After consulting with village staff and volunteers, as well as state environmental officials, New Paltz’s trustees voted at a recent meeting to require that all toilets and sinks installed from here on in be brown in color. This is intended to prevent the inevitable complaints and calls that arise when the village’s water supply is turned brown due to sediment in the old pipes being disturbed.
“The discoloration is entirely harmless,” explained Mayor Tim Rogers, “but whenever the water turns brown, our building and water department phone lines get jammed up.” Brown water is just a sign that an iron pipe — in the village, most likely one of the older water mains — has had some debris or sediment shaken loose. This can be due to hydrants being flushed for maintenance, or work on the water system in another part of town, or even a particularly big truck rolling over top and sending vibrations downward. It can be unpleasant to look at, but running the water for a short period of time should clear it up. If it persists, it’s more likely a problem within the home than in the municipal pipes.
“Our village employees always patiently explain that our water supply remains safe, and that running it is all that’s needed,” Rogers continued, but Nancy Branco, the village treasurer, flagged this time as a cost area of concern, prompting the mayor to act. “I had a meeting with Cory Wirthmann from our building department, and Tom Olson from our Historic Preservation Commission, and came up with this design plan as mitigation. We realized that since most sinks and toilets — especially in rentals and other commercial buildings — are white, and that this color change should, in time, reduce the calls by as much as 70%.” This will not require replacing existing fixtures, but whenever a toilet or sink is swapped out within village limits, the new one will have to be brown. Rogers said that managers at both Beck’s Hardware and Lowe’s have been advised to stock accordingly.
Olson appeared particularly excited by this prospect. Design review typically is restricted to what can be seen from the street, and this presents a new way to leverage the vast amount of expertise among historic preservation commissioners. “This wasn’t necessarily what we envisioned when it came to design review, [reporter’s name redacted], but we’re more than ready for this work. At our last meeting we began an extensive retro counterfactual exploration of appropriate shades of brown.”
“The village water supply in New Paltz always meets or exceeds safety standards,” said the DEC regional director Kelly Turturro in a statement. “We wholeheartedly support this simple adjustment to avoid answering the same questions over and over.” Village water comes from both the Catskill aqueduct and local wells, which have largely been developed since Rogers has been mayor, and other than the occasional cosmetic inconvenience of an old pipe being shaken, it’s considered both safe and tasty.
Trustees also approved language for an insert in the next water bill to explain the change. To ensure that no one overlooks it, the text will be topped by a smiling poop emoji.
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