Town mulls expanding, consolidating water districts
Plan creates mixed reaction from residents



NEW SCOTLAND — The town has to make improvements to the infrastructure of the Clarksville and North Road water districts, and wants to extend the public water service to new users at the same time.

The town board held a public information meeting on Thursday, Sept. 29, to explain the options to the residents living in the areas affected by the proposed project. Letters of invitation where sent out to 200 households, but only about 50 people attended.
"I’m thrilled to have this meeting for the people that don’t have water," Patricia Weller of Upper Flat Rock Road told The Enterprise before the meeting started. She does have public water and is part of the North Road Water District.
"I would like to see them extend it," said Jerry Schaddy of the original Clarksville District. "I think it will help extend the base...get more people paying in."

Ralph Collen lives on Lower Flat Rock Road and currently uses well water on his property, which he said he has had no problem with, and has not needed to purify or treat. As people filed into the meeting room, Collen said that he was up for joining a public water system, because he understands that it will increase the value of his home. However, he said, he hasn’t thought yet, about how much he’s willing to pay for it.

All three individuals were of retirement age and said that they didn’t know anything about the proposed project; the letter they received in the mail, was what brought them out that night.

The project

The original Clarksville Water District was formed in the late 1980’s and hasn’t really had any improvements since, Councilman Scott Houghtaling said; he is the town board’s liaison to the water committee.

In 1995, construction started on the North Road District, made possible by a grant and an interest-free loan, because of the contaminants that were found in the ground water, Houghtaling reminded everyone.

The water source for both districts is wells that are located on Winnie Lane. Town engineer and water committee Chairman R. Mark Dempf said water from those wells is plentiful, and has the capacity to serve many more people.

Expansion of the public water system in this section of town is being held up by the expense of laying underground water pipelines.

Water is pumped out of the wells on Winnie Lane and then runs along Route 32 up Flat Rock Road and along the Delaware Turnpike. A booster pump on Route 443 then pushes the water up the hill to the residents in the hamlet.

Current residents along Flat Rock Road and Route 32, who have a water transmission line running in front of their houses, are not able to tap into the public system.

The town wants to make needed improvements to the water tank on Stove Pipe Road, the booster pumps, and the filtration equipment at the well house, and at the same time allow the residents along the transmission line to join the district. New lines would serve as many new residents as economically feasible, including the front end of Morning Star Lane.

The extension will offer water to 43 new users, Dempf said.

The largest single expense of the improvements to the existing district is a new water tank. The current one is rusting and, in order to make the needed repairs to the tank, the town has to put another tank at the same location on Stove Pipe Road; otherwise people would be without water for at least six months as repairs are completed, Dempf said.

The plan is to put in a 280,000-gallon tank next to the existing 200,000-gallon tank.
On the district owned small parcel of land on Stove Pipe Road, Dempf said, "It’s going be a tight fit for the two tanks"; the new one will be wider, but not taller, he said.

The old tank needs to be sandblasted and recoated, Dempf said. Under-water divers inspected the tank six years ago, and, at that time, the inspectors said repairs were needed, Dempf said.
"Is it leaking"" came a call came from the audience.
"Not yet," Dempf said with all seriousness.

Clarksville resident Tony Silvano asked about using a different material for the new tank to make it last longer or cost less.

Dempf said that the plan is to glass line the tank.

Delaware Avenue resident Arthur VanPraag asked what was the difference between Clarksville’s water tank and Feura Bush’s tank that it needs to be replaced sooner.

Houghtaling responded that the Feura Bush tank is not that far behind in needing to be replaced.
"In order to keep the system up and running, we need to do these upgrades," Houghtaling said.

Houghtaling said that the estimated cost for the improvements is $446,000, which would mean a water tax rate of $5.42 per $1,000 of assessed value. This would mean an average parcel would pay $661 per year, which is above the state comptroller’s current limitation of $575. That limit, of how much a municipality can charge each resident for water is set by the state and changes every year. A year ago, it was $621, Dempf said.
"If we add more users, we can drive the cost-per-homeowner down," Houghtaling said. But, at the same time, the town can’t add too many new users, because of the cost of extending new pipelines.

The water tax that residents pay in this water district is based on the assessed value of their property, Houghtaling said.

The current assessed value of the Clarksville Water District is $13 million. North Road’s assessed value is $3.9 million, and the area of the extension has an assessed value of $5.7 million, Houghtaling said.

Supply

One man in the audience stated that considerable development will follow the public water extension.

A lot of the parcels in the area of the extension are currently vacant lots.

Houghtaling nodded in agreement about the potential for development.

Residents expressed concerns about the yield of the well repeatedly throughout the meeting and questioned if the Nitrate problem would come back again, with pulling more water out of the wells. Dempf assured everyone that the water districts’ wells have both quality and quantity.

Dempf added that his firm’s engineering principals have to be approved by the county’s Health Department and the state’s Environmental Conservation Department. A State of New York water supply permit gives New Scotland permission to take water from underground, Dempf said; there is plenty of water in this area.

Consolidation

Something else besides maintenance that’s been put off and needs to be done, Dempf and Houghtaling said, is consolidating the North Road Water District with the Clarksville Water District to make it into one district.

This was one of the stipulations of receiving the state funding for North Road to begin with, Dempf said.
The consolidation is "for equalization" so that everyone who benefits from the infrastructure pays for its upkeep, Houghtaling said. Currently, the North Road Water District users have a lower water rate than Clarksville users, and the North Road people are not paying their fair share to contribute to the expense of the infrastructure, that brings water from the wells through Clarksville into North Road, Houghtaling said.

Joe Weller and his wife were the only North Road Water District residents who attended the meeting. When the audience was asked to raise their hands, about 40 percent were from the original Clarksville Water District and about 58 percent were from the area of the proposed extension.
"I guess we really want it," said one woman with her hand raised as she looked around the room noticing that the individuals without public water were the ones that showed up at the meeting in the most magnitude.

Weller told The Enterprise after the meeting that he was fine with the consolidation, and that he understands that he should be paying for the pipes that are coming up to his street. "Theoretically we were getting a free ride," he said.
"We wouldn’t have a district without Clarksville Water District being there first," Weller said. "My house was affected by the pollution...We had bad water for five years," he said.

Refinancing

The total cost of the needed improvements plus the extension is estimated to be $888,000, Houghtaling said.

The new tax rate per 1,000 of assessed value would be $5.52. This tax rate is 10 cents higher than the rate just for the improvements, Houghtaling said. However, the cost can be reduced by refinancing the existing debt, he added.

North Road debt is on an interest-free loan and is now at $72,000; in five years, the loan decreased by $18,000, Houghtaling said.

Clarksville’s remaining debt is $583,000, to be paid off over 20 more years, at an interest rate of 5.17 percent. But, a 4.75-percent rate is available, Houghtaling said. The town can pay this new rate over 25 or 30 years, he said.

The current water tank didn’t last 30 years, one audience member pointed out.

Houghtaling said that, in retrospect, maybe the town boards over the years should have been charging more for water, to set aside a reserve fund to pay for maintenance.
"These districts just break even — there’s no surplus fund," Houghtaling said.
Resident Joe Hogan, asked, with extending the length of the debt to 30 more years, won’t paying over a longer period of time end up costing homeowners more in the long run"

Financing a water district is not like financing a car, Dempf replied. Even after the current debt is up in 20 years, there will be continued need to update, Dempf said. Residents will also have a need for water and, everything has a life expectancy, he said.

Clarksville resident Sherry Fink said she heard 15 years ago from town officials, that after residents paid for the establishment of the district, the cost of water would go down, because the initial expense of establishing the district and putting in the pipes would be completed.

Houghtaling responded that town taxes, county taxes, school taxes, water taxes and electricity bills have all gone up.

Will this happen"

Consolidation is a board action, Houghtaling said, which will have at least his vote.

Town attorney Michael Mackey said that, after the board votes to consolidate, that vote will be subject to a permissive referendum, which means there will be a 30-day period in which residents can petition for a referendum, if they don’t like the board’s decision.

An extension, on the other hand, is formed through an official petitioning process, Houghtaling said, adding that the town board will require at least 50 percent of the property owners in the extension area to agree to the project.
"We want to see 80 percent," Houghtaling said. The petitioning process will make sure that residents know what they are getting and how much they will have to pay for it.
Houghtaling clarified that the town would bring the water lines up to the landowner’s property lines but then, "It’s the homeowners’ responsibility to hook it up from the property line to your house."

Houghtaling laid out what he thought was a reasonable timeline, if everything goes well: Petitioning will begin in March and construction in 2007.
Dempf said that, by 2007, he would be "very concerned about the improvements."

Some residents uneasy
"They are going to do whatever they want," is the conclusion that Arthur VanPraag came to at the end of the meeting. He said he wants to have the residents vote on the project rather than leaving it in the control of elected representatives.
When asked what he would like the town to do, he said, "They should have done it right the first time."

Maybe if the town had better engineers and better planners when the district was initially proposed, it could have been done better, and there wouldn’t be as many problems now, VanPraag said.

Everything needs maintenance, but the town shouldn’t have waited until the tank was rusting out before coming to the residents, asking for money to fix it.
"Don’t wait for there to be an emergency," VanPraag said. Maybe the town should have charged a little more for water all along to have a reserve fund to repair things along the way, he said.
VanPraag mistrusts the town government when it comes to the water district, because, even from the beginning, he said, when the Clarksville Water District was formed, the town representatives "did not do what they said they would do." He was told 16 years ago that there would be two houses per hook-up and now there are six houses per hook up, he said.
Mike Cootware of Delaware Avenue joined the conversation and said that residents are content with using well water until they want to sell their house; then, he said, "I’ve seen people in their backyard with a backhoe," tapping into the water line illegally.