State money will help secure drinking water supply
New York State announced on Monday (Dec. 23) that it will send $2.5 million to the Village of Cold Spring for repairs to one of the two dams at its reservoirs.
The money is part of $225 million from the state Department of Environmental Conservation for 165 projects across New York to update aging infrastructure, improve water quality and protect drinking water. The village submitted its application, written by Trustee Laura Bozzi, in July.
“While this grant is only a portion of the nearly $8 million needed to complete the Upper Dam repairs, it is a significant boost for the village,” said Mayor Kathleen Foley in a statement. “It will enable us to bond [borrow] less and keep water rates a bit more stable during the construction.
“The condition of the dam is a critical public safety issue, and it is a relief that we finally have resources and momentum to see necessary repairs through,” she said.
Foley praised Bozzi, “a public health research professional [who] has brought her grant-writing prowess to bear for village projects time and again,” she said.
Located off Lake Surprise Road on Foundry Brook in the North Highlands, the two reservoirs provide water to Cold Spring, Nelsonville and some parts of Philipstown. The 270-foot Upper Dam was constructed in 1934 and the 328-foot Lower Dam in 1942; each is about 25 feet high.
The Department of Environmental Conservation rates both as “high-hazard” — a measure of the damage, including loss of life, that would result from their failure — and “unsound,” which is worse than “deficiently maintained” but not as bad as the lowest rating, “unsafe.”
The reconstruction will raise the Upper Dam by 2 feet to improve spillway capacity, install a waterproof membrane on its face and improve the outlet and abutments. In 2017, an engineer told the Village Board that the repairs would cost between $3.8 million (a single spillway requiring the reservoir to be lowered by 1.2 feet) and $4.2 million (multiple spillways). The latter estimate has nearly doubled over the past eight years.
In January 2023, Foley said an engineering firm told her that, once the design was complete, it would take eight to 12 months for the dam to be repaired. A 2016 assessment of the dam conditions is valid until 2026.
During the repairs, Cold Spring will likely need to tap into the Catskill Aqueduct; in 2023, after 15 years of negotiations, the village reached an agreement with New York City to create the connection. If Cold Spring taps into the system, it must pay $2,450 per 1 million gallons, Foley said last month when the reservoirs dipped because of drought. The system requires about 300,000 gallons per day.
Since our announcement and The Current’s article, I’ve received a few inquiries about the Upper Dam repair, so it’s important to emphasize the big picture.
Our water supply consists of five impoundments: the two on Foundry Pond Road, known as the Upper and Lower Reservoirs; the beaver pond on Fishkill Road, where we work with nature as free labor to retain water stores; the coffer dam, which is the concrete structure near the road on one of Fishkill’s big bends; and the holding dam at the water treatment plant, where supplies are retained before being treated, piped and sent to our homes, businesses and institutions.
The repair work, at a price tag of just under $8 million and for which the village has been awarded partial funding, is for the Upper Reservoir impoundment wall. The Lower Reservoir (i.e., from the other side of the impoundment wall to Foundry Pond Road, in the lower portion of the aerial photo printed with The Current article) has its own engineering and repair needs at significant costs. The same is true for the other two constructed impoundments.
The impoundments need varying amounts of work. The grant we’ve received will help fund the repair of only the wall separating the Upper and Lower Reservoirs; you can see it clearly in the aerial photograph, just under the blue words “Cold Spring Reservoir.”
The reservoirs on Foundry Pond Road date to the 1860s, when they were built by the West Point Foundry to power its operations. The village bonded to acquire them in 1922 when the foundry shut down. Repairs were made in the 1920s and 1930s and the additional impoundments were built. The bond notes are framed and hanging in Village Hall if anyone would like to see them — they’re a cool bit of our history that then-Mayor Seth Gallagher unearthed and preserved for us all.
Securing and preserving our drinking water supply is a massive infrastructure project that will take many years and a great deal of funding. The work has been deferred for far too long, and doing nothing is no longer an option. The Board of Trustees will continue to pursue grants to help fund these costs. And we all need to be aware that bonding will be part of our community’s future for some time. We’ll do everything possible to offset consumer costs, but rate increases are inevitable as we do the work.
As I’ve said in relation to drought conditions, our drinking water is a precious resource; we must always protect it and use it judiciously.
Foley is the Cold Spring mayor.