GUILDERLAND — Once dry, the town’s rural west end is closer to having municipal water service.

In a unanimous vote at Tuesday night’s meeting, the town board authorized its department of water and wastewater management to accept bids for the $7 million project.  The plan will provide water to 189 parcels in the rural section of town, about 75 to 80 percent of which are occupied, Ed Hernandez of Delaware Engineering guessed.

His firm put together a report, detailing the project, in December of 2006.  In addition to providing water to more Guilderland residents, the project will improve water quality system-wide, Hernandez said.  Since it will soon be fed from two directions, he explained, the water system will run on a loop, which will eliminate most of the standing water problems that the town has had in the past.  Water standing on dead-end lines can develop trihalomethane, a byproduct of chemicals used to clean drinking water.

Town residents outside of the new water district will see an increase of $9.81 per year as a result of the project, Hernandez said.  Those who are in the district will pay $575 a year plus an initial hook-up fee of $750 if they want to be connected to the system.

“Anything you do in Guilderland, your taxes go up,” Jack Fitzgibbon of Church Road told the board at a public hearing on the issue about a year ago.  “You can run your lines, just don’t charge me.”

Most residents at the hearing, who largely live in the water-strapped section of town, were in favor of the project.

Since development often follows municipal water, the town waited until it had a comprehensive land-use plan in place.

“Thank you; we’ve been waiting for this for 26 years,” said Lauren Beckman of Weaver Road at the hearing.  “We don’t even give our water to our pets right now…It sounds like we are very fortunate we are spreading the cost around to existing customers instead of just the affected metered customers bearing all of the cost.”

Other business

In other business at its May 20 meeting, the board:

—        Unanimously favored Susan Thomas’s request to rezone a parcel of land at 4770 Western Ave. from Industrial to RA-3, so that she and her husband can build a house on the land that borders the reservoir;

—        Voted unanimously to sell a standby generator that had been in the Nott Road sewage treatment plant.  The town had planned on selling the equipment to the village of Fishkill for $15,000, but the village no longer needs it;

—        Voted unanimously to appoint Susan Wheeler Weeks, Diane Meeusen, Martha W. Whitney, and the Rev. Allen Jager as volunteers to the Guilderland Center Hamlet Study Committee;

—        Heard a presentation from Donald Fletcher of Barton and Loguidice on a storm-water management report.  Discussion on the board soon turned to flooding issues in McKownville and it decided to have the supervisor ask William West, superintendent of water and wastewater management, and Todd Gifford, highway superintendent, to look into what concerns residents in that area have and what might be done to address those concerns;

—        Voted unanimously to support the Altamont Free Library in grant applications; and

—        Went into executive session to discuss litigation.