The communities that are the most blighted are the ones that get dumped on." "None of it makes sense, and it's always the same.
"Do you want to go to a restaurant where people are shooting up and trading money for drugs?" Simpson asked. In an interview, Simpson also talked about what Central Avenue should be - a boulevard where all of Albany comes together, a Main Street where families can eat, walk, enjoy the city. Legislator Merton Simpson, who represents the area around the clinic, believes children in the largely Black, poor neighborhood have enough on their plates without having to sidestep problems related to the clinic as they travel back and forth to school. Get the story behind Chris Churchill’s latest columns. Last week, 18 members of the Albany County Legislature added their voices to the chorus, declaring in a letter to the state that the clinic does more harm than good and asking that it move. This is about fairness.Ī significant number of local officials agree - including Mayor Kathy Sheehan, who for years has said the clinic is inappropriate for a commercial strip in a densely populated neighborhood. This is about a poorer section of the city bearing too heavy a burden, one that should be shared by the region. This is about a clinic, she said, that is out of scale with what its neighborhood can handle. That's not what the opposition to Camino Nuevo is, she said. More than most, she knows the damage done by irrational NIMBYism and cold shoulders turned toward the needy. Hitt is the executive director of the Homeless and Travelers Aid Society, a nonprofit dedicated to preventing and combating homelessness. "It truly was kind of like day and night." "From the day those doors opened, it was like a bomb went off on the block," said Liz Hitt, who has worked on Central Avenue since 2008. The point isn't to ignore the transformative impact that treatment clinics can have.īut those who know that section of the street well say the change was palpable when Camino Nuevo, a branch of the Bronx-based Acacia Network, arrived in 2015. Is Camino Nuevo, which at times has been authorized to serve as many as 581 clients, responsible for all the neighborhood's problems? Of course not.Īnd nobody I talked to wanted to toss aside empathy or demonize the people who come to the block day after day hoping to rebuild lives ravaged by addiction. Used needles litter parking lots and other tucked-away places, apparent evidence that drug dealers are coming to prey on the addicted.
Businesses, including a CVS pharmacy, have closed, leaving behind the grim specter of numerous vacant storefronts. And longtime observers of the stretch between Lexington Avenue and Robin Street say the impact has been significant. It would never, ever happen.īut it happened on Central Avenue in Albany. Would the state authorize a methadone clinic near a school in a wealthy suburb?ĭumb question. There's even an elementary school, Sheridan Preparatory Academy, almost directly behind Camino Nuevo. It's easy to stick them with uses and services that other communities would have the power to fight off. The neighborhood around the clinic, located in the old Hauf's furniture store on the edge of West Hill, is generally poor and poor areas are usually places of low resistance. The cynical answer is probably the correct one. The lawsuit accuses Sappi’s Somerset Mill in Skowhegan of being the source of the contamination, claiming that the chemicals came from biosolids in the mill’s wastewater treatment plant that were spread as sludge.So why is Camino Nuevo, as the clinic at 175 Central Ave. In March, attorney Brian Mahaney filed a class-action lawsuit against Sappi North America on behalf of Nathan Saunders and others in Somerset County who have been exposed to per- and polyfluoroalkyl compounds. But the chemicals are not easily broken down in either the environment or human body, which is why they are often referred to as “forever chemicals.”Įxposure to them is linked to increased risk of health problems and certain cancers. Per- and polyfluoroalkyl compounds first came into use in the 1940s, and were widely used for their water-, grease- and stain-resistant properties. In response, Fairfield is looking into expanding its public water system to those with the affected wells, while the state is providing them with bottled water, according to the Sentinel. The investigation began there after milk from Tozier Dairy Farm had levels greater than 210 parts per trillion, the maximum threshold allowed by the state.
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