Archive: Opinions

EditorialThe other night I overheard a Town board member saying that the New York State Departtment of Environmental Conservation (DEC) has finally approved the idea of a stand-alone sewage treatment plant for Lansing.  This comes not long after town officials learned they would lose much of $4.2 million of bond act money that could have been used to construct a sewer here.  So the news is bitter-sweet.

Previously the DEC insisted that the Town be part of an intermunicipal sewer effort along with five other municipalities.  A good faith effort to come up with a project failed, largely because the shared sewer treatment plan made the project too expensive for taxpayers who would have been within the district.  To make matters worse, not everyone paying for that sewer would get service.  After trying both conventional and innovative ideas for reducing the cost of that project, town officials had no choice but to shelve the project.  Subsequent efforts to retrieve money spent on the project and to get permission for a stand-alone solution failed.

The stated reason for the money being taken back is that it took too long for the town to come up with a viable project.  Of course the current state budget disaster has a large role in the timing of this.  But the reason it took the town so long to come up with a viable project is that the State made town officials pursue a plan they didn't think would work -- and they were right.  While town officials at that time had to publicly say that they were 100% behind the shared solution, they privately confided that they thought it wouldn't go, and that the State would eventually allow the town to build its own treatment plant.

Now is a great time to get that permission because of the intense interest in a town center, and future planning.  While some residents don't want sewer because of the increase of population density it could bring, the fact is that sewer will allow townspeople to decide where that density should occur.  Growth in Lansing is inevitable, and there are two choices: we can let it happen haphazardly as we have done in the past, or we can determine our own future by planning the shape of development for years to come.

In my opinion the State torpedoed the town by insisting on an unworkable plan that took much time, effort, and money, and then pulling the rug out by withdrawing the money on the grounds that it took the Town too long to come up with an affordable, workable approach.  Town officials say that a stand-alone plant approach will be so economical that it can probably be accomplished affordably anyway.

But with New York State hemmoraging over a million people leaving for less taxed states, wouldn't it have been great to be able to use that money that was, after all, pegged for building a sewer -- to build a sewer?

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