The Saratoga Hills mobile home park is still not connected to the Saratoga County Sewer District, despite consent orders with the state starting 31⁄2 years ago.
The connection was first ordered to be completed in 2006 and then in 2007 but still has not been made.
A May 2005 consent order between the state and PNL companies, the Texas-based owner of the park (then called Hillside Mobile Home Park) was amended in February 2006. It required PNL to close the park’s sewage treatment plant and hook up to the county system by Dec. 28, 2006. That deadline was not met, and another modified consent order, in June 2007, fined the company $50,000 and set a new date of Aug. 15, 2007, as the deadline to hook up to the county system. It still didn’t happen.
Lee Park, a spokesman for state Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, said Saratoga Hills has otherwise complied with the consent order, making repairs to its sewage system so that it no longer pollutes the Schuyler Creek.
As for shutting down the mobile home park’s sewage plant and connecting to the county system, which has a large treatment plant in Halfmoon south of Mechanicville, Park said: “The attorney general is working with all the stakeholders to make sure the [Saratoga Hills] plant is closed down as soon as possible.” He declined to answer more specific questions but did not say Saratoga Hills is out of compliance with the consent decree.
Saratoga County Sewer District Executive Director James DiPasquale said the holdup is with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which needs to issue a waiver to allow the connection. The sewer district requested the waiver in May, he said.
John Senn, an EPA Region 2 spokesman, said he was unfamiliar with the issue, and the state Department of Environmental Conservation press office did not return calls. PNL and the Saratoga Hills office did not return calls for comment.
Town officials, Supervisor Shawn Connelly and Building Inspector Ray Abbey said the mobile home park will hook into a sewer system that will be built for the planned Revolutionary Heights subdivision off of Kellogg Road, which will connect to the county system.
“Revolutionary Heights has not been approved yet,” Connelly said. “They need to build a sewer system there first,” he said, before Saratoga Hills can make its connection to it and the county system.
That was confirmed by Dennis DeGennaro, president and CEO of Camelot Associates, developer of Revolutionary Heights. He said he hopes the 149-unit subdivision will be built next year.
It’s not clear what will happen if the subdivision, which still needs various governmental approvals, is not built.
The mobile home park is off of Lake Road northwest of the village of Stillwater.
John Van Amburgh, a resident of Saratoga Hills, complained about lax town code enforcement in various aspects at Saratoga Hills. In a letter published in this week’s Mechanicville Express, he said: “There is no sewage dump station to empty camp trailer sewage tanks.” Connelly rejected that contention, saying no one is living in the trailers Van Amburgh is complaining about.
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