New York City has stepped up the pressure on Bedford to safeguard Gotham’s water supply with sewers, not septic systems.

Dusting off an eight-year-old proposal, the city’s Department of Environmental Protection pressed town officials in May to move ahead on a project that would bring sewers into densely populated Bedford Hills and Katonah. At an estimated cost of $54 million—part of it borne by the city—Bedford would acquire and expand a wastewater treatment plant at the women’s prison, then install a collection system along miles of torn-up roads in the two hamlets.

While that plan was far from warmly embraced at a town board work session this week, more-often serving to inspire exploration of smaller, less-expensive alternative solutions, neither was it rejected out of hand.

The board, minus Councilman Francis T. Corcoran, met informally around a town hall table Tuesday evening with Public Works Commissioner Kevin Winn, Planning Director Jeffrey Osterman and Carolyn A. Love, a professional engineer with Malcolm Pirnie Inc., the town’s environmental consultant.

A half-dozen spectators, including some town residents who asked not to be identified, Town Clerk Lisbeth Fumagalli and Bob Eichinger from Onsite Engineering PLLC, a Pawling, N.Y., firm that specializes in wastewater treatment systems for small communities, occupied seats in an otherwise-empty town hall as the work session discussed sewers.

Hardly a new topic, sewer projects have been considered for Bedford since the 19th century, and rejected. Most recently, a proposed townwide Bedford Sewer District, put to a vote in 1991, was “absolutely killed,” Osterman recalled. It would have fitted Katonah and Bedford Hills with gravity sewers and a new treatment plant but only provided treatment of septic-tank effluent in the rest of the town.

With some 6,300 residential and commercial installations, Bedford relies on individual septic systems to dispose of sewage and waste. A staple of suburban sanitation, the septic system is a self-contained, three-step treatment of wastewater, deceptively simple in design: Solids settle out in a holding tank while, naturally occurring bacteria attack and destroy pathogens in the water. The effluent then flows through the gravel bed of a drainfield before entering natural soil, where bacteria destroy the remaining pathogens. Solids are drained periodically from the holding tank.  

Given Bedford’s good soil and generally low population density, septic systems were deemed adequate to keep offensive materials out of the groundwater, thus safeguarding the Croton Watershed’s supply of clean drinking water.

Still, less than a week after a new, state-mandated town law stiffened maintenance standards for those septic systems, city officials met, at their request, with Supervisor Lee V.A. Roberts and others to review a long-dormant sewer-system solution. “We went through many topics, including money,” DPW chief Winn told the Tuesday gathering. “We . . . talked about this being a very high burden for the residents.”

Referring to Town Attorney Joel Sachs and the city DEP officials, Winn recalled, “Joel even asked them for more money.”

Even with a city contribution, the so-called “Bedford Correctional Facility wastewater treatment plan” would wind up costing the town more than $29 million in total and the average homeowner more than $1,100 each year in property taxes, according to a memo recounting the May meeting.

“I just wonder,” Councilman Christopher Burdick said Tuesday, “whether, No. 1, no matter how we market this, whether it has any realistic chance of passage [in a referendum].”

Councilman David Gabrielson agreed, saying, “I don’t know how anybody at this table can say, ‘I can get that vote through.’” He asked whether smaller systems, designed for specific local conditions, could address the town’s needs.

On the other hand, Councilman Peter A. Chryssos said, “This may be the opportune time to proceed” with a large-scale sewer plan. While acknowledging a need to consider multiple solutions, he said prudence dictated finding an answer “not just for today but the future.”

Smaller alternatives may solve current problems, he said, but “what’s the situation going to be in 30 years?”

Burdick, for his part, agreed, saying, “I don’t think at this point we can pull the plug on a systemwide solution.” But he wants further information. “I don’t know whether we have a complete assessment of the problem. . . . How many of them [the individual septic systems] are in extremis: either failing or on the brink of failing?”

Roberts, presiding as supervisor at the work session, suggested the town was pursuing a two-track solution, exploring both the prison treatment-plant option and scaled-back local alternatives. But, she worried, “Is DEP going to pull the plug on us?”

Yes, Burdick said, but not tomorrow. “If we sit on our hands long enough—do nothing for years—ultimately we’re going to get a consent order from a judge.”