Burden Lake Road closure poses concern ahead of winter season

Parts of Rensselaer County were devastated by flooding last summer. Months later, a stretch of Burden Lake Road is still closed.

NewsChannel 13 reported in August the road was closed due to concerns over a private dam.

It’s not clear what this means come winter, when roads will need to be plowed.

Rensselaer County Executive Steve McLaughlin calls Burden Lake Road is an interesting situation, and says it’s an ongoing discussion.

“I will say it’s a privately owned dam. It is not a dam owned by this county. And that’s a dam that has not been inspected as required by the DEC by state law. It had not been inspected in years. We did not know that, we’re not sure DEC knew that,” McLaughlin said. “But when it came to light, we cannot have buses, cars, children, going over that dam, people going back and forth to work. We can’t have that until we know that dam is inspected, and we feel it’s incumbent on the private owners of that dam to get that done.”

There is no plan yet as to how the county will approach plowing the road.