Water District Renovation Projects Are Proceeding
By Alex Brooks
At the October 16 meeting of the Petersburgh Town Board it was announced that Taconic has submitted plans for New York State DOH and DEC approval for four improvements. Improvements to the Petersburgh Water System that they will be paying for, all of which the Town has signed off on. These are a system to remove PFOA from well waste water, Well 2 upgrades, Well 5 and 6 upgrades, and a recirculation system which allows use of recirculated clean water to keep the flow rate through the carbon filter up to design specifications. The upgrades to Well #2 have been approved, and the other three projects are still under review by the State agencies.
Water District Superintendent Ben Krahforst said the cost of these projects can be used as the loan portion of the project under the rules of the grant the Water District is trying to get, so if the Water District gets this grant, it will be able to renovate its facilities without spending its own money or taking on additional debt. However, the State has not announced any new round of funding under this grant program and it looks like they will not do so until the Spring.
The Water District needs to get some work done immediately, and will be spending significant sums this fall funded by temporary borrowing, with the expectation that these projects will eventually be funded by a State grant. An application for one of these projects has been submitted for DOH and DEC approval this week by the Town’s engineering firm, Cedarwood Engineering. The project submitted is for installation of piping bypassing the storage tank, so that water can be supplied to the system even while the tank is out of service for cleaning.
Other than that, Krahforst said the Water District’s operations are running “as well as can be expected.”
Town Hall Construction
After all bids for renovation of the Records Room in the basement came in too high to be done with the money available under the Record Management Grant, the Town asked Kean Clyde of C&H Builders to look at the job, and he submitted a bid which came to under $8,000 and could be funded by the grant money available. The Town has also asked C&H Builders to install new tile in the bathroom and change the bathroom door so that the bathroom is handicapped accessible, and to put in a new handicapped-accessible front door which the Town has already purchased.
Town Supervisor Alan Webster said the new boiler for the Town Hall is in. He said Carlton Coon is waiting for one more part which is supposed to arrive in a couple of days. Coon was working on the boiler while the Town meeting was going on.
The Board felt that the Town parking lot needs to be better lighted. Ben Krahforst submitted, on behalf of his company ACT Electric, an estimate to install two 500 watt flood fixtures, one on each corner of the Town Hall, with a programmable time clock to control them, for $2,750. He said the fixtures will be the same make and model as the one currently on the Library. The Board accepted his proposal and asked him to go ahead with installation. Supervisor Webster said there is a lot of activity in the Town buildings nearly every night, and with the uneven pavement and it being very dark in the parking lot so you can’t see where you are going, it was unsafe. He said he was pleased that the new lighting was approved.
Landfill
The DEC is planning to install nine new pairs of wells (one deep, one shallow at each location) at the landfill to take more samples and more accurately characterize levels of toxic materials there. Ben Krahforst accompanied a group of DEC contractors who were scouting access to the locations where they want to put in the wells. Krahforst said only one of the locations was difficult, but they can access it by going across neighboring land, and the neighbor is cooperative. Krahforst said he thinks they will start drilling the test wells in the first or second week of November.
The Town has approached Covanta, the successor company to Energy Answers, the company which closed the landfill in the 1990s, to ask them to contribute to the cost of putting in the leachate collection system that should have been put in by Energy Answers in the 1990s. Supervisor Webster said the Town had originally asked for a response by October 13, but Covanta asked for more time to do research and formulate their response, and they are now expected to respond by the end of the month.
Supervisor Webster also said he and Berlin Supervisor Rob Jaeger have been working on getting the brush cut down on the landfill. Although the surface of the landfill is supposed to be mowed once a year, that has not been done in quite a while and some trees have grown up on the landfill. Webster got a quote from the Town’s mowing company, A&E Landscaping, to cut down all the brush for $3,500, and Jaeger got a quote from Duane Goodermote to cut down all the brush for $3,000. The Board approved hiring Goodermote to do this job. The cost will be split between Berlin and Petersburgh.
Webster said the landfill will need to be mowed annually from now on, and he said the cost of that is expected to be $1,300 per year (split between the two towns), which will need to be budgeted by the Town from now on.
Highway
Town Highway Superintendent Rob Cottrell said all the roads have been mowed. He said it was done late in the season because he wasn’t able to get the rented machine here earlier. He discussed plans to replace culverts on Maxon Road and on Weaver Dam Road this week, and said there has been a rash of road signs being stolen lately.
Insurance Policies
The Town Board passed several new policies on sexual harassment and discrimination, workplace violence prevention, and the like, at the request of the Town’s Insurance carrier, MYMIR. The Town is required to have all Town employees take a class annually on these issues. The class will take place in Petersburgh and will be provided at no cost to the Town by NYMIR. One of the policies, concerning control of exposure to blood-borne pathogens, was tabled because there were some blanks in the text and more information was needed.
Other Matters
Supervisor Webster said the problem with the tax software purchased from the Williamson Law Book Company has been resolved. Apparently the County has reconsidered its refusal to accept data from that program, and the data can now be submitted from the program that the Town has purchased.