Adam Litman, Town of Lloyd Administrator for Water & Sewer, gave his monthly report to the Town Board last week, starting with a bit of bad news.

 

“We have Earth Care pumping sludge from the backwash tank at the water plant again,” he said. “Out polymer mixer malfunctioned [and] it broke causing sludge to back up in the centrifuge, which damaged the main drive end of it and clogged the internals.”

 

Litman said Greg Palmateer got all of the drive in removed and brought it to the machine shop to be fixed and it has now been put back together.

 

“We’re still trying to get the internals unclogged and parts for the polymer mixer are on order and some of them arrived this week, but they didn’t send the O rings, so we’re pumping again next week,” he said.

 

Litman noted that Verizon’s land line went out of service in late January.

 

“It affects our control signals for the river pumps and we had to switch over to river water and then a blend of reservoir and river water, which lasted about five days,” he said. “It is a reminder of what’s to come with that line when they retire it.”

 

Supervisor Dave Plavchak told the board that he and Litman have been looking at this issue for some time.

 

“The plant was built in 1983 and all of the control panels there are still analog and you need this land line to tell the pumps down by the river when to start,” he said. “We need to put a project together to replace the controls there.”

 

Plavchak said a previous engineering report estimated the cost of new digital controls is between $400,000 to $500,000.

 

Plavchak said the town must start to modernize their decades old equipment now.

 

“To me being on analog in 2025 just doesn’t cut it. We have to modernize that piece first and then we’ll go forward with the rest,” he said.

 

Plavchak has spoken to the town’s engineering firm of Brinner & Larios to see about splitting off this part to upgrade.

 

“I’ll put in for some grants for just that and maybe it will be easier to get a lesser amount,”he said, adding that with or without a grant, the town has to find a way to fund this equipment. Litman concurred, “It would be a very important part of the entire equation.”

 

Litman said they recently had a trial run to start the pumps through their own control panels down by the river.

 

“It was very difficult to figure out and I read the books for about eight hours because we didn’t really want to mess with them because it doesn’t take too much to offset the programming [since] they are soft-start pumps, so there is a lot or programming that goes into the control panel there,” he said. “We had to have an electrician come to assist us that took about four hours to figure out and that’s only one pump because you can only start one and let it run. We had enough reservoir water to actually do a blend, so it is important that we get this [upgrade] going.”

 

Litman said river water is making up 98% of daily production and wells are providing the remaining 2%.

 

“The water table is still low so we have them on a reduced time schedule,” he said. “Water production has been averaging about 10 hours a day, which is down a little bit. The river had a nice ice cap on it that wasn’t affected by the wind so some of the turbidity was down. [turbidity is defined as a measure of the relative clarity of a liquid. It is an optical characteristic of water and is measured by the amount of light that is scattered by material in the water when light is shined through a water sample. The higher the intensity of scattered light, the higher the turbidity.]

 

Litman said they are still having issues at the Bridgeview pump station and his crew is cleaning outside the storage area at the station in preparation for a generator.

 

“I am hoping they’re going to do the slab once the weather breaks, which is one part of the project,” he said. “Central Hudson is supposed to install the gas line,” he said. “We have to have all of that stuff out of the way [for] the gas meter, which is kind of large, and they want to put everything in an area that is pretty congested.”

 

Litman said in the past two months they have been repairing water mains; 2 on Smith Terrance and 1 on Reservoir Road and 1 on North Road.

 

Litman said the Sewer Department has been operating normally, “except for the winter season that has caused freeze-ups and equipment breakdowns. The guys have been very busy chipping ice and throwing things out and keeping things turning ‘round and ‘round.”

 

Litman informed the board that their new pick-up truck just arrived but he hasn’t had a chance to put it out on the road.

 

Supervisor Plavchak commended Litman and his crew.

 

“We do appreciate you guys being out there in a hole when it’s 5 below zero and the water is gushing out at you. Let your crew know we do appreciate that.” Councilman Lenny Auchmoody added, “Give those guys our best.”