Gillibrand recently made her third trip to Syracuse’s Inner Harbor. During the upstate swing she also stopped by Buffalo and Rochester’s waterfronts.

The senator said she wants to create half-million dollar grants for environmental cleanup at former industrial waterfronts: “It was a site just like this that helped give New York’s strong manufacturing tradition the ability to power us through the 20th century…But in the wake of decades of watching factories close, it’s sites like this that have some of the worst economic decline.”

In true Washington fashion, the program would also create a task force.

Buffalo is undergoing large-scale cleanup and redevelopment of its waterfront. And this summer, Syracuse signed off on a $350 million project to create a neighborhood around its Inner Harbor area. The developer estimates the environmental cleanup would cost $11 million.

Gillibrand admitted her program doesn’t have any hope of making it through Congress before the election. But she was more optimistic about afterward.