NEW SCOTLAND — Albany County legislators L. Michael Mackey and Herbert Reilly, both Democrats representing New Scotland, want protections under a new county blasting law meant for local private water wells to be expanded to protect municipal water supplies.

Mackey authored the original blasting bill this spring, as Kinder Morgan and its subsidiary, Tennessee Gas Pipeline, prepare in the next two years to expand pipelines across New Scotland and parts of Albany County.

Mackey and Reilly are proposing a similar bill to create additional protection for town reservoirs in Albany County, including the Vly Creek Reservoir in Clarksville that serves Bethlehem, New Salem, and parts of New Scotland, Reilly told The Enterprise.

“This is a separate law, not an amendment to the earlier one,” Mackey wrote in an e-mail to The Enterprise.

The legislature’s Conservation and Improvement Committee unanimously voted this week to schedule the municipal water protection bill for a public hearing on Aug. 25, he wrote.

“This came about primarily at the urging of New Scotland Town Board member Bill Hennessy,” Mackey continued, “who felt it was important to add protections for the Clarksville well field and the Vly Creek Reservoir.” Mackey said.

Mackey said that section 4 (b) of the bill would require a blaster to inquire of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and the towns where blasting is proposed about whether or not there are any known or suspected areas of subsurface contamination within the blast effect area.

If towns or the DEC identify sites of contamination, the Albany County Health Department could require the blaster to investigate and perform remediation prior to blasting, Mackey said.

“Obviously, this is intended to prevent pollution of drinking water, since, as Herb Reilly has pointed out, there is, at least, one known brownfield as well as a capped municipal dump not far from where the pipeline will be going,” Mackey wrote. 

Mackey and Reilly are seeking opinions on the amended bill from the towns they represent, Reilly said; they met with the New Scotland’s town board two weeks ago.

Reilly said that he is concerned about Kinder Morgan’s potential to start blasting because of the presence of identifiable brownfields in Clarksville.

A brownfield site is a property where a contaminant is present at levels exceeding soil-clean-up objectives or other health-based or environmental standards, adopted by the state Department of Environmental Conservation, according to the DEC website.

Reilly referred to an oil spill in New Scotland decades ago that leaked into the rock fissures on the hill near North Road and Flat Rock Road.

“They caused a lot of damage up there,” Reilly said of the industry that spilled contaminants. “This blasting is going to go right down the pipeline. The Kinder Morgan blasting is 1,500 feet from the oil spill,” he said.

“No one has ever determined how much oil is in the ground,” Reilly told The Enterprise.

Hennessy, an engineer, told The Enterprise that the ground’s subsurface can be altered through the blasting technique proposed for the pipe expansion that could cause contaminants to migrate.

“It’s a very important issue in the town because of our geology and hydrogeology,” he said, referring to the town’s varied water supplies. “Protecting them is important to existing and future town residents.”

Councilman Douglas LaGrange, whose well was affected when the first pipeline came through, said that the town board welcomed the legislators’ efforts.

“We were very excited, equally excited as we were for the private-well law,” he said. “It’s as important a protection for our residents, as it is for Bethlehem.”

About the old oil spill, LaGrange said, “Right now, it’s contained. A blast could open up a fissure.”

He said that Mackey and Reilly’s proposal has “a lot of good reasoning behind it” and that the town board passed a resolution supporting it.

LaGrange said that introducing the bills for private well and municipal supply protection separately, rather together, allowed the bills to be considered by the legislature without encumbrance.

“When you start piling those laws together…things can really bog it down and you don’t get the intent done,” LaGrange said. “Both of these are great protections for our residents. I wish somebody had done it 35 years ago.

“It’s not an anti-pipeline law,” LaGrange said. “If it has to go through, the residents should have protections.”

Mackey told The Enterprise in an email that the legislature could vote on the municipal water protection bill as early as the Sept. 14.