Failures of Vision
Olive’s Town Board, cautiously and appropriately, is moving forward into the no-cost, no-risk design phase for a proper septic treatment facility in Boiceville. Given that DEP funding is available, and given the ongoing difficulties of maintaining a working system for the hamlet’s big user, the Onteora school complex, they’re clearly doing the right thing.
Cross into Shandaken though, and things appear to be going terribly wrong. The town board is under fire from Phoenicia’s residents for many aspects of its handling of the matter. We share many of the concerns voiced by residents and business owners. And we also share some of the concerns voiced by both sides that not all the information being provided is complete or adequate, or always truthfully presented.
We want to see Phoenicia evolve into a vital commercial center. We strongly favor centralized septic treatment for the hamlet, and have taken no other position since 1997. We believe the current design is too small to accommodate future growth here, though we understand that with an amended SPEDES permit, these plants can be expanded. But the critical question is “who pays to operate these plants? On that, our answer is the City of New York is the responsible party. The plant is needed for one reason only; to maintain the purity of the water entering the Ashokan reservoir. This is not Phoenicia’s problem. It’s DEP’s problem, and it’s one they have with the federal government, not with the residents of Phoenicia or anywhere else in the watershed. If they wish to avoid the insane cost of filtration, they need to insure that the water entering the reservoir is free of human waste. Hardly any rocket science involved here at all.
Under Phoenicia is a patchwork of ancient, lousy septic systems along with some newer and better ones. Everyone who knows Phoenicia knows why these systems haven’t failed generations ago. It’s because every 10 or so years the hamlet floods and every ancient cesspool gets a bottom-to-top total flush, with whatever it contains washing straight into the Ashokan. And when the floodwaters recede, they’re clean enough to keep functioning until the next natural pump-out. Will they fail eventually? Opinions differ. But regardless, Phoenicia’s future and the quality of the Ashokan’s water are both tied to the same solution: adequate septic treatment. Let’s see, 9,000,000 users downstate, 280 hookups in Phoenicia. Gosh, where should we look for the money?
We view the failure to resolve the question of who pays Operating and Maintenance costs as a huge political failure here in the watershed. We see it as a failure of vision, mostly on the part of the Coalition of Watershed Towns. They manage to advocate with DEP on all manner of less important things, but on the critical question of O & M costs for whatever wastewater treatment is needed, they’ve dropped the ball. This should be the #1 issue in the watershed now, but for some reason our elected officials can’t seem to see it.
But theirs isn’t the only failure of vision in play. Sewage plants are designed to work big to keep O & M costs low; small is not cost efficient. We still think Boiceville and Phoenicia should have one plant, not two, and that pumping effluent the distance between them is hardly a technological challenge. We also think that the near-zero cost O & M alternative, a patchwork of small Constructed Wetlands, was dumped in Phoenicia far too early, despite nothing but positive feedback from DEP’s engineers.
At this point we don’t have all the right answers and we’re not sure anyone does. Our hamlets need wastewater treatment, almost as much as the City needs that wastewater treated. But any claim the City can’t pay those costs is as hollow as the claim that any portion of them rightly belong with us. They don’t. And if people across 1,600 square miles of watershed start speaking with one voice on the subject, they won’t.
BP