Village of New Paltz officials got a demand letter in the mail earlier this month. State officials are looking for village taxpayers to pony up $1,722,008.76 by the beginning of March, or face a lawsuit in which the attorney general will seek to recover that money — which is compounding at a rate of nine percent — along with “penalties up to $25,000 per day for each violation” and court costs. This whopping bill represents the cost of cleaning up the contamination of the village water supply in February, 2020.
It’s alleged that the cause of the oil leak that contaminated the village’s main reservoir was a careless contractor, who broke an oil line while doing work on the grounds of the water treatment plant off Mountain Rest Road. Mayor Tim Rogers broke the news of this demand letter at the February 14 board meeting, four years to the day from when the all-clear was sounded to drink from village taps again after that massive cleanup was complete, ending a multi-day saga of seeking water from trucks parked by the public works garage or by cleaning out local grocery store shelves.
Rogers explained that negotiations to settle a lawsuit against that contractor are ongoing, and expressed hope that such a settlement would result in the contractor — or, more likely, an insurance carrier — paying that massive bill to the state. The mayor also recounted that for months after the incident the amount of water that had to be drawn from the Catskill aqueduct was much higher than normal. This water, extracted by New York City officials from the region and exempt from the costly filtering requirements that are otherwise standard in the state, comes at a cost to village water users that has gone up more than 10% annually in recent years. On top of the $407,000 cost for the raw water that is used unfiltered by those downstate city residents, village users must then pay to have water from that same supply filtered.
When asked later to provide the name of the third-party contractor being sued over this incident, the mayor declined in a text message, writing that because “it is in a painful litigation I’m gonna pause before sharing extra info,” but expressing the belief that the contractor’s name had been made public previously. A search of Hudson Valley One archives and other coverage from the time did not immediately reveal the name of that company.
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