New Water Operator Hired
By Alex Brooks
Deputy Supervisor and Supervisor-elect Dennis Smith ran the Petersburgh Town Board meeting on November 18 because Supervisor Alan Webster could not attend because of illness. Denise Church was also not present, which Smith said was because of weather.
The Board unanimously approved the appointment of Leonard Clapp of Berlin as the Water District Operator and Thomas Margiotta as Second Water District Operator. Clapp has a Water Operator’s license already, as he was the Water Operator in charge of the smaller Berlin water system for many years. Smith said Margiotta had a Water Operator’s license at one point but he had let it lapse. He will be getting a license again. Smith said Margiotta formerly operated a water system for the military at a location in New York State.
Smith said the idea is that the two operators would share duties seasonally, with Clapp being the primary operator in winter and Margiotta the primary operator in summer.
For the moment, Clapp is the operator in charge. He began the job November 1, and filed his first monthly water report for this meeting.
Water District Questions
The meeting was almost entirely taken up with Water District issues, as Heinz Noeding has submitted a list of 8 questions (and a few more added extemporaneously) on behalf of the Water District Committee which took about an hour to go through.
He asked about reimbursement from the WIIA grant for significant repairs undertaken recently to Well #2. The estimate for those repairs was about $13,000, but Dennis Smith said the actual bills have not been received yet, so the exact cost has not been compiled, nor have requests for funds from the grant been made yet.
Noeding asked if the test results were back yet from the sediment testing. Sediment samples were taken about a week and a half earlier, and at that time results were expected in two weeks. Smith said he has not received any results yet.
Noeding asked if progress had been made on an agreement with the Environmental Facilities Corporation so that Petersburgh’s Emerging Contaminants Grant can get underway. This grant was awarded to Petersburgh some time ago and its purpose is to try to find a source of clean water (uncontaminated by PFOA) close enough to be a feasible site for a new well. Smith said he is not sure what progress has been made, but he did not believe that any agreement with EFC has been concluded.
Noeding asked what is the status of putting an interim bubbler system in the tank to prevent freezing this winter, since the Town’s engineer Tom Suozzo said he does not think it is feasible to put in the mixer, which will be the permanent anti-freezing device, before winter. Smith said he had no update on this. It’s possible that Supervisor Alan Webster would have had more answers, or more detailed answers, to some of these questions, had he been there.
Next Noeding asked about invoices and expenses related to a Water Operator training course that the Town was trying to arrange for the former Deputy Water Operator. Apparently when he did not make it to the first class set up for him, the town arranged a second class a month later, and he did not go to that one either. Smith said the first school refunded the money paid for the course, and the second gave the town a credit for a future course. The hotel, however, was not so forgiving and the Water District had to pay for the hotel stay. The Town also reimbursed the former Deputy Water Operator for mileage and tolls, and Noeding said he thinks there is a “fundamental problem” with paying a town official’s expenses to go to a class if he or she did not go to the class. Both Amy Schaaphok and Jack Barnhart said they agreed. Noeding continued on about the details of this episode, asking why the reimbursement voucher was signed by the Town Clerk rather than the former Deputy Water Operator, and why the reimbursement check was paid before the Town Board signed off on the voucher. Nobody present had answers to all of Noeding’s questions. Amy Schaaphok said “this needs to be reviewed,” and that’s more or less where the matter was left.
Noeding then asked about a bill for $2,500 from a contractor for digging needed to repair a pipe in the Mill Yard last month. Although the Water District has in the past had bills of this size for digging up pipes to repair them, the Water District has been trying to avoid them lately by either having the Town crew do the digging or hiring a local contractor who is less expensive. Noeding remarked that for an organization with an annual budget of about $32,000, a $2,500 bill is a big problem. Dennis Smith described the episode, saying the water tank was running low at that time and it was believed that a leak was the cause. When a leak was found on a Saturday morning, he felt they needed to hurry to get it fixed because of the water tank situation. When he could not reach anyone from the Highway Department, nor Pat Sweeney nor Burdick Excavating, he accepted a recommendation from Jim Hurlburt to bring in an excavator he knew. Smith said, “I trusted the judgment of our Water District Operator, and it didn’t work out as well as I hoped.”
Noeding then added a question which was not on his written list. He said the Water Operator’s report for last month showed amounts of water added to the tank in the neighborhood of 460,000 gallons per day, which could not possibly be accurate since even in the best of circumstances the Water District’s wells can only produce slightly more than 50,000 gallons per day. Ben Krahforst explained that the main water meter going into the tank will not give accurate figures because it includes water going through the recirculation system, and it is also sometimes inaccurate when the wells are entraining air in the water. He said another meter which measures water coming in from the wells is more accurate. The Board said they would make the new Operator aware that there is an issue with measuring water production so that he can seek to keep accurate reports.
Ben Krahforst then said that there is a sub-metering package available that can be installed at the pump house to keeps tallies of how much electricity is being used by the GAC system and how much is used by the regular pumps and equipment, so that the Water District can determine how much of the electrical cost is attributable to PFOA remediation and can charge that to Taconic. Heinz Noeding also asked the town to compile accurate records of electricity usage before and after the GAC equipment was installed, so that the Water District can document what the additional electric cost is of the PFOA remediation equipment.