RENSSELAERVILLE — Jerrine Corallo grew up in Rensselaerville, at the Huyck Preserve, and is now helping her hometown secure a safe water supply.

She and Mary Carney are partners in Sustainable Growth, a business based in South Westerlo.

They started working with the town’s Water and Sewer Advisory Committee in 2023 when Bill Bensen chaired the group of volunteers. Soon after, Ed Csukas took the leadership role, shepherding the committee through the many hurdles that needed clearing to obtain an award now totalling over $3 million.

In December, after giving his final report to the Rensselaerville Town Board, Csukos handed the baton to Gerard Wallace. 

On Jan. 8, Wallace told the board, “We have been working very hard, also with Sustainable Growth. And we have a new clerk and we have two new members. And everybody has been really stepping up fantastically … And the bottom line is that we feel very confident that we’ll be successful in the transition.”

The committee has been overseeing a total renovation of the hamlet’s water district, which serves 79 homes, after flaws in the current system allowed for high levels of trihalomethanes (TTHMs) and HAA5 — a group of five haloacetic acids — which develop as a result of the disinfection process.

Because the water is pulled from Lake Myosotis, an exposed water source, more treatment is necessary than if the water comes from underground. 

Several well sites have been identified and the plan is to transition away from using water for Lake Myosotis.

Corallo anticipates contracts for the work will be awarded in mid-2027 and the work will be completed by 2029.

Corallo, who has a bachelor’s degree from the University at Albany and a master’s degree in environment and development from the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, said that she and Carney formed their business to “help bridge the gap we find in a lot of areas. There is a lack of resources and so we’re trying to help folks access those resources in different ways.”

Just before starting Sustainable Growth, Corallo had worked as a community development specialist for an engineering firm.

“I have been writing grants professionally for about 20 years,” she said. “I had seen this gap and my partner, Mary, and I had talked about the type of work that we wanted to do close to home. We have young families. We need some flexibility.”

Corallo went on, “Mary and I really try to keep our costs as low as we can and lean on building capacity and working intimately with town staff and the volunteers to try to get as much done through others as we can.”

In looking for technical assistance for the Rensselaerville Water District, she said, “We found this really incredible non-profit run out of Syracuse University.”

The Environmental Finance Center offers guidance across Region 2 of the Environmental Protection Agency, which includes New York, New Jersey, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands. The center focuses on the how-to-pay component of environmental protection, Corallo explained.

“They actually have taken what’s happened in Rensselaerville and done presentations on it,” she said. SU-EFC has used Rensselaerville as a model, she said, because of “the level of involvement of the committee members and volunteers.”

What jump-started the Rensselaerville project was an administrative order from the EPA when the haloacetic acids had exceeded federal safety limits.

“Sustainable Growth was able to come in and help organize and identify funding ….,” said Corallo. “We helped the town understand the importance of securing an engineer to create a preliminary engineering report.”

Once CT Male had completed the report, “we could then get listed on the New York State’s Drinking Water State-Revolving Loan Fund intended-use plan and get funding.”

She went on, “That’s what we did. It was a long process.”

Wallace, she said, was “very involved in an income survey, which allowed us to demonstrate that the small water district actually met hardship status and that made us eligible for a better financial package from the state.”

Rensselaerville also “got some points,” Corallo said, because it had to respond to the EPA’s administrative order on the exceedances of disinfection by-products.

“It elevated the level of concern,” she said.

At the same time, the water district has had to update its existing system, using water from Lake Myosotis, to keep the current drinking water within standards.

“We haven’t exceeded the maximum contaminant levels for those disinfection byproducts since February 2024,” she said.

The project has been awarded a total of $3,080,100 through the Drinking Water State Revolving Fund Base Hardship program; close to a million dollars of that amount is because of interest-free financing due to the hardship that was established.

Two different state entities co-administer the award: the Environmental Facilities Corporation, which handles finances, and the Department of Health, which handles design.

“It’s an award,” Corallo stressed. “The town doesn’t have that money yet.”

She explained, “The way these major infrastructure projects in towns work is they have to have an engineer; they finance an engineer to do the design work. Then, once the funding agency approves it, they get money from a local bank through … a bond anticipation note and then they’re able to finance the project.”

When construction is nearly complete, the town then goes through a full bonding process. 

“They figure out how much everything costs and then, at that point, it’ll go on the water-district users to pay,” she said.

Rensselaerville recently got a bump in its award money to cover increasing costs of material and labor.

“We submitted an email to EFC in the right time period and asked them to escalate the project costs to reflect the current construction period,” said Corallo. “So basically, the old funding award was based on 2024, and we requested that they update to reflect the current project cost.”

The project reached another milestone in December when the Rensselaerville Town Board followed the committee’s recommendation to move forward using the engineering firm Tighe & Bond.

“We’re trying to keep things moving as quickly as possible,” said Corallo. “Our next milestone is entering a project finance agreement with the Environmental Facilities Corporation by September of 2027.”

Corallo concluded by talking about what a difference a group of committed citizens can make.

“It sounds cliché” she said, “but it’s just having a few people who sit down and are like, ‘We’re just going to commit to this and keep meeting once a month or however long as volunteer … to take on what we can to make sure that this gets done for our community because it’s important.’”