GENEVA, N.Y. (WROC) — Monday, the New York State DEC Interim Commissioner Sean Mahar announced the completion of the former Geneva Foundry sites and its surrounding areas. The DEC conducted this $36 million environmental cleanup of the offsite area from April 2017 through July 2024. During that time, approximately 15,000 soil samples from nearly 3,200 soil boring locations were collected and tested for lead and arsenic to define the extent of the cleanup. Interim Commissioner Mahar said this has been a long time coming. “It’s been a long seven years, and it hasn’t been the easiest seven years. But, by working together and what you are seeing today is truly the power of partnerships in action,” Mahar said. More than 94,000 tons of contaminated soil and debris were removed, and more than 48 acres of land were cleaned up. And the results showed. "And it’s really fitting to be here in this park because this is an example of what it looks like after the restoration is complete. And you can see and know that we have the community in mind when we design these cleanups because we want to make sure we’re not just cleaning up that toxic legacy but actually bringing the communities back and creating the amenities that they want,” Mahar said. In the seven years this project took, many new faces joined the team, but the focus never shifted away from cleaning the city of Geneva.  “We were just chatting beforehand, and a lot of staff have turned over since the beginning of this park and throughout all of those different leaders, we have maintained the focus on the community and what the impacts of the community of the past has done for the community of the present and the community of the future,” Geneva City Manager Amie Hendrix said. And it’s not just local leaders who saw the end results. Local residents, like Father Gregory Murphy, saw the major improvements as well.  “The DEC did a great job. They did more than what they promised,” St. Michael's Orthodox Church Pastor Father Murphy said. “The whole neighborhood has improved. You know, they didn’t just come in and just dig up the dirt. They came in and they improved. They took stairways and porches down if they needed to because underneath it was the contaminated soil.”