NORTH SALEM, N.Y. - The opportunity to learn more about a sewer project proposed for the North Salem hamlet of Croton Falls drew dozens of curious folks to the town’s community center earlier this month.
Laying out the back story on Monday, Jan. 6 -- as well as salient facts about financing, timing, and logistics – so that everyone could “get up to speed” -- was Supervisor Warren Lucas. Accompanying him were all four members of the Town Board, key staffers, and an engineering consultant. Taking it all in were Croton Falls business owners and residents.
As part of his presentation, Lucas displayed a map showing which areas were to be included in Phase 1. There are 32 properties are in the General Business District (GBD) as well as, potentially, municipal properties such as the Croton Falls firehouse and 3 Owens Road.
There are about 90 properties, mostly residences “up the hill,” within Phase 2’s boundaries.
Referring to suggestions from some quarters that he may have plowed ahead without sufficient preliminary input from all of those affected, Lucas insisted that it was never his intention to “push” anything on anybody and that any actions he or the board had taken to that point were necessary to one, lock in a facility willing to treat effluent from Croton Falls; two, gain the approval of Somers, the neighboring town through which the sewer main would run; three, suss out and secure federal, state, and other grants that would fund capital costs such as the building of a pumping station and installation of pipes; and four, involve entities -- the New York City’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), the state Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC), and the county’s Health Department -- that have skin in the game.
“You have to understand that for me to get money and stuff, I need to be aggressive on certain things and I need to make decisions,” he told the audience, promising that before “any trigger gets pulled” the town will come back to the public with additional and/or updated information.
Whether Phase 2 ever comes to be depends on whether the town can find additional grant money to fund it.
Operation and maintenance costs are a different kettle of fish. Those must be footed by those who hook up through their annual district taxes.
Of course, people can initially opt out, but they could be charged a nominal yearly fee. (It’s about 20 bucks in the Peach Lake sewer district, Lucas said.)
Should they decide to dive back in later, they themselves may have to pay to install the line and grinder pump from their plumbing to the spot where the town’s easement begins.
When hooking up, property owners have to take a look at the type of septic system they have. If their old tank is made of concrete, it can be pumped out, disconnected, and then filled in with clean dirt or gravel. If it’s steel, it has to be completely removed because, once empty, such tanks are prone to collapsing, Lucas said.
It’s not necessary to remove so-called tile fields, which are systems where wastewater from the tank is distributed into the soil through a network of perforated pipes.
To be conducted this spring is a “needs assessment” that will determine who in the designated area would be interested in – or eligible to – hook up. It will ask for information about things such as the location and condition of cesspools, tanks, or tile fields.
The survey will be mailed to the appropriate property owners in both Phase 1 and 2. Representatives of the town’s consultants, Brewster-based James J. Hahn Engineering, will be going door to door as well.
The town had weighed several options for Phase 1 (the business district) – including hooking into the Seven Springs wastewater treatment plant, which services two nursing homes/rehab facilities in Purdys, and building its own plant adjacent to Primavera restaurant on Route 202 – before landing on the one at the Heritage Hills condo complex in Somers.
(Capital costs for the Seven Springs option were estimated at $13.6 million; for the one on Route 202, $12.5 million; and for Heritage Hills, $10.9 million.)
The town has to formally pass a bonding resolution in order to form the district and to borrow money. Property owners can petition for a “permissive referendum,” a process that allows them to vote for or against the bonding resolution.
“So, it’s not our decision; it’s still your decision,” Lucas assured those gathered.
If all proceeds as planned, the sewer system could be operational by 2027, he predicted
Why It’s Needed
After listing all the projects that the town’s had a hand in in Croton Falls proper – for instance, the creation of a greenspace with a gazebo on a former brownfield site -- Lucas got down to the nitty gritty of why he thinks a public sewer system is needed.
Croton Falls is built on “a lot of sand,” he said. While that’s one of the reasons the businesses’ septics work – unless there’s grease in them, or they have some other problem – it also means that some of the effluent can travel through the sandy soil and end up near or in the Muscoot reservoir, a source of drinking water for New York City.
There’s also only so many places for tanks or septic fields.
Because of that, there are limits put on restaurants and other places that use a lot of water.
The county Department of Health, for instance, can forbid them from washing dishes, which means they have to use paper plates and plastic utensils. Seating can be curtailed, too.
“Sewers can help with a lot of that stuff,” said Lucas, adding that his “goal through all of this has simply been to make the business district more viable.”
It wasn’t that long ago that the downtown seemed to be in its final throes. There were empty and derelict buildings and numerous spaces for rent.
The latest crop of intrepid entrepreneurs has invested a lot “in the community” and sewers could help keep that momentum going, he said.
Of course, for entities doling out the grants, the first order of business is NOT “growth” but the protection of the drinking water supply.
Lucas noted that money awarded through the state DEC’s Water Quality Improvement Program (WQIP) can’t be applied to empty lots, especially those that could potentially be subdivided.
The NYC DEP is reviewing Phase 2 costs for WQIP funding. It is OK with the proposed district except for two lots on the map: a small, privately owned one and the 12-acre former Mariott site on Route 22, which is owned by the town and which the DEP would like to protect from development.
In a Jan. 7 letter to Lucas, DEP Section Chief Mike Meyers pointed out that “the use of WQIP funds is limited to sites with known septic failures or septic systems that are anticipated to fail.”
The two parcels mentioned have no septic systems and “would not be able to be included in a WQIP project,” he wrote, adding: “This is similar to the boundaries of the district for Peach Lake, where vacant lots were not included in the project. Without them, I think you are good to go.”
A land swap has been discussed where the DEP would get the bigger parcel in exchange for land it owns in the Croton Falls business district. The town now rents space for about $50,000 a year for its commuter parking lot.
However, if a homeowner or business owner wants to improve or add on to existing buildings, that’s allowed – under the grant process -- as long as they follow zoning and get the necessary permits and approvals.
Costs
That’s the big question on everyone’s minds, said Lucas as he provided current, or “best,” estimated numbers.
Phase 1 (business district) will cost $10.9 million to build; Phase 2, about $5.2 million, “assuming everyone hooks up,” he said.
The biggest chunk of Phase 1 construction costs -- about $5.4 million – is due to the underground pumping station alone. The station would also accommodate the folks in Phase 2.
There are two potential sites behind Back Street for the facility. The DEP is fine with either one as “long as it’s at least 50 feet away” from the west branch of the Croton River, Lucas said.
(To know what a pumping station looks like, check out the one at the middle school/high school campus.)
Those numbers came with a caveat.
“You never know what anything’s going to cost you until you actually go out to bid,” Lucas said.
The town has currently lined up an “average” 20,000 gallons a day (GPD) of capacity at the Heritage Hills plant. That would cover both Phase 1’s and Phase 2’s needs
The town is basing its grant requests on capital cost estimates provided by its engineering consultant, George Pommer, who attended the presentation.
Of the $10.9 million in capital costs for Phase 1, the town has commitments for $9.8 million in grants.
The DEC was expected to approve a state Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) $8 million grant that week. The money won’t be available until July, when the town is also anticipating receiving a $1.25 million Community Project Funding (CPF) grant from Congressman Michael Lawler’s office.
The Northern Westchester Watershed Consortium (NWWC) has voted in favor of awarding $4.8 million in WQIP money to North Salem for the sewer project, said Lucas, who happens to be its chairman. However, the county and NYC DEP both have to approve the allocation and the exact amount they will greenlight isn’t known at this time.
Lucas said he was “fairly comfortable” that the town would get “a big chunk of that money.”
North Salem applied for a $2 million Water Infrastructure Improvement Act (WIIA) grant from the state’s Environmental Facilities Corporation (EFC) last June.
Lucas said he’d forgotten to sign one of the necessary documents so that request has to be re-submitted this summer.
The town won’t find out if it got the money until November.
According to Luca, WQIP money can’t be used to expand the district. In other words, it can’t be applied to empty lots that could potentially be subdivided someday.
The grant program’s goal is NOT growth, but to protect the drinking water supply.
“The nice thing about that is there are no capital costs if I can get this done,” Lucas said of the grant process.
Due to an Intermunicipal Agreement (IMA) signed by Lucas and Somers Supervisor Robert Scorrano in December, North Salem has given its neighbor $526,000 of its ARPA (American Rescue Plan Act) money.
That’s to compensate it for loss of capacity at the plant and for allowing North Salem to install a 4-inch pressurized main that will go up Route 202 to Butlerville Road where it will connect with an 8-inch main in the Green Briar housing development.
The number of “players” involved just adds to the “complexity” of the project, Lucas said.
Because the plant’s owner/operator, Veolia, considers North Salem an “outside user,” it will charge the town a flat $700 a month in connection fees. That adds up to about $8,400 a year.
(Heritage of Westchester LLC kept ownership of the plant’s capacity when it sold it to SUEZ, which then sold it to Veolia. The pump station will be located on NYC DEP property.)
The plant’s total daily capacity is 770,000 gallons but it currently only uses about half of that.
That’s why North Salem, as an “outside user,” was able to snag 20,000 GPD for itself.
Veolia’s estimated charge to treat Croton Falls’s effluent is less than a half cent per gallon, or $4.15 per 1,000 gallons. At 10,000 GPD, that works out to $15,148 a year; at 20,000 GPD, $30,295.
The district’s O&M costs for electricity could be $590 a month, or $12,000 a year, if all 20,000 GPD are utilized, Lucas estimated based on those incurred in the Peach Lake sewer district.
VRI Environmental Services, which oversees the town’s water and sewer districts, would check the new system once a week, for a yearly cost of $6,000.
Insurance – included as a “rider” on the town’s policy – is expected to cost $1,500 a year.
The average private residence uses between 100 and 200 GPD. It would cost about $700 annually for the former and about $900 for the latter.
In Peach Lake, the average sewer bill is about $1,000 a year, Lucas said.
Business usage is typically a lot higher. A large restaurant that goes through 700 GPD might expect to pay around $2,000 a year.
But that’s a bargain compared to what it currently costs them to have their septics regularly pumped out, Lucas said, noting that one Croton Falls business owner had told him that he now shells out about $4,000 a year for the service.
The numbers are just estimates at this point. “Obviously, if we move forward, we’ll come back and talk to everybody,” Lucas said.
Q&A
During the Q&A session, one of the folks whose property could potentially be included in Phase 2, asked if she and the others would have to pay any capital costs attached to Phase 1, which targets the General Business District.
Reminding everyone that the town is counting on covering the vast majority of Phase 1’s construction costs with grant money, Lucas said they would likely only be responsible for O&M costs if Phase 2 moves forward.
One woman in the Phase 2 area said she’d like “the opportunity” to hook up to the new system should her septic system eventually fail.
Lucas told her that he hasn’t yet asked the DEP if WQIP funding would “cover that far up the hill.”
It may turn out that there could be enough grant money to cover Phase 1 and 2. However, if there isn’t, the town will have to go on the hunt for more.
Agreeing that combing Phase 1 and Phase 2 could result in an “economy of scale” as one audience member suggested, Lucas nonetheless defended the way things are being handled.
The town now has the sewer plant “locked in,” he said, adding: “It’s there; it’s paid for. All I have to do now is put a pipe to it and the capital costs are done.”
Lucas noted that when the Peach Lake sewer project was first being contemplated, the town also needed to be somewhat “non-committal” in order to retain some “flexibility.”
“I don’t want to throw a bunch of costs on everybody, so this is going to be our process,” he explained.
Lucas insisted that he does want to get Phase 2 in eventually, but at present his focus remains on the business district’s needs.
“I can’t afford to have them sell out because the buildings are worth nothing,” he said.
Fire Commissioner Bob Daros, a former councilman and co-owner of a commercial building on Front Street, wanted to know if the Croton Falls firehouse off Sun Valley Drive is included in Phase 1.
Lucas said it could be.
(Municipal buildings are indicated on the yellow portion of the map (Phase 1) with blue asterisks; Phase 2, or the residences, is depicted in blue.)
Concerned about the town’s ability to get certain grants, Planning Board Chair Cynthia Curtis drilled down on the question of whether someone could increase the number of bedrooms in their home or add an accessory apartment and still be eligible to hook up.
Yes, answered Lucas, as long as property owners didn’t subdivide their land, add more houses, and then expect those to be included in the sewer district.
As usual, zoning codes have to be followed and any expansions or changes of use must be approved by the town’s planning department and county health officials.
Another resident asked about the needs assessment’s intent.
Pommer assured him that the survey is non-binding and that its only aim is to gather data that the town can use to plan the project -- for example, what kind of septic system each property owner has, what shape it’s in, and where it’s located.
None of that information is distributed to other entities, Lucas said, adding: “We just ask that you answer it (the survey) as well as you can.”
The first question posed is whether the homeowner or business wants in, and, if not, why not.
If they don’t wish to hook up, that might discourage them from answering the rest of the questions, said
Councilwoman Katherine Daniels, who thought everyone should complete the survey “regardless” so the town knows “where the real needs are.”
Pommer offered to rephrase the wording so that it’s “more inviting.”
Next Steps
Next steps include the completion of the “needs assessment,” the finalization of grants, the re-doing of the SEQRA (State Environmental Quality Review Act) process – because the town altered the proposed district’s original lines in order to add lots; the passage of a bonding resolution and approval of a permissive referendum -- if one is petitioned for by the public; the signing of an formal agreement with Heritage Hills of Westchester LLC., which owns the capacity at the Somers plant, and of an engineering agreement with Veolia Inc., the company that owns and operates the facility; and, finally, the approval of the district’s creation by the state comptroller’s office.
Once all that’s done, the town can finalize the system’s design and then go out to bid.
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