Petersburgh Water Tank To Be Back In Service In A Week
by Alex Brooks
At the Petersburgh Town Board meeting on September 21, Supervisor Dennis Smith said the contractor had finished sealing the inlet and outlet pipes of the water tank that day. He said they needed to let the sealant dry for a couple of days and disinfect the tank, and get permission from the Department of Health to put the tank back in service, and they could probably get the tank filled and back in service by the end of the week.
Sealing the pipes cost $58,000, and diagnostic work prior to that cost $6,800, so finding and repairing this leak cost about $65,000, which is more than twice the Water District’s current annual revenue. This sum can be paid from the WIIA grant that is currently in progress, but since that sum was not included in the original grant budget, and other things in the original grant budget need to be revised as well, the Town will have to submit a revised budget for that grant and get it approved by the state grant administrators.
Some of the other items increasing the grant budget are pump replacements for Well #2 and Well #6 that were not in the original budget, the realization that the generator needs to be replaced, which was not in the original budget, an increase in the budget for engineering, and a price increase for steel which increased the cost of the new pumphouse/GAC Building.
There are some items in the original budget which will not have to be done so there are some reductions in cost that may balance to some extent the additional unplanned spending. Heinz Noeding asked the Board to schedule a special meeting for the purpose of constructing and approving a revised budget for the WIIA grant to submit to the grant administrators, and the Board scheduled a meeting for that purpose on Monday September 28 at 7 pm.
Landfill Project Update
Tom Berry said he and Heinz Noeding had walked around the landfill that day to inspect its condition and view the work that Jim Winn had done to fix the stream diversion system which initial assessments had found not to be working. Berry said the ponding on the landfill which had been occurring has been eliminated and culverts designed to carry the water around the landfill have been unplugged and are now functioning. Some other problems have not yet been fixed. Berry mentioned a diversion pipe which is dumping water near where the leachate seep is occurring and may be mixing with leachate and augmenting its flow, which needs to be re-routed away from there. He said there is still some rooted vegetation that needs to be removed because it threatens to pierce the cap. But overall the landfill cover is in good shape.
Measuring the flow of the leachate seep has begun, and monitoring during July, according to Berry, produced an estimate of its volume as 400 gallons per day. The engineers who have a lot of experience with landfills say this is a relatively small flow and it bodes well for being able to find an affordable solution to the leachate problem. But this monitoring system needs to remain in place for quite some time so that the engineers can get data on what the leachate flow volume is in all seasons and all weather conditions, drought or flood.
Meanwhile, the engineers have completed their initial landfill assessment and submitted it to DEC.
Hazard Mitigation Plan
A Hazard Mitigation Plan written by Rensselaer County was once again on the agenda, and Supervisor Smith said Petersburgh needs to adopt said plan in order to be eligible for certain types of grant funding. The plan was not passed last month because nobody had read it, and that is because it is, in Councilman Noeding’s words, “hideously long.” But Noeding said he had read it, and he summarized some of the facts about Petersburgh he had found in it. The Board then unanimously adopted the plan.
With budget season approaching, the Board scheduled its first Budget Workshop for Monday October 5 at 7 pm, when it will begin constructing the town’s budget for 2021.