Watkins wastewater plant fine is $20K

WATKINS GLEN—Mayor Mark Swinnerton announced Monday, June 2, the village must pay a $20,000 fine. This fine comes through a revised consent order issued by the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) due to issues at the village’s wastewater treatment plant. That consent order was was accepted by the village during the meeting.
Swinnerton said the $20,000 fine can be paid in $5,000 per year. He said this fine is in addition to the $20,000 the village will finish paying off as of this June. Swinnerton added there are also additional things the village must do within the next 30 days.
“We have to put together an operations plan for our wastewater treatment plant,” Swinnerton said. “We must also revise our wet weather plan for our wastewater treatment plant. There’s other stipulations in the consent order we have to meet [...] but those are the big ones we need to be working on, and we are working on.”
Swinnerton also gave the board an update on the current situation with the joint regional wastewater treatment plant with Montour Falls during the meeting. The regional plant, which will be located at the historic UDS site along the canal, is currently going through the state environmental quality review (SEQR) process. The mayor said it would still be “a few years” before construction begins on the plant. Swinnerton said they have also discovered eagles nesting near the site, which the villages are trying to work around.
“We are working on the SEQR,” Swinnerton said. “We are dealing with some eagles at our current site that we will work around. It is not a roadblock. It will probably add in anywhere between $500,000 and $1 million to our project, but that remains to be seen. We will see how that plays out. It looks like they will allow construction around their breeding season, so that lengthens the amount of construction time.”
Despite dealing with issues at the Watkins plant, both Swinnerton and Montour Falls Mayor John King have previously stated they still plan to continue progress with the regional plant. King indicated he believed the eagles located at the site were causing more of a delay to the process than Watkins Glen’s wastewater problems. King has previously said it would be more costly to each village if they were to upgrade or rebuild their own wastewater treatment plants.
Swinnerton said the village has completed the necessary intermunicipal agreements (IMA) with Montour Falls which the village board must sign and approve. He said the IMAs must be signed soon because they need to be approved before the village can do any bond resolutions for the project engineering.
Swinnerton said he and King had sent a letter to the Schuyler County Legislature asking them to make sure the sales tax revenue sharing with the county does not go away. He said while they are not required to share the revenue, taking it away could potentially disrupt the regional water treatment plans. Swinnerton said he and King are trying to be proactive to preserve the revenue sharing for all towns and villages in the county.
“It would be catastrophic to our budget,” Swinnerton said. “I want to make sure when moving ahead we are not asking our residents to pay for a new regional wastewater treatment plant then get hit with a 20 to 25 percent tax increase from the village of Watkins Glen to maintain the same level of services. It’s a very real possibility if we did not have that sales tax revenue sharing.”
In other business:
• Several residents and business owners discussed the village’s noise control ordinance, saying it is harmful to both business owners, employees and musicians if they have to stop all live entertainment in the village after 11 p.m. Swinnerton and Trustee Scott Gibson said it is not the intent of the law to stop bands from playing past that hour, but added they need to represent the interests of everyone in the village. They said there will be growing pains in the first summer of having this law, but said they will try to find a middle ground that all parties can work with.