WATERFORD, N.Y. - "Bringing the pipe into the town of Waterford is a good thing, but if the pipe doesn't have water in it, it really doesn't really accomplish very much," said Waterford Town Supervisor John Lawler.
Delivering water from Troy to Waterford and Halfmoon won't be cheap. If residents want safer drinking water when the pipeline is complete in April, they'll have to pay. They project the latest solution to the Hudson Rivers PCB problem to cost close to half a million dollars. Taxpayers like Ward Patton would have to absorb costs.
"It's my understanding that that's the battle line right now between our community government and the EPA is the cost of that switching over and were hoping that the EPA will realize their responsibility for health and safety and pick up the cost," said Patton.
Saratoga County is one step closer to a PCB free Hudson River. A 4.5 mile pipeline is under construction. It's designed to bring safe drinking water to the residents Halfmoon and Waterford, but as our Dave Detling reports, it could have taxpayers paying more.
It's a battle county officials have waged since the start. Their biggest fear is that once dredging begins in May, their current water supply will be tainted and that means paying out of pocket for clean drinking water.
"We didn't ask for dredging. We didn't put the PCBs in. We shouldn't have to bear the financial burden of making sure that we have safe drinking water and paying $600,000 for that privilege," said Lawler.
Now we do want to point out that in addition to paying for the new pipeline, the EPA says they will pay for the towns' increased costs from using water from Troy, but that will only happen when PCB levels are found to exceed safety limitations.