Water meeting scheduled for June 29
NEW PALTZ, N.Y. » The New York City Department of Environmental Protection has scheduled a June 29 meeting to discuss the possibility of water being drawn from the city’s Delaware Aqueduct if a proposed water district on Plains Road fails to win court approval.
The meeting is to begin at 7 p.m. in the Community Center on Veterans Drive.
The city’s Delaware and Catskill aqueducts are to be shut down during several 10-week periods from 2018 to 2020 so that upgrades can be made, and Department of Environmental Protection spokesman Adam Bosch said the department remains hopeful that the proposed Water District 5 on Plains Road will be operational by then.
“We are getting awfully close to the deadline at this point, so DEP has needed to prepare some contingency plans,” Bosch said in an email.
“The city and New Paltz have not given up on the Plains Road water district and development of groundwater wells there,” he said. “In fact, lawyers for all the parties have been meeting recently in hopes of settling the legal action so that the ground water system can be built.”
The New Paltz Town Board voted in February 2016 to establish Water District 5 for 86 properties along a section of Plains Road. Twenty-two homes are to be connected to the system initially, and other properties in the district won’t be charged unless they, too, connect.
A lawsuit filed by New Paltz resident Ingrid Beer contends the town did not establish a maximum amount of expenditures, failed to establish costs and provide details about the project, did not obtain signatures from both property owners for some parcels, does not have outside users factored into the cost of water use, and will render private wells in the district useless.
Bosch noted that there are 74 communities north of New York City that purchase water from the aqueducts. “At this point, New Paltz is the only one of those without an adequate backup supply or an active project to construct one,” he said. “If New Paltz is able to forge ahead with the Plains Road project, New York City is prepared to provide an additional $9 million to build out that water system, in addition to the $2.5 million that we’ve already given greater New Paltz for exploration, studies and other purposes.”