Aug. 21--BETHLEHEM -- A Canadian company that makes de-icing products for municipal highway departments plans to set up a storage and distribution center on a Hudson River site owned by National Grid.

The company, Innovative Municipal Products (U.S.) Inc. of Ajax, Ontario, currently stores magnesium chloride and calcium chloride that it imports from the Netherlands at the Buckeye Partners terminal at the Port of Albany.

But the company plans to lease a 56-acre property that National Grid owns on Route 144 in Glenmont -- formerly a Texaco oil tank farm -- as a more permanent solution for importing and storing the materials before distributing them to municipal customers.

One of its products is sprayed onto roads before winter storms to prevent snow and ice buildup. Another product is spayed onto road salt to make it more effective.

Innovative Municipal Product's general counsel, Patrick Berrigan, said Thursday that the company currently uses large tanks at the Buckeye terminal for both liquid and solid chloride.

But the National Grid site is attractive because it has a dock where it would off-load the product from ships that come up the Hudson. And the site has large former oil tanks it could use for storage. The site, about one mile south of the Port of Albany, also has an office building and warehouse. A small part of the parcel located on the western side of Route 144 has railroad access.

"It is a nonhazardous product," Berrigan said. "There's not much danger. They want to acquire their own tank farm."

The lease, which is for 25 years, must get approval from the state's Public Service Commission, which regulates utilities in the state and has to sign off on major land sales and long-term leases by utilities.

National Grid has owned the site since 1985, when it was Niagara Mohawk. The site, which was bought for $2.5 million at the time and is adjacent to a power plant it once owned, was originally expected to be used for a research and development project. The utility later sold the power plant, and the research project never transpired. The power plant is now owned by PSEG Inc. of Newark, N.J.

"We use the site for storage and training now," said National Grid spokesman Patrick Stella.

National Grid will be paid an annual lease that starts at $50,000 and escalates to $100,000 for the final ten years of the agreement, according to the PSC filing. Innovative Municipal Products must also reimburse National Grid for the property taxes.

Innovative Municipal Products has received all the necessary government approvals for the project except for the PSC, including permission from the Bethlehem Planning Board, which approved the project in June.

Berrigan says he expects the PSC to put the project on its November agenda, and then the company will start the long process of upgrading the site at an expected cost of $2 million. Completion is expected by the spring.

A filing with the PSC says the new terminal will allow the company to "expand its current operation base in New York state." It also says the facility will employ three to five people.

Larry Rulison can be reached at 454-5504 or by e-mail at lrulison@timesunion.com.

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