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Bob Mitchell, the Albany County architect who designed the new consolidated Beacon fire station, corrected me when we spoke over Zoom this week. I had toured the under-construction station on April 26 and remarked that I was impressed with the facility's many bells and whistles.
"Bells and whistles" suggest extravagance, Mitchell said. The firefighters are actually getting "nuts and bolts - spaces that are highly functional and necessary."
The $14.7 million, 16,400-square-foot structure, which is on schedule to be completed by September, will have three bays for fire trucks on Wolcott Avenue, across the street from City Hall. There will be two more bays on South Avenue - which had fronted the former Lewis Tompkins Hose Co. station - one for a backup fire truck and the other for Ambulnz, the city's advanced life support ambulance provider.
City leaders in 2022 decided to gut, refurbish and enlarge the 1979 Tompkins Hose building, ending a nearly 20-year debate over consolidating Beacon's three aging stations - Tompkins Hose, Mase Hook and Ladder on Main Street and the Beacon Engine firehouse on East Main Street, none of which met modern firefighting standards.
Rather than build a station at a new site, Mayor Lee Kyriacou pushed to renovate Tompkins Hose, a decision that he said this week cut costs significantly and allowed the city to "do something state-of-the-art that will last a few generations." He said a renegotiated 10-year sales tax-sharing agreement with Dutchess County, reached in 2022, also helped. The deal brought Beacon an extra $1.2 million in revenue last year, and the numbers could triple over the life of the agreement.
The all-electric station, heated and cooled by 20 geothermal wells dug in the adjacent parking lot, will have six bedrooms, each equipped with four lockers. That means each firefighter will have a private locker for their 24-hour shift, and the six rooms gives the department, which has 17 paid "career" firefighters plus Chief Tom Lucchesi, ample room to grow.
The partially enclosed engine bays will be enlarged and equipped with an exhaust-removal system that will connect to the trucks. There's even a simulated manhole inside the station where firefighters will practice subterranean rescues.
Perhaps the most important upgrade will be the decontamination facilities. When returning to the station, firefighters will enter a three-step "hot zone" designated for cleaning. There will be a "gross decontamination" room to surface-clean their gear, then another room with deep-cleaning laundry machines and dryers, and then showers. After those safety measures, firefighters can go into the "cool zone," which is the rest of the station.
There's more data these days on the effects of the toxins concentrated in smoke that firefighters inhale, ingest or absorb through the skin. For example, Mitchell said, the rate of testicular cancer among firefighters is twice the national average. He also cited the recent case of three children of firefighters at the same station in Honolulu who, over a six-year span, developed Ewing's sarcoma, a rare bone cancer.
"Ultra-fine particles in smoke pass through protective garments and into the skin," Mitchell said. "They have to be washed off quickly, because if that dust is on them or their clothing, it goes home with them."
For previous generations, facilities like these didn't exist. "When my dad was a volunteer firefighter, he would just throw his gear in the back of the car," City Administrator Chris White told me. "There was no place to go."
The lobby and interior spaces of the building will pay tribute to "the spectacular volunteer effort" to fight fires and handle other emergencies in Beacon over the past century, Kyriacou said. The U.S. flag and a memorial to fallen volunteers will be moved from South Avenue to the front of the station on Wolcott.
The brick exterior is envisioned as a gateway to the city. "We asked the architect to look at Main Street and make this loo

Charged with installing cameras in a restroom
A former Stonecrop Gardens employee was arrested on April 18 and accused of secretly filming girls in 2018 and 2019 as they used a public restroom.
A criminal complaint filed in federal court accuses John Towers, 54, of Mahopac, of making more than 800 hidden-camera videos that also captured women inside stalls as they used the toilet.
The complaint describes the scene of the alleged crimes only as a "privately owned, public park in Putnam County" and states that Towers had worked there for 20 years, since 2004. A Facebook profile for John Towers identifies him as a Mahopac High School graduate employed at Stonecrop since August 2004, and archived Stonecrop material, such as a newsletter from 2007, identifies John Towers as a part-time horticulture assistant.
Towers was arraigned April 18 and released on a $200,000 bond until his next court date, scheduled for May 15.
Stonecrop did not respond to an email or phone message seeking comment. The park was created in 1958 by Frank Cabot and his wife, Anne, on their 60-acre property on Route 301 and opened to the public in 1992. Towers' attorney, Michael Burke of White Plains, also did not respond to an email or phone message.
In the criminal complaint, filed April 17, a Putnam County Sheriff's Office investigator assigned to an FBI task force said that, during a raid at Towers' home, officers seized a desktop computer with a 2-terabyte hard drive that contained 816 videos taken with cameras hidden in a park restroom, including 78 with the word "yung" in the title and at least 15 that depict children. According to the complaint, the videos were created between July 2018 and October 2019.
According to the complaint, the investigation began in February after the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children passed along a tip from an internet service provider that a customer with a phone number associated with Towers had uploaded 57 files depicting child pornography to its cloud storage.
Responding to a search warrant, the company provided more than 6,000 images and videos that had been uploaded by the customer, including photos that depict girls and women in stalls in a restroom with blue-and-white tile walls. At least one image was embedded with GPS data that indicated it had been taken at the privately owned, public park. Mark Tunney, the Putnam County investigator, said in the complaint that he visited the park and noted its restrooms have blue-and-white tile walls.
During an early morning raid on March 29 at Towers' home in Mahopac, police seized 10 spy cameras, including three that resembled ballpoint pens; 20 DVDs with explicit content; a cellphone and the desktop computer. Towers was arrested and arraigned in Carmel Town Court on six charges related to the DVD images and sent to the Putnam County jail before being released on bail.
According to the complaint, investigators searching the computer found a folder with the 816 videos, whose titles included the word "visitor" and a date, that were focused on a toilet in a restroom with blue-and-white tile walls. A number of the videos appear to show the same person from different angles, suggesting multiple cameras, the complaint said. Towers allegedly captured screen shots from the videos.
Investigators said they identified the mother of a 7-year-old whose g******s were filmed as she used the park restroom in July 2018. The woman showed police a photo taken of her daughter on the same day in which the girl was wearing the white tank top shown in the video, with the word "Summer" across the front.

Voters will also weigh budget, capital project
Four candidates filed nominating petitions this week to run for three open seats on the Beacon school board, creating the first contested race since 2018.
Flora Stadler, the vice president, is seeking her third, three-year term on the nine-member board. She will be joined on the May 21 ballot by newcomers Chris Lewine, LaVonne McNair and Meg Phillips.
Two of the open seats are held by Stadler and Yunice Heath, who announced in February that she would not run for re-election. A third seat was vacated last year by John Galloway Jr., who resigned.
Lewine, a former high school principal and math teacher, is the chief of data strategy and product innovation for Connecticut RISE Network. McNair is an analyst with Carrington Mortgage Services and a board member of I Am Beacon. Phillips has a master's degree in English and a master's in teaching secondary education.
The candidate with the most votes will join the board immediately to fill Galloway's seat and serve a three-year term. The other two winners will begin their three-year terms on July 1. A Meet the Candidates event is scheduled for 7:30 p.m. on May 13 at Beacon High School.
The May ballot will also ask voters to approve the district's $83.86 million budget for 2024-25. The school board unanimously approved the budget on April 23; it will hold a public hearing during its Tuesday (May 7) meeting.
The district is proposing a $47.68 million tax levy, a 3.91 percent increase over last year, that will trigger a modest tax hike. For a home worth $425,000, the median value in Dutchess County, the increase is estimated to be $88 annually for district residents who live in Beacon, $100 for those in the Town of Fishkill and $106 for those in the Town of Wappinger.
Like many districts, Beacon will receive less state aid this year in New York State's newly adopted budget. The district will receive $30.8 million, a decrease of $168,499 over 2023-24.
The ballot will also include two propositions related to student transportation and one that would allow the district to borrow money to fund a $50 million capital project.
The first proposition would give the district the OK to purchase a second electric school bus. Voters approved one electric bus last year but it has yet to be purchased. The state will provide $257,250 toward each $495,000 bus.
The second proposition would permit the district to spend $485,000 to buy three 72-passenger, gas-powered buses.
The third proposition asks voters to approve an initiative for sweeping capital improvements across all six district school buildings. It would include heating, ventilation and energy-efficiency upgrades, new roofs on some buildings, secure visitor entrances and Americans with Disabilities Act compliance, among other repairs.
Many classrooms will receive new flooring, ceilings, lighting, windows and doors, while the stage and theater at Beacon High School will be upgraded and new playground equipment installed at Sargent and Glenham elementaries. The tennis courts and baseball and softball fields at the high school will be improved and the cafeterias and gymnasiums at the four elementary schools and Rombout Middle School will be air-conditioned to create "cooling centers," the district said.
If approved, the capital project would trigger a second tax increase, estimated at $127 annually for a home assessed at $300,000; $170 for a $400,000 home or $212 for a $500,000 home. Taxes have not gone up as the result of capital improvements in at least 15 years. Individual bills could decrease if a homeowner has a STAR or Enhanced STAR exemption.

Local outbreak continues, little threat to humans
If it seems like every spongy moth caterpillar in the Highlands hatched this week, it's because they probably did.
"That was a boom day," said Clive Jones of the Cary Institute in Millbrook, referring to the spongy moth caterpillars - formerly gypsy moths - first spotted on Wednesday (May 1). He said a similar mass hatching occurred the previous week in Gardiner, and that the Cary Institute's campus was seeing its first outbreak of what he called "spongies" since the 1990s.
The caterpillars prefer oak leaves, so the same conditions that trigger oaks to start budding - a certain number of consecutive days above a certain temperature - also trigger the caterpillars to hatch. "Many insects have managed to get themselves synchronized to when food is available," Jones explained.
If the blanket of caterpillars is disconcerting now, brace yourself. Soon the caterpillars will start "ballooning," or hanging from branches by a silk thread and letting the winds gently carry them to new trees. Jones said that because the hatch was so large, the competition for feeding spots will be fierce, which means a lot of floating caterpillars.
"It's irritating when you walk through a cloud of them, but at that point they're not particularly problematic," said Jones. The caterpillars do not bite, but their tiny hairs can cause a reaction that feels like a bite. Jones suggests wearing long sleeves and long pants for the next few weeks - and a wide-brimmed hat.
"There's going to be caterpillar crap falling everywhere," said Jones. The technical term is frass.
The Cary Institute hosts a page at bit.ly/cary-spongy that lists strategies for dealing with the outbreak, besides hiding indoors. Since most of the spongy egg sacs have hatched, disposing of them is a waste of time. Burning the sacs with a blowtorch is a popular method but New York State's burn ban is in effect until May 14.
To protect a tree from the caterpillars, tie a band of burlap around the trunk. The caterpillars will fall to the ground and can be swept up and placed in a bucket of hot soapy water and composted the next day. Because of the prickly hairs, Jones recommends wearing latex gloves.
Wrapping a sticky band around trunks is an option, but can ensnare beneficial pollinators as well. There's also the microbial insecticide Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), but you need a license to apply it. Jones said anyone with that license in the state is already booked for the season.
Squashing individual caterpillars won't make much of a difference, Jones said, but "some people gain a certain degree of satisfaction from smashing a caterpillar. I'm not going to take that pleasure away from people."
The final option is to pray for rain. Spongy moths have two natural predators: white-footed mice and the fungus Entomophaga maimaiga. When the outbreaks get to be as big as this one currently is, the mice can't eat enough to make a dent. The fungus needs lots of wet, humid weather over the next six weeks without having too many days in the 80-degree range.
"It's just like growing mold in your basement," said Jones. The fungus infects the caterpillars with spores that kill them, and as the caterpillars decompose the spores spread to new hosts.
The good news is that there shouldn't be much permanent damage. There may be a lot of defoliation in the Highlands this spring and summer, as there was last year in the first season of the outbreak, but most hardwood trees will recover.
Eventually, the caterpillar population will get so big that it will get stressed trying to find enough food, weakening their immune system and making them more susceptible to a virus that is always present in the population, but sub-lethal when stress levels are low. That will lead to a population crash and the end of the outbreak.
Whether that happens this year or next year is unknown. For those who would like to learn more, Jones is planning a public walk at the Cary Institute on Ju

Philipstown landscaper, speeding deputy collided
Putnam County is poised to approve a $775,000 settlement with a Philipstown landscaper severely injured in a May 2021 crash when a sheriff's deputy crossed the double yellow lines on Route 301 while speeding to a non-emergency call.
The Legislature's Audit Committee on Monday (April 29) approved a resolution authorizing the settlement with Marc Manzoeillo, who owns Marc's Landscaping and Outdoor Living. He suffered a broken shoulder, head and back lacerations, a concussion and left hip and right ankle injuries when he was ejected from his Ford dump truck after the collision with a Dodge Charger driven by Sgt. William Quick.
The full Legislature is expected to vote on Tuesday (May 7) to settle the lawsuit Manzoeillo filed in January 2022 against the county, the Sheriff's Office and Quick, who was airlifted to Westchester Medical Center after being pinned for an hour by the Charger's dashboard and steering wheel.
Putnam would pay a $250,000 deductible and insurance would cover the rest.
According to court records, Quick, who later retired on disability, decided to respond after seeing that three deputies were dispatched to investigate a report of a suspicious person on a property at 657 Route 301. After racing down the Taconic to Route 301, Quick reached 75 mph as he sped west on a narrow, two-lane stretch near Canopus Lake, where the speed limit is 40 miles per hour.
The sergeant shifted to the eastbound lane to pass a vehicle just as Manzoeillo approached from the opposite direction. Manzoeillo hit the brakes, sending his truck spinning into the westbound lane, where he and the deputy collided.
In June 2023, a state judge rejected a motion by the county to dismiss the lawsuit, noting that the Charger's dashcam recorded vehicles trying to get out of Quick's way and recorded the officer's "outrageous vulgar tirade" after a driver slowed down and moved to the left to let him pass at the Taconic exit.
The judge cited Quick's "indifference to the difficulties faced by motorists confronted by the blaring lights and sirens of a rapidly moving police car."
The collision caused the left side of the dump truck's cab to dislodge. Quick's vehicle incurred heavy damage on the left front and side.
Manzoeillo said in a deposition that he was disabled for more than two months. He said he remembered only driving west past Canopus Lake just before the crash and then hearing someone tell him to "lay back down."
A state police report said Manzoeillo caused the collision by "failing to maintain his lane of travel" when he reacted and spun into the westbound lane. The county argued that Quick should receive immunity under a section of state vehicle and traffic law that gives officers leeway when responding to emergencies.
Grossman acknowledged that Quick's response represented an "emergency operation" because he believed that there may be a burglary in process, but he allowed the case to proceed because Manzoeillo and his attorneys could possibly prove that Quick acted with reckless disregard.
Under Sheriff's Office guidelines, deputies should only consider certain calls for an emergency response, including when pursuing or apprehending a violator or suspected violator, when an incident may involve "possible personal injury, death or significant property damage" and when there is a crime in progress.
An internal investigation of the crash found that within a minute of Quick activating his sirens, one of the three deputies dispatched to the scene was told he could "disregard" the call.
The report also found that Quick did not inform anyone that he was responding and he failed to use his work phone to confirm the contents of "broken radio traffic" coming from the Sheriff's Office's channel. None of the radio transmissions or onboard computer information "suggested that the activity was a possible burglary in process,'" according to the investigation.
The Sheriff's Office also reviewed Quick's action

Decommissioning board examines wastewater solutions
A week after Holtec, the firm that is decommissioning the Indian Point nuclear power plant, challenged a state law that prevents it from discharging radioactive water into the Hudson River, an oversight board discussed alternate methods of handling the waste.
Holtec says it needs to dispose of at least 1.3 million gallons of wastewater, telling the Indian Point Decommissioning Oversight Board that the amount will increase but not indicating by how much. While the plant routinely discharged radioactive wastewater into the river during the 50 years it operated, the process has drawn renewed concern by critics who say the risks have been underestimated.
Arnie Gundersen, a former nuclear engineer and nuclear industry executive, told the oversight board at its April 25 meeting that the federal Environmental Protection Agency standards set in the 1970s for tritium, the radioactive material in the wastewater, were "not a health-based standard. It's based on what was easily achievable."
Gundersen said that further research was needed to determine the "synergistic toxicity" of tritium, or how it could potentially increase the toxicity of non-radioactive pollutants it comes in contact with, particularly the PCBs in the Hudson River.
"We need to take another look at tritium, because it's not as benign as we think," he asserted. "Let's wait for the science to catch up and store it until then."
Environmental groups would like to see the wastewater kept on-site for at least 12 years, which is the amount of time that it would take for the tritium to decompose to half its current potency.
David Lochbaum, a retired nuclear engineer and former director of nuclear safety at the Union of Concerned Scientists who serves on the oversight board, has repeatedly warned that the tanks used for long-term wastewater storage have leaked elsewhere, and that they must be vented, which allows tritium to escape into the atmosphere.
In his presentation, Gundersen explained how the leakage problem could be addressed by storing the wastewater in tanks housed in the plant's former turbine building, which has not yet been torn down. An empty backup could also be available if one of the tanks fails.
Berms placed around the tanks would stop leaks from reaching the Hudson, he said, and a rubber diaphragm placed over the vents once the tanks were filled "would allow air movement due to minor temperature changes while preventing evaporation."
Frank Spagnuolo, a representative from Holtec, said Gundersen's plan would not solve its primary problem: Until the tanks and pools have been emptied and the wastewater is off-site, the company cannot fully decommission the plant.
Holtec announced in November 2023 that the ban on discharging wastewater into the Hudson would delay the completion of its work from 2033 to 2041. It sued New York State in federal court on April 18 to overturn the law. At the April 25 meeting, Spagnuolo said the company had calculated the time lost to legal battles into the anticipated delay.
"The tanks need to get released somehow, somewhere," Spagnuolo said. "We can make this our grandchildren's problem, if that's what we decide to do."
In a second presentation, Bridget Frymire of the New York Department of Service discussed the feasibility of shipping the wastewater off-site. This is what happened at the decommissioned Vermont Yankee plant from 2021 to 2023, although Frymire noted the site already had a railroad spur.
Vermont Yankee's wastewater was shipped to a Texas facility where it was solidified and buried. A facility in Tennessee that is also licensed for radiological waste disposal could put the Indian Point wastewater through a similar process.
This potential solution did not appease many of the community members who spoke during the public comment portion of the meeting and said that offloading the Hudson Valley waste to another community would be an environmental justice violation. It w