Multi-Million Dollar Fix Needed for Mahopac’s Brown Water Problem
Close to two and a half years after a Mahopac resident who lives on Country Lane attended an April 2010 Carmel Town Board meeting to complain that the water flowing from the taps in his home was a rusty brown, a large-scale and expensive construction project proposed, once and for all, to remedy the problem is forecasted to begin this September.
The next major step is to have the members of the public weigh in at a public hearing scheduled for next Wednesday, July 11 regarding a proposal to borrow $2.2 million to pay for the project, which will be paid back by all of the residents who own homes in Carmel Water District No. 8.
At a June Carmel Town Board work session, Town Engineer Ronald Gainer explained the problem of brown water in the Country Lane neighborhood as being, “a bane for the residents for a very long time.”
After that April 2010 meeting when the homeowner publicly addressed the brown water problem, months passed, and as of September 2010, residents said they had not received an update from the town on when the problem would be fixed, although it had remained a topic of discussion at two Town Board meetings in June and August of 2010.
It was during those meetings, before Gainer had been hired by the town, that Town Special Projects Coordinator Rob Vara explained to the Town Board that the 10,000-plus feet of old cast iron pipe within the district, including the pipes running along Country Lane, Kennicut Hill Road, Glen Ridge Road, Rustic Lane, Woodland Road, Maple Court, Prince Road and Lakeview Avenue, was causing the discoloration of the water and that replacing the thousands of feet of old iron pipe would be a multi-million dollar project.
In October 2010, a group of residents attended a Town Board meeting to express frustration regarding the slow pace of instituting a solution, as well as the estimated cost of the project, which they feared would significantly drive up the cost of their water bills.
At that meeting, former Councilman Robert Ravallo said to the residents that when old iron pipes in another area in water district No. 8 had been replaced in the 1990s, they had shared in the cost of that project and now the other residents in the district would share in the cost of replacing the remainder of the old iron pipe.
In Feb. 2011, the Town Board approved the funding in order to contract out for design plans and two months later in April 2011 that process began.
On the cusp of finally beginning the project an entire year and a half later, Gainer explained to the Town Board what caused the delay.
“It took an inordinate amount of time to get the design documents finalized,” Gainer said of the project plans that were finally submitted by the design firm to Putnam County Department of Health this April and quickly approved this May. “It’s at a point where you have the necessary approvals to release the project for competitive bid.”
Town Comptroller Mary Ann Maxwell told the Town Board in June that the now estimated $2.2 million to fund the project could be borrowed over either a 20-year or 30-year period. If the Town Board opted to bond the money for 20 years, she said the residents of water district No. 8, collectively, would pay an additional $40,000 per year, based on today’s interest rates.
While relief from the daily annoyance and cost of brown water running from the taps in their homes is said to be on the way, the residents of Country Lane, and throughout other portions of Carmel Water District No. 8, will have to suffer through more inconvenience in the coming months before the construction project is completed.
All told, Gainer said, 15,400 feet of liner pipe would have to be laid down and the construction period could be tough on residents who live in those neighborhoods, as the shoulders of two and a half miles of roadway would have to be ripped up.
“That is several months of work. It’s probably a six-month construction period,” Gainer said, expressing hope that if the Town Board followed a specific time line, the project could begin by this September, but may have to go on hiatus during the winter months. “It might have to continue until March, April, May [2013], to actually get this project completely in the ground and done.”
Adam has worked in the local news industry for the past two decades in Westchester County and the broader Hudson Valley. Read more from Adam’s author bio here.
