“Another family on the road was supposed to host the family from all over the state for Christmas, and they cancelled it because they did not have potable water.”
— Boiceville resident Gemma Young
With the Ashokan Reservoir shoreline 44.3 miles around and a 122.9-billion-gallon capacity, it’s baffling to consider anyone living down the road could ever worry about having enough pristine water to drink. But that was the situation faced by 25 Town of Olive households from the middle of December through the holidays and into the new year.
Their water supply has now finally been restored.
Operators of the affected Water System #5, the Hudson Valley Water Companies, Inc. (HVWC), have acknowledged that a deteriorating arsenic filtration component had failed, rendering the water coming through the pipes unsafe to drink.
Warnings issued months earlier to the company by the Ulster County Department of Health went unheeded. For Ulster County government, the Boiceville arsenic scare seems to have been the last straw in its long and troubled relationship with HVWC.
“The Ulster County Department of Health has fielded complaints from HVWC water customers over many years and has repeatedly tried to intervene to ensure appropriate measures are taken to provide adequate service and quality water to these residents,” said county health commissioner Carol Smith. “It is beyond time for a solution that will ensure a safe and reliable water supply for these residential customers.”
A pattern of dereliction
Local politicians and water customers have now charged HVWC with a degree of negligence sufficient for the removal of the company and its president, Jeffrey Fuller, from operational control of its five Ulster County holdings, serving 430 households.
County executive Jen Metzger released a letter on January 10 describing the dismal predicament and the preferred outcome to state Public Service Commission (PSC) chair Rory Christian. The letter was co-signed by Olive town supervisor James Sofranko and supervisors Fred Costello of Saugerties, Mike Boms of Hurley and Jeanne Walsh of Rosendale, as well as by assemblymember Sarahana Shrestha, state senator Michelle Hinchey, and several county legislators.
“As we write, customers at System #5 in Boiceville are without drinking-water service for the 25th day, and spent their holidays carting water from a tanker truck,” the letter said. Offered as one more data point in a historical pattern of dereliction, it alleged that HVWC “has not elected to invest in its infrastructure or perform appropriate maintenance in its water systems.”
The officials pointed to problems at other systems long owned and operated by the company, including the #2 System in High Falls, which experienced a service outage on December 20 and 21, and the #4 System in West Hurley. which is “once again requiring leak identification and repair” while pumping at less than 35 percent of capacity.
“For far too long, Hudson Valley Water Company customers have been plagued by service interruptions, poor communication, and the company’s outright failure to follow its own commission-approved standard operating procedures and emergency plan,” said Metzger’s letter. “It is unacceptable to leave hundreds of Ulster County residents with no access to safe running drinking water for days at a time, and it is high time for the Public Service Commission to find a new qualified operator to take over and operate this critical service.”
A lack of communication
The behavior of the company throughout the crisis has especially angered residents.
When an interruption in service can be anticipated to last longer than 24 hours, the company’s published emergency plan calls for the provision of one or two 3000-gallon Turco Brothers tanker trucks to provide potable water each day. A full week had already elapsed from when the tap water in Boiceville was deemed unsafe to drink to when the first tanker truck arrived to park on Beechford Drive.
The news of the Do-Not-Drink order itself was first relayed to customers in a December 16 email. No paper letter of notification has been delivered to residents.
A 2019 company response to numerous complaints from West Hurley illustrated the defensive and antagonistic qualities that have won HVWS so few friends among its customers.
“All questions are answered as best as possible,” wrote president Fuller to the PSC. “There are times, however, when the customer does not agree with the answer and some get antagonistic. Unfortunately this has caused us to then behave the same way and that should not happen. As to the form letters, there were many from customers that we had never even spoken to, so this seems suspicious.”
“We can’t live like this”
Current resident Dan Zelikman, of the HVWC operation in Boiceville, had read the email warning as soon as it arrived. “There were two neighbors of mine across the street, Lindsay and Phoebe, who were never notified. And so they continued drinking [the water],” said Zelikman, “and you know, cooking with it. They got sick. It could have been arsenic poisoning, but they weren’t sure.”
Talking with them, Zelikman realized that not everyone had been made aware of the tainted water. His neighbor Avi went o door to door, leaving notes and making neighbors aware of the situation. Zelikman characterized the lack of communication as “ludicrous.”
“It was like two sentences. Do not drink the water. Exclamation point. If this was a responsible entity, that was like, ‘Hi, the filtration system went down, there might be higher levels of arsenic in your water. The federal level standard is point one zero, you’re at point one, three.’ You know, if it was a reasonable informative email, we would have been able to act appropriately.”
Zelikman, taking no chances respecting the health of his two-year-old, had been bathing the child with bottled water since getting the email.
“We just didn’t know what was going on,” said Zelikman. “Arsenic can cause cancer and skin lesions and diarrhea and dizziness. We shouldn’t be drinking it. I’m not going to make a concession to drink arsenic because I have an irresponsible water provider. Obviously, we weren’t washing dishes. We weren’t doing laundry, I have a two-year-old. And I’m like, ‘This is absurd. We can’t live like this.’ ”
Zelikman, with wife and child, left to stay with family, then reluctantly spent money on renting an AirBNB in Lake Placid until the water could be restored.
“This is the second Christmas in two years where we couldn’t host family,” he said. “Since July 5, 2021, to January 9, 2024, we either had no access to water or were under a boil-water advisory for 61 days. So it’s a little bit under like a month a year, essentially, when we don’t have access to water because of this company. We can’t even be comfortable in our own homes because of their negligence.”
What the other towns say
A Christmas without potable water in two HVWS’ West Hurley systems on the west side of Route 375 would have been no surprise to new Hurley town supervisor Mike Boms, who recently ranked getting the water situation in West Hurley under control as his second big priority this year – behind only dealing with the town’s newly designated Superfund site
“It’s an interesting habit in West Hurley. Every time around Christmastime for the past four years, there’s an outage,” Boms said on December 27.
Boms predicted upcoming negotiations with Fuller. State and federal grants may be available to update the infrastructure once the areas serviced by the water company become town water districts, he said.
“We’re going to settle this. It’s not going to be pushed two or three years down the road,” Boms said. “If we have to buy the water company, sue the water company or do something, we will get our hands on that water company and we will try to upgrade it to a modern system.”
Local HVWC customers have historically had the largest number of issues in West Hurley, where System No. 4 services 68 homes in the Holland Drive and Brittany Drive area and System No. 3 serves 16 homes in the Pine Street area. Residents have told of systems that have been plagued with water main breaks, billing problems, and water acidic enough to corrode pipes and damage appliances.
“We’re going to settle this. It’s not going to be pushed two or three years down the road,” Boms promised. “If we have to buy the water company, sue the water company or do something, we will get our hands on that water company and we will try to upgrade it to a modern system.”
In Saugerties, which in October 2022 received a $300,000 state grant to extend a town-run system on Kings Highway, supervisor Fred Costello said Hudson Valley Water Companies has made marginal improvements based on the town’s inquiries.. “From our perspective, we didn’t get a response that we feel is adequate,” he said. “We have problems, and our problems relative to what those folks [in West Hurley] are experiencing are not as severe. I don’t want to diminish our problems at all, but I certainly don’t want to diminish the problems that those communities are experiencing, because they’re real.”
Rosendale supervisor Jeanne Walsh complained of recurrent problems with the HVWS-owned High Falls Park water district, which serves 110 users. “They don’t even have a backup generator,” she said.
The town has no control over the private system. Walsh is hopeful that county involvement will improve the situation.
Mending its errant ways
HVWC has been pursuing a twofold strategy of promising to mend its errant ways and emphasizing its financial woes. An October 2020 PSC staff report found the company “in violation of numerous sections of the PSL, NYCRR, and its tariff, and is not utilizing best practices.”
In February 2021 the company responded with an implementation plan.
“PSC dockets are unclear as to how much of the plan has actually been implemented,” wrote Steve Ellman last week in an informative article in Kingston Wire entitled ‘Arsenic and Old Pipe’. “The company’s March 2021 short-term capital investment plan and September 2021 long-term capital investment plan are riddled with caveats about insufficient funds.”
In 2023, HVWS asked the PSC for a 20.6 percent increase in the price of its water delivery systems, which would have increased its annual revenues by about $44,646. The PSC gave it 2.8 percent.
Don’t boil water with arsenic in it
Without additional information provided in the do-not-drink order, there were those who in spite of the warning would attempt to boil the water, said Gemma Young, another Boiceville System #5 resident.
“Boiling water with arsenic in it is the worst thing you can do. It concentrates the arsenic,” she said. “So the critical thing is not to boil it.”
Like Zelikman, Young said too had neighbors who missed the Do-Not-Drink order. They were the Guendels, a mother and daughter who lived in the neighborhood.
“I happen to call Carol to talk about something else,” said Young, “ And I said, you know, ‘Oh, my God, how about this water situation?’ And she said, ‘What do you mean?’ They’d been drinking the water the whole week!”
Gemma Young confirmed water service was interrupted over last Christmas as well, “only there was no water truck provided.”
When the word got around this year that the water truck had finally arrived, a frightened and stressed Olive population had to make do. Young told of driving to the Turco Brothers’ truck numerous times to refill empty gallon water bottles.
“We were using gallon containers. so that the kids can lift them,” she explained.
“A clear justification”
“Hudson Valley Water Company has clearly proven its inability to provide a safe, reliable water supply at just and reasonable rates, with a poor track record over many years,” Metzger asserted in her letter to the PSC. “HVWC’s poor record of service establishes a clear justification under Public Service Law allows for a new operator where there is a vital benefit to the public interest.”
Attempts made by both telephone and email to reach Jeffrey Fuller, president of HVWC, have so far gone unanswered.
“Essentially, he has a bunch of water systems,” said Zelikman, “and all the water systems and people that he services are frustrated with him in one capacity or another In multiple counties. He’s a bad business owner and not a great human. Just look at the record at the PSC.”
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