Day: April 19, 2025

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Exploring the Gerald D. Jennings Wetlands Preserve aka Coeymans Creek Wildlife Management Area

Nice chunk of land now much more accessible that they’ve completed the driveway and parking area from NY 144 as the majority of the land is on the east side of the Coeymans Creek and it’s just deep enough you’d want waders to cross it and I bet it’s mucky and you’d sink into it.

People might be off put by the Thruway noise and the cement plant on the other side but there is much to explore and solitude to be found. There is a large open area of grass, cat tails and alfalfa planted for deer. Marshy woods with vernal ponds and year round marshes. Not a lot of real mature forest but some. Deep ravines and ridges along the placid Coeymans Creek where I saw several muskrat.

It’s funny how this land came to be. Thirty years ago, the City of Albany wanted yet another expansion of the Rapp Road Landfill in the Pine Bush. The state insisted that if the city got one more expansion they had to come up with an alternative plan to dump garbage that wasn’t in the Pine Bush. This was around the time the OGS incinerator shut down due to the 1990 Clean Air Act requirements and because of the embarrassing incident where the state messed up the incinerator and it started burning really black and leaving the downtown covered in black ash and made everything smell like smoldering burn barrel. So the city, out of landfill funds bought land in Coeymans between the cement plant and the Thruway, mostly isolated from houses but still passing by and within smell range of many others.

For about two decades the city made payments to three farmers and landowners for this land near the cement plant. It was said that the landowners had been democratic committeemen and loyal supporters of then Mayor Jerry Jennings. Not only did the farmers want the cash, I’m sure they were well aware of the mercury pollution from the cement plant. It’s really bad, a fact that the DEC continues to cover up to this day. But at any rate, much of the land is wetlands and vernal pools – a fact either the city didn’t know as no wetlands survey was conducted before the money flowed out of the city coffers or just as likely didn’t care as long as the state let the city keep dumping in the Pine Bush. Or maybe just as likely is that the clay soil that makes this a good area for a landfill as it keeps the garbage chemicals out of the ground water also traps water on the surface. Who knows but eventually the city decided they couldn’t get the permits to build the landfill here and needed a state bail out so they were able to sell the land to the state as public hunting grounds.

Spectulator Beach Sunset

Even in the winter, the Spectulator Beach is not a good place to watch the sun set as it's oriented too far towards the south. 

Spectulator Beach Sunset