By THANE GRAUEL
The Pound Ridge Town Board on Tuesday unanimously voted to set some details for a special election on whether to form the Scotts Corners Water District.
The board itself approved the district’s creation in July. Now the property owners will have their say.
The election — at which the owners of the 39 or so taxable properties in the district can vote — will be held Thursday, Oct. 24, from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., at the Town House, located at 179 Westchester Ave., Pound Ridge. Two election inspectors, one Democrat and one Republican, will be on hand.
Water issues, whether the supply of drinking water or how to deal with wastewater, have been an issue for many communities in the region.
Scotts Corners’ groundwater has been contaminated by fuel and chemicals from a gas station, a cleaner, spills and leaking underground tanks over the decades. In addition to gasoline and additives, the “forever chemicals” perfluorooctane sulfonic acid, PFOS, and perfluorooctanoic acid, PFAS, have been found.
The water district would be formed to solve the problem of providing safe drinking water to the 39 or so affected residential and commercial properties.
A May 2024 engineering report commissioned by the town saw four courses of action, including taking no action. The other alternatives are:
1. Connecting to a treated water storage tank, owned by the Aquarion Water Company, at the Pound Ridge Golf Club on High Ridge Road. That would require laying 13,000 feet of water main.
2. Using the Siscowit Reservoir as a raw water supply and building a filtration and disinfection facility. This would require a new 200,000-gallon water storage tank and 13,000 feet of 8-inch water main.
3. Installing individual point-of-entry treatment systems at each property to treat the existing private well supply, with quarterly water supply testing and regular replacement of treatment components.
The report recommended the first alternative, hooking into Aquarion’s system on High Ridge Road, which has an estimated cost of $10.8 million.
At previous town board meetings, some residents were critical of aspects of the plan, and questioned what the actual annual costs to the property owners in Scotts Corners might be. Also percolating have been fears that by creating a water district, a wastewater treatment plant might soon follow.
That was on the mind of Jessica Genova of Fox Run Road on Tuesday night.
“I’m very concerned about, it seems like if we go down that direction, we’re putting in the pipes, we’re going to end up with a wastewater treatment plant,” she said. “I know that there’s been talk about it being at Old Pound Road, which is very close to the elementary school, the town park, where young children and families regularly congregate and play.”
“I can ensure that all these new young families in town will be enraged if they find out about this anywhere near where children congregate and families congregate,” Genova said.
She mentioned numerous studies she said document the health hazards of having a wastewater treatment plant near a residential area, including airborne hazards, well hazards, respiratory and gastrointestinal reactions, headaches and more.
“Our town is a residential town, so we have to remember that,” she said. “We don’t have the ability, we don’t have the place to put this that won’t impact the health of people.”
She said people come to live in Pound Ridge because it’s far from major infrastructure, train stations and highways.
“I’m very concerned … because we know if pipes go in downtown it’s going to end up here,” she said of a wastewater plant.
“There will be lawsuits, I can assure you, because this is not the right thing for this town,” Genova said.
Town Supervisor Kevin Hansan thanked her as she left the podium, and Genova said, “I don’t want to say I told you so.”
A man in the audience asked whether people could vote by absentee ballot in the special election, and whether the number of eligible property owners had been determined to be 37.
“There will be no absentee ballots,” Town Attorney William Harrington said, “You have to be in person.” “They can delegate somebody,” Hansan said.
Harringtown said a special counsel is helping with the legal aspects of the election, helping figure out questions such as who gets to vote if a property has two owners; and if a property is owned by a trust, obtaining written authorization for someone to vote on its behalf.
He also was asked about what would constitute a majority vote.
“So, it’s a situation where if you don’t show up, it’s obviously a ‘no’ vote, the question is whether or not it’s a majority of the people who vote, or a majority of the people who are in the district eligible to vote,” Harrington said.
A special counsel would help figure that out, he said.