Waterline work gets go-ahead

The Board of Trustees approved bids for the second portion of a waterline project in the village and officials expect work to get under way before the onslaught of winter.

The village accepted a bid from Riznick Construction of Crown Point to replace several hundred feet of a water main alongside Route 22 near the area of Neddo Street. The bid was for $670,602 and will be paid for using the last remaining monies from a low-interest loan provided by Environmental Facilities Corp. a few years ago to make improvements to the village’s water infrastructure.

The village received several bids for the work and Riznick was the qualified lowest bidder, Mayor Peter Telisky said.

The project will replace between 700 and 900 feet of antiquated water lines. A portion of the lines near the intersection of Saunders and Neddo streets will be rerouted away from two houses and placed closer to the highway.

Contractors will also install a pair of fire hydrants near the northern end of the project.

“We’re doing that for the homes that are there and its one of the only areas in the village where the village could expand too,” Telisky said.

The latest work is the second phase of a water main replacement project that was completed on Broadway in the spring and summer of 2011. That project resulted in the replacement of a water main from the area of Trinity Episcopal Church all the way south to McDonald’s.

That project increased water flow at the southern the end of the village and officials are hopeful it will do the same for the northern end of the village.

“We’ll probably find some hidden things, like leaky joints,” Telisky said.

He said the village has made considerable strides in fixing some of the problems that ail its troubled water system, which is some areas is nearly a century old.

“We’ve closed 200,000 to 250,000 gallons of lost water per day,” Telisky said.

That’s a third of the nearly 750,000 gallons of water the village estimates it was losing every day. Officials are hopeful that by stemming the amount of water loss, they’ll see a corresponding 25 to 33 percent savings in the cost of treating water.

“We’re hopeful that we’ll start to see some stability in the water system,” Telisky said.

An audit released by the state comptroller’s office earlier this year estimated the losses in unaccounted for water cost the village as much as $129,000 per year.

But officials have taken a number of steps they hope will address that problem. Besides fixing a number of leaks, including a large one near the site of the latest project, they have also mandated that every home, business, and organization have a water meter so officials can accurately account for water usage.

Despite the strides, Telisky admits there is still much work to be done. He said the latest work could cause additional leaks because the pressure running through the pipes has increased so much that older portions of the system may not be able to handle all that pressure. He also said the village, the town and the school need to work together to address problems on the water main that serves the school and have appealed to Sen. Betty Little, a Queensbury Republican, for sources of funding that could help facilitate that work.

The latest work, when it begins, isn’t expected to cause any traffic delays. Before it’s complete, however, it will likely necessitate a boil-water notice when the new line is put into service.