Town Aims To Finish Plan For Water System Renovation
By Alex Brooks
At the Petersburgh Town Board meeting on Monday, May 21, Water District Superintendent Ben Krahforst said Tom Suozzo of Cedarwood Engineering had created a new draft of the engineering report which will be the basis of the Town’s application for funds to repair and refurbish the Water District. Krahforst said the revision came out of many discussions over the past few weeks aimed at paring down the project to make it affordable. The Town Board had just received the document, so they were not ready to discuss it yet, but they scheduled a workshop meeting to talk about it for Monday, June 4 at 7 pm.
The flooring in the main hall of the Town Hall will be replaced starting on June 3, and the Town Hall will be closed that week while the floor is torn up.
Petersburgh Library Director Melissa Lockett said the Library’s annual fundraiser, the Book, Bake, and Plant Sale, has not been doing well and they plan to change it this year. They are going to scrap the plant part of the sale and add a 50-50 raffle. They wanted to do it legally, so they checked with State authorities and were told that the State needs to see the Town’s law on gambling.
No Town law on gambling could be found except a 1958 law about Bingo, so the Town plans to write one which will enable charitable organizations to hold games of chance for fundraisers in Petersburgh. A public hearing on this law was scheduled for 6:45 on Monday, June 18, just before the Board’s regular monthly meeting.
Siegfried Krahforst spoke to the Board about a situation on Head Of Lane Road. He owns a two family house on that road, and he said a 10″ clay drainage pipe that used to carry stormwater down the side of that road was broken or removed at some point and now storm water is running down the side of the road and causing an ice problem in winter, especially in front of Mrs. O’Dell’s house. He said he isn’t too sure about the history of this pipe, when it was put in or when it was taken out or damaged – but there definitely is a problem with the runoff now.
He said there is a lot of water running off the mountain in that location and it needs to have a place to go.
He said he would be willing to buy the materials if the Town crew would put in a new drainage pipe to carry the water to a catch basin on Route 22 in front of the garage. Town Supervisor Alan Webster said the Town can probably do this, but he needs to talk with the State DOT and “check into a few things” before committing to do it.
Landfill
Supervisor Alan Webster said there has been active negotiation going on about what’s going to happen with the landfill, including talks with Covanta (the successor company to Energy Answers, which contracted to close the landfill in the 1990s), but he is not able to talk publicly about what’s going on. He said there is not currently any litigation in progress.
He also said he was up at the landfill this week with an engineer who said it was the best-looking landfill he’d seen recently, as it is now mowed and being taken care of.
At Public Comment time Joe Dunlop said he was given a tour of the water building last week.
He said there are numerous code violations in the building and the interior finish is unfinished OSB board, which he said will deteriorate rapidly in the humid conditions of that building. He said he thought the building that Taconic put in for the filtration equipment was not up to code and should have been designed to meet code.
“The way that building is, it’s going to fall apart, and the Water District patrons are going to have to pay to have it fixed,” he concluded. Supervisor Webster thanked Dunlop for bringing this to his attention and said he will look into it.
In other business:
• The Board adopted a FOIL policy based on a sample policy found on the NYS Department of State website.
• Webster reported that several people have brought garbage to the landfill that they said they picked up on the side of the road and wanted charged to the Town, but he said that can’t be done.