Town Board Ends Plans for Sewer District

A $54 million price tag to create a sewer district in Bedford is too steep for locals to absorb, town officials decided at a work session this week.

"The numbers don't add up," said Bedford Supervisor Lee Roberts when contacted by Patch.

Pressed by New York City's Department of Environmental Protection to move ahead on a project to bring sewers into Bedford Hills and Katonah, where failing septic systems are leaching into the town's groundwater supply, Bedford officials the acquisition and expansion of a wastewater treatment plant at the women’s prison, coupled with the installation of a sewage collection system.

Bedford currently relies on individual septic systems to dispose of sewage and waste from some 6,300 residential and commercial installations.

Even if some of the costs were borne by the city—bringing the cost down to $29 million, by some estimates—the board determined the project would be too burdensome for the town's residents, said Roberts, who had also shared her concerns about the issue at a meeting on Thursday with Congresswoman Nan Hayworth and other town supervisors.

"Large scale infrastructure projects are too big for a small community to absorb," she said. "Spending $55 million on top of our $ and other mandates like annual stormwater cleanup costs...it's a very heavy lift."

The board was also concerned about voter approval for a sewer district referendum, according to David Gabrielson, town councilman, reached by phone on Thursday. A similar proposal was last put to the public, and defeated, in 1991.

"Our feeling was that it was not appropriate to ask voters to absorb that substantial assessment, so we voted to abandon that option," he said.

Instead, the board and town's planners will focus on smaller, localized solutions for aggregated areas or individual homes with the greatest frequency of failure.

"We discussed possibilities that have been recently approved, newer septic tanks that were not available in the past," said Gabrielson, noting those areas included homes located at the bottom of hills and commercial businesses in the downtown shopping areas of Bedford Hills and Katonah.

Identifying those problem areas will become easier with the rollout of a new local law mandating septic inspections and pump-outs every five years.

For homeowners concerned about incurring potential costs for septic tank remediation, funds may be available in the form of a grant or loan—or combination of the two—to pay for newer tank technologies.

"We are envisioning that part of the $10 million that the DEP has allocated toward protecting drinking water for New York City can go to local residents," said Kevin Winn, Bedford's public works commissioner. Winn said that the town was also considering setting up mini-sewage treatment systems that could cover several households or a small commerical area if the situation warranted.

At the town board meeting following Tuesday's work session, board member Chris Burdick asked Assemblyman Robert Castelli about available state funds to address the town's wastewater problems.

"I don’t think anyone would dispute Bedford needs to do something about this... we determined we did not feel it was in best interests of the public to pursue a large scale system, but clearly there will be expenses we are going to be incurring to address the problem," said Burdick, as he laid out the issue to the Assemblyman.

Castelli, who had just presented a state budget update to the board, said he would be happy to have ongoing conversations with the Department of Environmental Conseration "relative to the mitigation of environmental issues," and recommended the board look into revolving loans through a new state consolidated application process for "clean water" funding.