfront lots cleaned up and ready to go back on the tax rolls.

Legislator Jim Reagen, R-Ogdensburg, called the county board’s action “a terrific example of a city-county cooperative arrangement and I think we’ll see great benefits to everyone and to the economy in the future.”

“I just would like to thank the county attorney and his staff for their willingness to work on this with the City of Ogdensburg and I believe this will be of great benefit to both the city and the county in the long term in getting these major shoreline property back on the tax roll and back into productive uses,” he said. “I thank Ogdensburg City Planning Director Andrea Smith for the efforts she’s made over the past decade to get these properties to the point we can move forward.”