ALTAMONT — All options are on the table when it comes to treating the water at Altamont’s Brandle Road wellsite.

Rich Straut, the village’s engineer, said Altamont has for the last year been exploring the treatability of the manganese at the Brandle Road wells.

The village has been “exploring one particular treatment technique,” Straut said, the introduction of potassium ferrate into the drinking water at Brandle Road, “because, if we do treat the wells, it would be a lot less expensive to do it that way than the more traditional way.”

The village has been dealing with its manganese problem since February 2022, when it was notified that a sample from the wellsite contained 0.59 milligrams of manganese per liter; the maximum contaminant level allowed by the EPA is 0.3 milligrams per liter. 

Brandle Road had produced about a third of Altamont’s drinking water, but has largely been closed save for periods of peak usage, at which point the Brandle Road supply gets mixed into the village’s other water supply, from Gun Club Road. 

The on-again-off-again problem became a live issue once again at the end of November when the village had to notify customers that levels were above the recommended level. 

Several options

But another option, Straut told the village board this month, “would be to interconnect with Guilderland.”

The Voorheesville mayor said, “We’re going to explore that as one of the options.”

The next phase will involve “digging in a little bit deeper to each alternative,” Straut said, like examining each option’s upfront and life-cycle costs. 

The options include: 

— The interconnect with Guilderland

An interconnection with Guilderland has been discussed for years, but only in an emergency backup context. 

The installation of a waterline was one of the few openly-discussed contentious issues the committee updating Guilderland’s comprehensive plan had during its two-year process bringing the town’s land-use plan up to date. 

The update committee took a long look at the town’s relationship with the village, and underscored a need for stronger collaboration on shared resources between the municipalities — water and infrastructure projects in particular. But the committee also made clear that the town would not be on the hook for any village-initiated water project, which isn’t something the village ever sought from Guilderland. 

Straut told the board, “We’ll be looking at if they connected, how much would it cost to connect? How feasible is it? Verifying that Guilderland has the water, how much would Guilderland charge them for the water?”

Figures from 2018 placed the emergency interconnection’s cost at about $900,000: about $600,000 for the waterline and $300,000 for a pump station.

It’s also possible for the village to continue running the Brandle Road site and use Guilderland water only as a backup, Straut noted. 

— Traditional greensand filter

A greensand filter uses a unique filter coated with manganese dioxide to remove the contaminants from the water. The filter consists of coated sand particles that create an effective platform for the chemical reaction to take place. 

— Potassium ferrate

This option has already been successfully tested by the village. 

In October 2023, trustees approved $20,000 to run a pilot study on the efficacy of introducing potassium ferrate into the water supply.

“We found out that it was very effective,” Straut said at the time. 

The issue a year ago was the company that made the potassium ferrate could not produce the potential solution on a commercial level, which is no longer the case. 

Straut said potassium ferrate was the least expensive of the village’s three options. 

He said the intention is to have a full report to the board by May or June so the village can then start to apply for grants.