Potential backup wells to be studied
Village officials plan to test three wells near the water treatment plant to determine if any can serve as a backup source.
Mayor Tim Rogers said during a telephone interview Thursday that the Chazen Companies have been hired at $21,000 to conduct a study, which will take place when the village uses its reservoir during a shutdown of the New York City Department of Environmental Protection water line that ordinarily serves as a primary supply.
“The hope is we get (state) Department of Health approval to test those wells ... (for) the yield and the quality,” he said.
Testing would also seek to determine whether there would be any impact on neighboring properties.
“We don’t anticipate that there will be because these are much smaller bedrock wells thousands of feet from the nearest neighbors,” Rogers said.
“Ideally, we’re going to be pumping them for 20 or 30 gallons per minute,” he said. “The idea is that we’re going to test these wells during the 10-week shut down.”
New York City has a planned 10-week shutdown of the Catskill Aqueduct in October but will be able to reopen the system long enough to refill the village reservoir on Mountain Rest Road.
For similar shutdowns in 2019 and 2020, the system will be inoperable and plans are to establish a water district on Plains Road for a backup supply. However, that proposal is being challenged in court and in the event it cannot be built, city officials would construct an extension from another aqueduct in Gardiner.
Rogers said the village is paying the $21,100 for the well tests while the city would pay for all of the other backup plans.
“This will provide us with the water we need to provide an additional cushion when the DEP is doing its repair work on the aqueduct,” Rogers said.
Rogers has also advocated finding ways to become less dependent on the city system.
“We’ll have 10 weeks of data to see how these wells perform,” he said.
The city provides an estimated 7,000 gallons of water per day to about 300 village and town customers.