In May of 2000, 400 linear feet of earth, trees and shrubs detached from a rain-saturated hill behind a car wash in Bethlehem and fell to the Normans Kill ravine below.
The slide destroyed Anthony Battaglia’s Delaware Avenue vegetable stand, the California Produce Marketplace. The Albany Med office building at 99 Delaware Ave. lost half of its parking lot to the landslide. The main route to Albany from Bethlehem was severed, and the 18,000 to 19,000 motorists who travel each day between Albany and Bethlehem on Delaware Avenue were forced to take alternate routes — more than doubling their commuting time in some cases.
Tons of dirt and vegetation fell on the Normans Kill Creek, damming a 90-foot-wide and 200- to 300-foot-long section of its waters…