County Legislators move toward law that would ban Orange County sewer hookups to new plant

May 13, 2009 Last evening, the Planning and Public Works Committee of the County Legislature decided to proceed with Joseph Meyers’ draft of a law that would prohibit "sewer connections to the Rockland County Sewer District #1 from structures outside the physical boundaries of the County of Rockland." Some see the focus of the legislation as aimed at the massive construction on Tuxedo Reserve in Orange County and Supervisor St. Lawrence’s recent contradictory statements supporting connecting those 1,000+ homes to the new Western Ramapo Processing Plant.
 

The new Western Ramapo Waste Water Treatment Plant is almost ready to go online. Its cost to the taxpayers is $125 million, and it was built to serve the Sloatsburg/Hillburn area of Ramapo.

When the County Legislature approved the funds for the project, then County Legislator Ellen Jaffee asked that a resolution be attached, which would forbid any connections outside the county or state.

There were actually two similar resolutions, in 2004 and 2007, and Ilan Schoenberger questioned the need for a law when these two resolutions are backed up by a general agreement of officials and the public.

The sponsor of the law, Meyers, pointed out the inherent weakness of a resolution vs. a law. "Have we ever passed the same law twice?" he asked the members. Well, we have with this resolution precisely because a resolution does not have the force of a law.

Several speakers in the public session portion of the meeting agreed on the need for legislation.

Patsy Wooters, Chair of the Torne Valley Preservation Association, read from a joint press release issued by the Monroe Highlands Conservancy, NJ Sierra Club, NY/NJ Trail Conference, Ramapo Highlands Coalition, and the Sierra Club of Rockland. She explained the damage to Ramapo’s aquifer that Tuxedo Reserve project will cause and requested: "Rockland County Sewer District Number 1 should maintain their restriction limiting service to Rockland County. Rockland County and the Sewer District should decline the Related Companies’ request for access to the new Advanced Waste Water Treatment Plant in Hillburn for Tuxedo Reserve. Such a connection would betray the public interest." Full text of the Press Release can be read here.

Addressing those members who were confident that there’s no chance that the Sewer District would hook up to Orange County buildings, this reporter read a number of recent public comments made by Supervisor St. Lawrence explaining the benefits of allowing Tuxedo Reserve to use a plant paid for by local taxpayers. I also related a conversation with Julius Graifman, in which the Chairman of the Sewer Commission spoke extensively on what he thought were the advantages of letting Orange County hook up to the new plant. With the Vice Chair (St. Lawrence) and the Chairman of the Sewer Commission both preaching from the same text, the legislators were warned that there was a serious movement afoot to do exactly what the current resolutions forbid. The fact that St. Lawrence has also been insisting that the sewer plant is "of the people and for the people (of Ramapo)" while at the same time selling the idea of hooking up should come as a surprise.

Robert Rhodes, Chairman of Preserve Ramapo, also expressed his skepticism over the ability of resolutions to withstand the kind of political pressure that St. Lawrence and Graifman might want to bring to bear.

At the end of the discussion, it was decided that the committee would defer a vote to set a time for public discussion. They would seek out comment from the other sewer districts in the county and would refine the penalty aspect of the law before deciding on the schedule for the next step.

Legislator Edward Day said that if there’s a conversation about hooking up already begun among the members of the sewer commission, he wanted to hear from them.

Ilan Schoenberger noted that the Tuxedo Reserve project was building a thousand mansions in Orange County, and they needed to provide their own infrastructure. As to whether they would be allowed to connect to the new wastewater plant in Hillburn, he simply said, "It aint gonna happen."

Read the full text of Meyers’ proposed law here.

Michael Castelluccio