Village looks to keep water flowing
NEW PALTZ » Village trustees are seeking a combination of water source options that will make up for the 1.7 million gallons per day lost when the New York City Department of Environmental Protection system goes off line for two 10-week periods starting next year.
Of five possible sources, three are considered likely under a plan that would have costs covered by the city.
“We’ve made some decisions about the directions we would go in with the approval in principle of both (the town and village) boards and New York City DEP (Department of Environmental Protection),” Trustee Thomas Rocco said.
“Those directions in principle include the village improving its current reservoir system and instituting a conservation program and potentially drilling for several other rock or gravel wells with the village,” he added. “and then the town ... developing the Plains Road and Pleasser Road well fields, and providing 500 gallons per minute to the village after they have developed those during the shutdowns and during emergencies.”
The village system, which serves about 7,000 village customers and 300 town customers, gets water from New York’s City Catskill Aqueduct and a reservoir off of Mountain Rest Road. The village uses about 1 million gallons per day from the aqueduct, which includes about 70,000 gallons per day that are consumed by town properties outside the village’s boundaries.
City officials plan to shut down the aqueduct for two 10-week periods, in the fall of 2016 and again in the fall of 2017, for a planned upgrade.
The city system repairs are related to leaks that have been found responsible for flooding Wawarsing properties. In March 2009, the environmental group Riverkeeper reported that city memos spanning 20 years reported leaks had amounted to about 35 million gallons per day, and, in 2012, the U.S. Geological Survey found the leaks had resulted in raising the water table enough to come up through basements.
Officials have estimated it would cost about $2 million for new wells on Plesser Road, $4.5 million on Plains Road and about $400,000 for upgrades to the village reservoir system.
Information was not immediately available about the cost of drilling new wells within the village.
“During the past year and half we had this exploration project ... that included dropping 120 very narrow pipes at various depths looking for water,” Rocco said. “Among those there were a number that showed positive that there is water down there, but it was not in enough quantity to make it worthwhile drilling for an 8-inch pipe to go down there. But it might be, if we could accumulate two or three of those, that it could amount to 50 or 60 gallons a minute.”