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At a special town meeting held by State Senator Michael Nozzolio at Lansing Town hall last Saturday, Town and Village officials reported on progress on the sewer project. Nozzolio listened to reports from Town Supervisor Steve Farkas, Village Mayor Don Hartill and Sewer Committee member Andy Sciarabba as they explained their efforts to work with the State to reduce costs and to raise private money to help fund the project. The Village has expressed its preference for the trunk line to be run along Route 34, but State Department of Transportation regulations for State road construction would add almost a million dollars to the project, a price that is unacceptable to the Town Sewer Committee. To address this Farkas and Hartill have joined forces to petition the DOT for concessions to their policy.
Farkas reported, "Mayor Hartill and myself are at the point of having to find the best route to put our major transmission line into the Cayuga Heights plant. There are basically two options. Don and I went to Syracuse on Thursday morning. We were given an audience by the DOT for about two hours. The positives of that are the Village would have gravity flow for the Northwest corner. And for the Town of Lansing it would be less expensive."Both men started on sewer projects as much as ten years ago. "The good news," said Hartill "is they didn't throw us out of Carl Ford's office when we suggested the possibility that 34 might be closed to heavy traffic for a period of about three months. In fact Carl has been very helpful all along. It's nice to see that for Steve and I within the last six to seven years it's gone from an idea to an agreement we could go forward with. Now it's a matter of implementing it." Nozzolio said he would be willing to do whatever he could to make the negotiation with the state go smoothly. "Lansing is one of the fastest growing communities in New York State," he said. "As growth develops, we're on the shores of one of the most important natural resources that we have." Andy Sciarabba spoke about his efforts to raise private and public money for the project. $5 million of Bond Act money will apply to the $17 million project. He said there is a gap of about $12 million. "Right now for every Equivalent Dwelling Unit (EDU) in that service area would pay around $883 per year for 20 years, which would decrease if more users came on line. We don't think that's acceptable. No one else in Tompkins County ever paid that, because we used to have Federal funds. So the Lansing Sewer Committee established a finance committee, and we're trying to raise $7 million from institutions in our community to lower that $12 million down to a number that will bring the EDU cost on an annual basis to about $350 a year." Sciarabba reported that they have talked to major corporations in the area, Cornell and the County, but can't predict how successful they will be at this point. He mentioned the County has comprehensive plans for growth. "That's impossible without sewer," he said. Nozzolio noted that he represents most of the Finger Lakes district, and that he considers it an important resource locally, Statewide and nationally. Our Ffinger Lakes need to be able to sustain growth in a managed way," he said, "a careful way, that has appropriate infrastructure needs taken care of commensurate with that growth." ----
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