Henderson plans for revamp of sewer system, water expansion project
May 8—HENDERSON — With all planning essentially finished and accompanying paperwork nearly complete, the town of Henderson is in search of grant money to help fund a project that's been discussed for decades.
In a few years' time, the town hopes to break ground on a large, combined sewer project and water expansion. The wastewater project is expected to cost about $13 million in total, with the water expansion, including putting up a new tower and additional filtration, coming in at about $11 million.
Grant and loan opportunities offered by New York state and the U.S. government have been identified but have not been secured to date. With funding scarce from the state at the moment, the town is also looking at federal grants as well, according to town Supervisor Edwin Glaser.
Tentatively, Mr. Glaser said, the town received a start date, or dig day, scheduled for April 2023.
"I've got some more meetings on different financing," he said. "The town's already been approved for zero percent financing."
The project looks to not only address the failing and inadequate subsurface sanitary systems along Henderson Harbor and Stony Creek, but also looks to expand resident access to water and serve more homes. According to Mr. Glaser, roughly 250 homes are served right now for water, and with the project, would be going up almost another 200. With the sewer project, close to 500 EDUs, or equivalent dwelling units, will benefit.
The two projects, which will be conducted in tandem, will go hand-in-hand, so wherever the sewer is, water will also run. An additional expansion will be going out on Snowshoe Road. Mr. Glaser said he has not yet had a meeting with the people who bought Association Island, but said he knows that they're not interested in running their own sewer and water plants out there, so the second expansion is going to try to include them.
"The town's kind of in a holding pattern because most of our businesses that are down by the water don't have adequate property or sewage leach fields and that anymore, and the health department is making it difficult for businesses to open back up because of that fact," Mr. Glaser said. "I understand what they're trying to achieve, but we're trying to achieve where we can come back on the map again and be a viable asset to the community."
Town residents, as well as commercial and business entities, currently utilize individual subsurface sewer disposal systems to dispose of sanitary sewer wastes due to the absence of a town-wide sanitary sewer to transport wastewater to a central treatment plant. The town has evaluated options for sewer and publicly owned treatment works in the past, and in 2017, developed a preliminary engineering report recommending a septic tank effluent pumping collection system and membrane bioreactor treatment system.
Though the project has yet to break ground, from what Mr. Glaser has been told this project has been an idea in the area for four decades. One of the intentions with getting the sewer district through is to benefit restaurants along the waterside, some vacant because they can't meet the state Department of Health codes without spending thousands on a treatment center for themselves. The sewer district will help the town expand and get the restaurants and facilities back open down in the waterfront area and also into the hamlet area as well.
"We're hoping to do the boots-on-the-ground engineering work, literally going to each individual house and finding where their septic system is and how to approach hooking up each additional house, this summer," Mr. Glaser said. "Once that work is done, all we have to do is at that point, if we have funding, is get the contracts out there for bid process and get the project shovel-ready."
