Honk Falls, and a Free Rondout

Honk Falls, and a Free Rondout

 

Projects:

Honk Falls, and a Free(er) Rondout Creek

 

We finish an 18-month project at the former Honk Lake, as the Rondout Creek returns to swift-running water in the Catskills.

It’s always satisfying to see a lakebed returned to a running stream. At the former Honk Lake in Wawarsing, New York, the old dam was lowered, effectively removing its ability to impound the Rondout Creek.

With the lake drained, and the creek running again, it wasn’t long before the herons, blackbirds and kildeer were searching the creek’s rocky edges for food This spring, the water by the new spillway was teeming with baby frogs.

We worked with contractor A. Servidone for this project, as they diverted half a mile of stream to allow work on the dam. The existing spillway and penstock was demolished, and a new cap installed.

Three river-cobble riffles were installed along the course of the stream to add oxygen to the water, and to create fish and insect habitat.

The effect of constructed riffles is to mimic naturally-occuring streams, where water speeds up and tumbles over stony obstructions, landing in a calmer pool below and making excellent fish habitat.

Buds appear in a close-up of a live stake

At the top of a willow live stake, buds appear. Live stakes are branches of trees that are cut while the trees are dormant and then planted directly in the soil.

Along the stone-armored shores of the newly-free river, hundreds of trees and shrubs were planted, and the underlying seed bank — there, under the lake, for who knows how long — began to sprout.

In the years ahead, willows, river birch, serviceberry, buttonberry and more species of a diverse and native forest will take the place of the old lake.

And despite the hatching out of millions of hungry and defoliating gypsy moth caterpillars, the newly-planted forest is growing.

Allman Environmental Services Photography worked with Servidone from the preconstruction to postconstruction stage of the Honk dam project. I’m looking forward to coming back in the fall to see how the new trees have developed over a single season.

In New York State — as elsewhere across the northeast — many dam removal projects are underway, returning streams and rivers to their natural, free-flowing state.

With several years’ experience in this area, Allman Environmental Services Photography is happy to provide photo and video documentation for dam decommissioning and stream rehabilitation projects.

 

A dam with water from a riverbed, taken during progress photography stage

Spillway of the Honk Falls Dam after rehabilitation. Lowering the spillway allowed the lake to drain, and the Rondout Creek to become a fast-moving creek again, before tumbling into the gorge below.

 

 

 

HONK FALLS DAM DECOMMISSIONING


  • Contractor: A. Servidone/B. Anthony Construction
  • Owner: New York City DEP

Get in Touch

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Challenging terrain, geography and environments are a personal specialty.  Capture the energy of your team at work, on training and field exercises, with heavy equipment or in challenging environmental conditions. These photos can be used again and again: in annual reports, your socials, on office walls and other marketing deliverables.  -Suzanne

 

  • CERTIFIED: SBA-certified WOSB, New York State- and City-certified WBE, and Port Authority certified DBE
  • REGISTERED: SAM & ORCA. Experienced in Federal Government contracting and subcontracting.
  • WILDLAND FIREFIGHTING CERTIFICATES S-130/190, L-180
  • FAA PART 107 Since 2017
  • DUNS: 839898728.
  • FEIN: 84-2603642
  • We accept all government agency purchase orders and credit cards.

 

145 NEPERAN ROAD, TARRYTOWN, NY 10591

 

 

CONTACT

 

SERVING ENVIRONMENTAL SERVICE INDUSTRIES, ENGINEERS AND AGENCIES BY USING PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FORCE FOR GOOD.

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Coire Glas: Pumped Hydro Storage in the Scottish Highlands

Coire Glas: Pumped Hydro Storage in the Scottish Highlands

 

Projects:

Coire Glas Pumped Hydro Storage, Great Glen, Scotland

 

A secret, hidden power station buried under centuries-old rock.

Hiking, biking or walking miles and miles of transmission lines: I love being outside, working or just trekking in the woods. It’s led me to a career in photographing large infrastructure projects which are mostly outdoors, where I feel most at home.

And I’ve become a big fan of renewable energy projects, and the creative thinking that inspires them.

On a recent eight-day hike through the Scottish Highlands with my friend Rachel, we passed the site of the future, now-underway Coire Glas* Hydro Storage project, high above Loch Lochy.

(*The name means “little grey-green hollow”.)

Breezy, remote, barren of tall trees apart from intermittent Caledonian pine forest, the landscape perfectly suits — and is high enough — for this kind of project, which cleverly uses the potential energy of water pumped at times of low demand.

A wide, green view of the Scottish Highlands, with a hiker walking on the winding trail through bare landscape

The bare landscape of the Scottish Highlands, above Loch Lochy, is the windswept setting for the Coire Glas project.

 

Pumped storage schemes involve two bodies of water at different heights. During periods of low demand and/or surplus generation, electricity pumps water from Loch Lochy in the Highlands to a reservoir at the top of the mountains, storing energy.

Water releases this energy in times of need, passing through turbines hidden deep in the mountains. This generates hydroelectricity at a time when demand is high or wind and solar power generation is low.

(Clean wind and solar power reduce carbon emissions, but this power is not always needed just when the wind blows or the sun shines.)

The system imitates a giant battery, storing energy until it’s needed, at the top of the Scottish Highlands.

A height difference of at least 500m between the upper reservoir and the lake below is essential if the economic energy recovery efficiency – the difference between energy required to pump the water uphill and the energy recovered when it runs downhill through the turbines – of 80% or more is to be achieved.

The hydro storage scheme promises to more than double Great Britain’s energy storage capacity.

View along a dirt trail over a scottish loch

The Great Glen Way stretches 79 miles from Fort William in the west to Inverness in the northeast. It’s a breathtakingly beautiful hike, and can be done over seven days, staying in guest houses along the way or simply camping at trailside campsites. ©Allman Environmental Services Photography

 

Get in Touch

______________

Challenging terrain, geography and environments are a personal specialty.  Capture the energy of your team at work, on training and field exercises, with heavy equipment or in challenging environmental conditions. These photos can be used again and again: in annual reports, your socials, on office walls and other marketing deliverables.  -Suzanne

 

  • CERTIFIED: SBA-certified WOSB, New York State- and City-certified WBE, and Port Authority certified DBE
  • REGISTERED: SAM & ORCA. Experienced in Federal Government contracting and subcontracting.
  • WILDLAND FIREFIGHTING CERTIFICATES S-130/190, L-180
  • FAA PART 107 Since 2017
  • DUNS: 839898728.
  • FEIN: 84-2603642
  • We accept all government agency purchase orders and credit cards.

 

145 NEPERAN ROAD, TARRYTOWN, NY 10591

 

 

CONTACT

 

SERVING ENVIRONMENTAL SERVICE INDUSTRIES, ENGINEERS AND AGENCIES BY USING PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FORCE FOR GOOD.

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Places We Go: The Champlain Hudson Power Express

Places We Go: The Champlain Hudson Power Express

 

Places We Go:

The Champlain Valley, New York

 

As-built and preconstruction work on new contracts is in full swing this spring. One really interesting project we’ve added is the Champlain-Hudson Power Express, a clean energy project and a massive part of New York State’s net-zero solution.

To get renewable power from Quebec to Queens, power will travel through cables buried under Lake Champlain, the Hudson and Harlem Rivers. In total, 192 miles of submarine and subterranean cable will be laid for the Champlain Hudson Power Express Project.

Allman Environmental Services Photography contracted with Caldwell Marine International to provide photo and video (including aerial) documentation for their HDD work on this project.

The Champlain Valley in way-north New York is one of the most beautiful areas of the state, and I was happy to be spending time along the shoreline of that peaceful lake.

And if there’s world-class hiking along the way, I’m in. En route to the start of the project, I stopped off at Hurricane Mountain, in the High Peaks region of the Keene Valley, in the Adirondacks.

The timing was perfect: still just a little chilly, a couple weeks before black fly season, with the promise of few hikers on the trails and abundant opportunities for utter solitude and silence in the mountains.

The Adirondack Mountains are like “home waters” for me; as a kid, we spent entire summers in an old timber cabin on Mountain Lake, in Bleeker. A constantly-slamming screen door on a rain-softened porch opened up to a shimmering hemlock forest overlooking Mountain Lake. We swam, fished, hiked, probably set things on fire, and fended off mosquitos during long nights on that porch.

But the hemlocks. Those trees give the Adirondacks their special mossy feel. Centuries of duff underfoot make the forest floor sound almost hollow. Nothing ever dries out there; it just hosts more moss, more fern, more mushrooms.

So it’s a little wrenching to see the injury caused to whole forests of standing hemlock by the wooly adelgid.

Dead hemlock trees in the Champlain Valley and Adirondack Mountain area of New York State

Wooly adelgid-infested, dead hemlocks on Hurricane Mountain, in the High Peaks Wilderness Area of the Adirondacks.

This was the scene along the south approach to the top of Hurricane Mountain; in four directions, a ghostly monument to a once-green forest.

Even in late April, I was caught in the spindrift of a spring snowstorm at the summit. I didn’t spend long there. An hour or so later, I set out from Route 9 to Round Pond, where spring had returned.

Clean image with a lot of negative space of Adirondack mountain lake in early spring, with spruce trees in distance.

Round Pond in the Adirondacks.

From there, off to Lake Champlain.

These are just some of the other projects we’re working on this month:

  • Renovation at the Cooper-Hewitt Museum of Design in Manhattan;
  • Continued work on two Catskill Mountain dam projects: one at Shawangunk Reservoir, the other at Honk Lake in Wawarsing;
  • Videography at the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in Westchester County;
  • Aerial photography and videography at Wellesley Island State Park, in the Thousand Islands.

 

Get in Touch

______________

Challenging terrain, geography and environments are a personal specialty.  Capture the energy of your team at work, on training and field exercises, with heavy equipment or in challenging environmental conditions. These photos can be used again and again: in annual reports, your socials, on office walls and other marketing deliverables.  -Suzanne

 

  • CERTIFIED: SBA-certified WOSB, New York State- and City-certified WBE, and Port Authority certified DBE
  • REGISTERED: SAM & ORCA. Experienced in Federal Government contracting and subcontracting.
  • WILDLAND FIREFIGHTING CERTIFICATES S-130/190, L-180
  • FAA PART 107 Since 2017
  • DUNS: 839898728.
  • FEIN: 84-2603642
  • We accept all government agency purchase orders and credit cards.

 

145 NEPERAN ROAD, TARRYTOWN, NY 10591

 

 

CONTACT

 

SERVING ENVIRONMENTAL SERVICE INDUSTRIES, ENGINEERS AND AGENCIES BY USING PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FORCE FOR GOOD.

Qualify Us Now! ProView

Preconstruction: Verrazzano Narrows

Preconstruction: Verrazzano Narrows

 

PROJECT:

Preconstruction at the Verrazzano-Narrows

 

 

A few early-morning starts on a new project in Brooklyn. This one is along the greenway at the Verrazzano Narrows bridge, where large marine vessels are anchored silently offshore and crowds of gulls wait for a regular morning feeding from the neighborhood retired.

I’ve photographed the bridge before, for the New York City Marathon (a few times for the New York Times, and once for Sports Illustrated): from the bridge at ground-level, from the photographers’ truck, and from a helicopter, twice. It’s an old friend.  

  • Project Location: Verrazzano-Narrows in Brooklyn, New York
  • Client: Triumph Construction, Inc.
  • Project value: 50M

 Get in Touch

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Preconstruction, progress, postconstruction and final completion photography and videography — including aerials — is what we do, and “no drama” is how we do it. No project is too far away from our home base in Tarrytown, New York. Contract requirements for large infrastructure projects are a specialty.  -Suzanne

 

  • CERTIFIED: SBA-certified WOSB, New York State- and City-certified WBE, and Port Authority certified DBE
  • REGISTERED: SAM & ORCA. Experienced in Federal Government contracting and subcontracting.
  • WILDLAND FIREFIGHTING CERTIFICATES S-130/190, L-180 
  • FAA PART 107 Since 2017
  • DUNS: 839898728.
  • FEIN: 84-2603642
  • We accept all government agency purchase orders and credit cards.

 

145 NEPERAN ROAD, TARRYTOWN, NY 10591

 

 

CONTACT

 

SERVING ENVIRONMENTAL SERVICE INDUSTRIES, ENGINEERS AND AGENCIES BY USING PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FORCE FOR GOOD.

Qualify Us Now! ProView

Setting the Floodgate, New York City

Setting the Floodgate, New York City

 

Setting the Gate:

New 45-ton Floodgate in Asser Levy Park, New York City

 

 

Work on our photography contract with they city’s 1.5-billion East Side Coastal Resiliency Project continues, as a new 45-ton, nearly 80-foot long gate at Asser Levy Park is installed.

The massive gate was trucked in on a flatbed, and raised into position in front of the gorgeous bath house, opened in 1908 to alleviate sanitary problems in the city. Many New Yorkers, especially immigrants living in overcrowded tenements, had no place to bathe.

The floodgate will close when the city is forecasted to receive major surges of ocean water from coastal storms.

The gate rolls on slowly-moving wheels, taking a full five minutes lock into place and block off the southern portion of the park, which opens onto East 23rd Street, from potential flooding. 

Asser Levy Park is the first of five parks being redesigned or rebuilt for the $1.5 billion East Side Coastal Resiliency project, which is set to provide flood protection for nearly 100,000 area residents.

Get in Touch

______________

Challenging terrain, geography and environments are a personal specialty.  Capture the energy of your team at work, on training and field exercises, with heavy equipment or in challenging environmental conditions. These photos can be used again and again: in annual reports, your socials, on office walls and other marketing deliverables.  -Suzanne

 

  • CERTIFIED: SBA-certified WOSB, New York State- and City-certified WBE, and Port Authority certified DBE
  • REGISTERED: SAM & ORCA. Experienced in Federal Government contracting and subcontracting.
  • WILDLAND FIREFIGHTING CERTIFICATES S-130/190, L-180 
  • FAA PART 107 Since 2017
  • DUNS: 839898728.
  • FEIN: 84-2603642
  • We accept all government agency purchase orders and credit cards.

 

145 NEPERAN ROAD, TARRYTOWN, NY 10591

 

 

CONTACT

 

SERVING ENVIRONMENTAL SERVICE INDUSTRIES, ENGINEERS AND AGENCIES BY USING PHOTOGRAPHY AS A FORCE FOR GOOD.

Qualify Us Now! ProView