Education Center Opens at BASF Site

Times Union: From a landfill, an oasis springs, Sept. 22, 2011

Chemical company BASF has transformed the site of its former manufacturing plant into 10 acres of wildlife habitat with an education center and 40 acres of land available for redevelopment.

The Record: Former landfill transformed into environmentally conscious education center, wildlife habitat VIDEO

BASF invested more than $20 million in the environmental investigation and cleanup of the property which now includes a small building made with local materials...

Press Release: BASF opens new environmental education classroom and wildlife habitat in Rensselaer, New York

The environmental education classroom is a new building that is a model for sustainable construction and has been registered with the United States Green Building Council (USGBC) with the goal of obtaining Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED®) Platinum certification.

This project, just north of the Besicorp Empire Generating plant, is extensively documented by BASF, with many images and videos including:

Transforming a Brownfield Site (includes interviews with Karen Urbanski, Rensselaer Middle School Principal, and Mayor Dan Dwyer)



BASF Environmental Education Classroom and Wildlife Habitat (The company makes many of the building materials used in this demonstration project, so most of these videos are long-format advertisements for their products, but the construction details are interesting.)



FYI, BASF makes an herbicide to deal with that invasive purple loosestrife in their native wildlife habitat (but nobody told their videographer...)