By Jonathan Cronin
Cedarhurst Village officials have submitted a proposal to the state that seeks a $3 million grant to renovate their ailing sewage plant, which has not been updated since 1966.
Deputy Mayor Joseph Horan said the money the village hopes to get falls under the Clean Water Bond Act that was passed two years ago to help municipalities that maintain sewage plants get help in keeping them up to date.
"Running a sewage plant is constant maintenance," Mr. Horan said.
While the grant proposal that Cameron Engineering and Associates, LLP put together for the village is pending, the state has approved a $1 million loan that will cover phase one of a three-phase renovation plan. Mr. Horan said the loan would be interest-free for the first two years and 2 percent thereafter. Mr. Horan said that they hope to pay back the loan with the grant, but he does not know how long it would take the village to pay back the loan if they do not obtain the grant.
On Tuesday, October 10, village board representatives were to meet with Mark Wagner of Cameron Engineering and Associates to begin the engineering designs for the renovation plan.
After the village board approves the plan, it will go to the state for approval and probably go out to bid for a general contractor in the spring of 2001.
Mr. Wagner said the plant, next to Lawrence High School on Peninsula Boulevard, was built in 1930 and, at the time, removed only some solids from the water and then chlorinated it. In 1966, the plant was updated to "secondary treatment," meaning it could now completely treat the water. "Most plants in the U.S. have secondary treatment," Mr. Wagner said.
Mr. Wagner explained that equipment in a sewage facility has a life of 15 to 20 years. He said Cedarhurst Village has done an excellent maintenance job on its facility and gotten good use of it.
He said the first phase of renovation would revamp the tertiary portion of the plant, meaning the preliminary part of the treatment area. Also, the main pumps at the pumping station on Cedarhurst Avenue would be replaced.
The second phase would be the upgrade of the portion that disinfects the sewage and installation of a standby generator for the plant.
The third phase would be to install a back-up system to that part of the plant that removes nitrogen from water. Mr. Wagner said that when the water dumps into Motts Creek, it should not have a high nitrogen level, because the creek would get overrun with plant life fed by the nitrogen.
Mr. Wagner said that none of the project would require any tearing up of streets to renovate piping.
Mayor Andrew Parise said that because the sewage plant already handles its daily capacity, "whether we get that grant or not, we're going to have to do something with that first phase" to increase capacity. The state loan would cover the cost of that.
Mayor Parise said that once the plant's capacity is increased, the Hebrew Academy of the Five Towns and Rockaway could then reapply to the Board of Zoning Appeals for a proposed expansion of the high school that was turned down in August.
In rejecting the HAFTR request, the BZA cited a village moratorium calling for no more than one million gallons of sewage flowing into the plant each day. The HAFTR expansion proposal, which includes six new classrooms and a gymnasium, would result in the million-gallon limit being exceeded, the BZA said.
"It's not a proper use at the moment," Mayor Parise said of the expansion plan.
Cedarhurst Building Commissioner Richard Burke said that the HAFTR plan is the only one currently that would be affected by the plant's renovation. "Nothing has come before the board under that moratorium other then HAFTR," Burke said.
Bill Bonesso, of Forchelli, Curto, and Schwartz, legal counsel for HAFTR, said his client's expansion plan includes low-flow systems installed throughout the school that "will reduce water usage dramatically."
He also said the school needs the additional space. "They are tight," Mr. Bonesso said. "They are trying to operate a high school using an elementary-school-size gymnasium."
"If it could hold more, then the expansion of the HAFTR facility wouldn't have any detrimental effect," Mr. Bonesso said in reference to the sewage plant. "We were going to use less water, anyway."
