Friday, April 13, 2012

Pain in the Pipe

Cape Vincent will be conducting an audit survey to determine how many private connections have been made and whether there are health sanitation issues.


People that receive water from a district but are outside the boundaries of the district are called outside users.
At the special board meeting Thursday Town Attorney Mark Gebo said
“There are geographic boundaries to this district. The problem is that we have users who are drawing water through this district that are not within the geographic boundaries,” “Generally speaking, the regulatory agencies, when I’ve had to deal with them on these issues, don’t like the concept of outside users.

If you are going to add somebody to the district, that’s fine. But expand the geographic boundary and bring them in.”
This may not be as easy as it sounds, the town may have to completely re- do all of the infrastructure and connect them at the curb.

Without re-doing the infrastructure It would be difficult for the Town of Cape Vincent to include these users in the district . How can they take responsibility for a system that runs through a private parcel they have no jurisdiction over.

Theoretically if the land owner receiving the water through a public water connection decides that they no longer want to furnish water to their neighbor(s) they have no obligation to continue the water service to the outside user .
Additionally , if the property changes hands the new owner does not have an obligation to let the water flow from their connection to serve others. I can't see the Town taking on this can of worms.

Bottom line
Why didn't they just do it the right way?

If they had expanded the district openly other people that were not in the know may have had the opportunity to get municipal water as well. Now we have a situation that needs to be dealt with .




7 comments:

Anonymous said...

They couldn't make money doing it the "right "way.

Did anyone believe Donny's claim that DANC encouraged them to only install a few meters,and somehow this justified illegally distributing water to other users?

Jeezus, when will it end?

Anonymous said...

is that a picture of the pelo rd waterline to nowhere?

Anonymous said...

K, if it is determined that outside users like Frank Giaquinto are connected with substandard piping and connections or that some additional piping and connections are needed, and if grant monies for municipal water construction are dried-up, as has been suggested lately, what does the town do in the meantime while waiting for funding? It doesn't seem reasonable to let the outside users continue to use water, pay Bourcy, Mason or the Ag&Mrkts Commissioner, until water district 2 is brought into the 21st century. I would think the outside users would have to be cut-off until they can resolve the situation. Not a good thing. Perhaps a new agreement can be setup to govern this district absolving the town of responsibility until they can get it fixed.

Anonymous said...

These same bandits when in our town did the waterline to no where. The only user? A guy whose house is in the town of Clayton. And TR claims that Hirschey does not know what he is doing?

Anonymous said...

Which came first the waterline to nowhere or the user?
Sounds like a CYA moment

Anonymous said...

Did they bury their personal waterlines along the town road right of ways? If they did who did they contact and who gave them permission? If their waterlines crossed Favret Road, either at Mason's property or along Hell Street, who gave them permission to dig up a town road? How did they patch the road, with a couple bags of cold patch? If the town knew about their road work then FG should claim the town sanctioned and knew about the 'illegal' water district. Lots of questions.

Anonymous said...

Ask the Village of Cape Vincent how many lines they serve that are outside the Village and not in a water district. The good-ole-boys from the Village and the Town have known about this for at least 35 years and have been told many years ago to correct the problem. Nobody tells the good-ole-boys what to do and how to do it. So, we have illegal water lines all over the fringe of the Village in the Town of Cape Vincent. Thanks, current Town Board for starting the process of cleaning up the mess they left you. However, #2 is only the tip of the iceberg.