Newburgh officials are looking to a new natural resources inventory to help guide future planning decisions, including where the city could prioritize trees, parks and other green-space improvements.

The project brings together information about conditions across Newburgh and other nearby watershed properties, including tree cover, extreme heat, parks, waterways and other natural resources. City Planner Jonathan Midler said the inventory will give the Planning Department and the city’s land-use boards another resource when considering future projects.

The area around Broadway, Lake Street and South Robinson Avenue is the hottest part of Newburgh, with temperatures expected to reach about 21 degrees above the average summer temperature in Orange County forests, according to the inventory.

The scale of the difference was striking when mapped across the city, Midler said.

“When you’re in Newburgh in the summer, it’s really hot and there are no trees around,” Midler said. “But once you see it on the map, see the scale of it, it’s surprising.”

Those same streets are already part of a separate effort to understand heat conditions at a neighborhood level better. Fifteen environmental sensors were placed along Broadway, Lake Street, Liberty Street, Front Street and Dickson Street through the state Department of Environmental Conservation’s Climate-Ready Corridors Project, a two-year effort with researchers from the University at Buffalo.

The data could ultimately shape how the city responds to those hotter areas.
“It’s definitely gonna help the Planning Department guide where street trees go in the future and where plantings are,” Midler said.

Expanding the city’s tree canopy is one of several recommendations aimed at neighborhoods facing greater heat and fewer green spaces. The draft calls for focusing tree planting and shade infrastructure in areas with low canopy cover and high heat vulnerability.

Trees can also provide additional benefits beyond reducing neighborhood temperatures, said Gretchen Stevens, a biologist with Hudsonia, a not-for-profit environmental science institute, who worked on the inventory, during an Oct. 3 public workshop. She pointed to their role in managing stormwater, storing carbon and providing habitat.

“The benefits they provide to the people living here and working here, I think, are immeasurable,” Stevens said.

Access to parks is another area the city could address. The draft recommends prioritizing new parks and recreational spaces in underserved neighborhoods, particularly in the northern and northwestern portions of Newburgh, while also identifying vacant or underused lots as potential green spaces, community gardens or pocket parks.

The recommendations also call for improving sidewalks and crosswalks leading to parks, expanding public transportation to parks and improving accessibility. Those concerns were also raised by residents who responded to a public survey conducted as part of the project.

Midler said the walkability survey helped identify where sidewalk improvements may be needed.

However, the recommendations are not requirements for the city. Stevens said they are intended to offer ways Newburgh could protect its natural resources and improve or expand resources available to the public.

Beyond guiding decisions about trees and parks, the inventory is expected to become a resource for the Planning Board and other land-use boards when they review development applications, Midler said. Developers can also use it to understand better environmental conditions surrounding a property.

“It’s a resource,” Midler said. “There are certain site constraints that they should be looking into already, but this is just like an additional resource that they can use to see what’s in and around their property.”

Documenting those conditions could also strengthen the city’s case when it seeks state or federal funding to address problems identified through the inventory, Midler said.

“Anytime you’re applying for a grant that will help address an issue that came up in the NRI, I think having a plan that has documented that issue helps you with grants,” Midler said.

The project was initiated by the city’s Conservation Advisory Council and managed by the Planning Department. Hudsonia Ltd. and GREENPLAN Inc. prepared the inventory, which was funded by a grant from the New York State Environmental Protection Fund through the state Department of Environmental Conservation’s Hudson River Estuary Program.

The inventory remains in draft form and is available on the City of Newburgh’s website. Midler encouraged residents to review the recommendations and send the Planning Department or Hudsonia ideas they believe could benefit the community.