The Village needs an additional source of water, resident Bill Barr said at the Saugerties Village Board meeting on Monday, April 4. He noted that the Village water report for 2020 shows a peak of 1.627 million gallons, and that is very close to the 1.8 million gallons per-day maximum the reservoir can provide. Residential development in the Town, such as two large housing developments in Glasco, will further stress the Village water system. Barr also pointed out that the Winston Farm development will also strain the Village’s capacity.
Barr acknowledged that the developers of Winston Farm have offered to provide an additional water source to the Village. But, he said, water is a public trust and “the proposal sounds to me like they would own the water and use it for their development and provide a little …”
“We’ve had this discussion with the previous owners, when we were giving them drilling rights, replied Mayor Bill Murphy. “We had a site for a well and we could basically store an additional million gallons of water a day to have available.”
The Village had federal money to pay for the development of the additional water source, but the ownership changed. “The new owners came in, three local guys we knew personally,” said Murphy. “They tried to make it work, but the well was in a location they wanted to develop. They are willing to work with us; they were even willing to pay for getting another test well done so we could have another water source.”
In the meantime, the Village lost the federal funding that was earmarked for an additional source of water, Murphy said. But the developers are continuing to help develop water resources on the property and they are talking about a sewage treatment plant as well. “They want to turn the water over to the Village. They don’t want to be in the water business.” And, he said, they will continue looking.
“Over the years, we’ve been looking at this, a source, and the Town will probably want an increase of probably 200 or 300 thousand gallons a day,” said trustee Donald Hackett. “There’s no doubt of that, so we want to have enough water to supply it.”
Trustee Vince Buono said the area around Glasco is developing rapidly, with several large developments on the drawing board or in construction. This development is bound to put increasing pressure on the water supply, he said.
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