Report Seeks Water Sources Free of PFOA
by Alex Brooks
Petersburgh has recently received the final report from a study undertaken with grant support from New York State to identify a new groundwater source with the potential to deliver adequate, uncontaminated drinking water for the Water District. The goal of the project was to find a place as close as possible to Petersburgh’s water tank where an adequate supply of PFOA-free water can be found.
The project entered data about existing PFOA contamination in wells throughout the Town into GIS mapping software to create a map which shows visually where in Town PFOA has been found in the well water and levels of contamination through darker or lighter shades.
This was combined with hydrogeological analysis aimed at locating areas where abundant water is likely to be found to identify places to drill test wells.
The study was done by Town’s consulting engineers, Cedarwood Engineering. The hydrogeological analysis was subcontracted out to a company called HydroSource Associates, which identified several areas in Town where conditions are favorable for finding large quantities of water. These are Route 22 near Brimmer Bridge Road; Route 2 near the lower end of East Hollow Road; Hill Hollow Road near Weaver Dam Road; the lower end of Dill Brook Road near Route 22; Prosser Hollow Road near Spencer Hollow; a site well out on Lewis Hollow Road; and Stillman Village Road near Avery Hill Road. While the report said that nearly all of these sites have the potential of providing an adequate source of groundwater free from PFOA contamination, the report selected the area by Stillman Village Road as the most promising site.
By far the largest cost involved in seeking a new PFOA-free well is that of installing a pipe to transport the water from the site of the new well. to the existing distribution system, which is over a million dollars per mile.
Cedarwood looked carefully at only four of the seven locations identified by HSA, because the other three were deemed too far away from the existing Water District system. These were Stillman Village Road, Hill Hollow Road, Lewis Hollow Road, and lower Dill Brook Road. All of these sites, except the Stillman Village Road site, would require a new water treatment plant, at a cost of $400,000. The Stillman Village site would not require a new water treatment plant because the raw water could be piped to the existing water treatment plant to be treated there before going into the distribution system.
For all of the locations considered, the report estimates a cost of land acquisition at $12,000, based on buying four acres at $3,000 per acre. It estimates the cost of putting in the two new wells at $60,000. For the recommended site near Stillman Village Road, it estimates the cost of installing pipe to connect to the existing water treatment plant (a little over 9,000 feet) at $2.26 million. The shortest distance from any of the sites studied to existing pipes of the Water District was from the Hill Hollow site, a distance estimated at 7,100 feet. This resulted in a lower cost for the transmission line but because it would need a new treatment building, the total estimated cost was similar to that of the Stillman Village site.
The report recommended pursuing a new well field in the area near Stillman Village Road and Avery Hill Road. The first step would be to investigate land acquisition with the idea of drilling test wells on land that is available for purchase to assess yield and water quality, and then to select and acquire the new well field location based on the findings from the test wells. At that point the route of the transmission line needs to be worked out in detail so that the design, bidding and construction of the new wells and the transmission line can proceed. But the biggest item on this to-do list is to secure funding for all of this, as the overall project cost is likely to be well over $2 million.