Village officials struggled with the sewer problem in their Monday (9/19) evening meeting in the Village Offices on Triphammer Road.  The Town of Lansing is committed to bring sewer service to the southern part of Lansing, roughly including everything south of Buck Road.  In order to get sewage to the Cayuga Heights treatment plant the main trunk line must go through the Village.  Three possible routes have been suggested by the Town's engineers, and the Town has asked the Village's input before choosing a route.

The Town favors a route (knows as Alternate Route B) along the old Ithaca Auburn Railroad line which runs roughly parallel to East Shore Drive to the East at a higher elevation.  Engineers have identified this route as the least expensive, in part because it would be run by gravity.  A gravity system would not need pumping stations and the attendant ongoing maintenance.  (Alternate A goes along Cayuga Heights Road and down Cedar Lane.  Neither the Town nor the Village favor this route.)  The Village favors Alternate Route C, which follows Route 34, because it would be lease intrusive to village residents during construction and maintenance.  This is the most expensive alternative.

What does a village do when it's codes and ordinances are stuffed into a notebook?  That question was answered for Ithaca High School students who observed the regular Village of Lansing Board of Trustees meeting Monday (9/19) night.  Mayor Donald Hartill explained to the four visiting students that Codification is putting all of the village's codes and laws into a standard format, indexed to make rules easy to find.

The Village has been working on codification for over five years to try to get all ordinances and village rules into a form that is easily accessible.  This will make it simpler for village officials and residents to figure out what is allowed in any given circumstance.

"Water, water, everywhere,
And all the boards did shrink;
Water, water, everywhere
Nor any drop to drink."

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, who penned these lines in "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner," must have been haunting Wednesday's Lansing Town Board meeting, which was dominated by discussion of water district proposals.  The Town Hall was nearly filled with residents concerned about the Algerine Road/Lansing Station Road water extension proposal, a proposal for Drake Road, and one on Lake Ridge Road.  When Town Supervisor began the meeting by quoting Coleridge he wasn't kidding.

This summer whenever people around town talk about the weather, they say, "I really feel badly for the farmers."  It has been a hot, dry summer.  The drought has reduced our rainfall to less than 25% of the average, and it has been hot.  "For our farm it was the worst drought that we've had since my father started farming in 1951," said Skip Hardie of Hardie Farms, Inc. in North Lansing.

But the year hasn't been a bad year for crops.  "Not as bad as you would think," he added.  Farmer Lin Davidson said, "They're looking for groceries for their animals.  How that's going to work out, by reducing animal numbers or trucking feed in -- that's the split that people are going to have to make a decision on."  But he added, "People run two to six to eight months ahead on their food, so there is some buffer in there."