Board OKs spending for water system controls

The Town Board has approved using $46,100 from four water districts to provide the local match for a state grant that’s helping to pay for updates to electronic control systems.

The project will allow the control systems to be monitored remotely by way of a program called System Control and Data Acquisition, or SCADA. Equipment already has been installed in the Ulster, East Kingston and Spring Lake water districts; the Bright Acres, Cherry Hill, Glenerie and Halcyon Park districts will be upgraded next.

“It’s upgrading the computer controls and pumps,” said town Supervisor James Quigley said. “So now when we finish Phase II, we will have the entire seven water districts computer monitored from the Fording Place Road plant . ...

“We can turn the pumps on, we can turn them off, we can monitor the levels of the water in the tank,” Quigley said.

Work to be done in the next phase of the project includes updating systems along Catskill Avenue, for the Spring Lake system, and on Dogwood Street, for the Ulster Water

District.

“What we’re now doing is Dogwood Street, which is the pump station from the city of Kingston, and we’re going to be able to turn the water on and off,” Quigley said. “As we take it (the water) from the city, we’ll be able to monitor how much water we take.”

Quigley said the new control systems will save the town money in the long run.

“When we do Spring Lake, we currently turn the pumps on and off over a signal that’s sent over a telephone line that runs from Spring Lake tower to Catskill Avenue,” he said. “It costs us $100 a month. That goes away [under the new system] ...

“And ... when we need to measure the tank at Spring Lake, we’ve got to put a guy in a truck, he’s got to drive across town, he’s got to climb to the top of the tank, and he’s got to look, the supervisor said. “That’s all going to be eliminated.”