Clifton Park joining water system soon

PHOTOGRAPHER: Stephen Williams

Share on Facebook

Save

The Saratoga County Water Authority will start delivering water to its second municipal customer sometime next week.

The Clifton Park Water Authority will start taking delivery of at least its contractual minimum of 500,000 gallons a day and possibly more, county Water Authority Executive Director Bill Simcoe said at the authority’s monthly board meeting Thursday in Ballston Spa.

The Clifton Park authority uses about 3 million gallons per day, serving customers in Clifton Park and the southern part of Malta. Currently, it relies on groundwater wells for most of its supply, and Clifton Park officials have said the county water should improve that system’s overall water quality.

Clifton Park Water Authority Chairman Helmut Gerstenberger could not be reached for comment late Thursday.

The county authority is continuing to build its customer base as it ramps up operations at its new water treatment plant in Moreau, which was completed last winter. The plant draws water from the Hudson River and is designed to produce up to 14 million gallons a day.

The town of Ballston will also be buying water from the authority and is currently working on making a connection to its water system.

The town of Wilton began buying 300,000 gallons a day in February, becoming the county authority’s first paying customer.

The Clifton Park Water Authority signed a contract last fall to begin buying at least 500,000 gallons a day once the county system was done, a culmination of years of on-and-off negotiations between the two authorities. The contract will mean about $30,000 per month to the authority at the minimum rate.

The two water systems are already connected near the Zim Smith Trail and Magnolia Way in Malta. The trail section between Ruhle Road and the Northway is going to be closed for a few days while necessary modifications are made, Malta officials announced earlier this week.

Eventually, the Clifton Park authority plans to make a larger connection to the county system at East Line Road and Route 67 in Ballston, sharing the connection that Ballston will be making.

The Ballston Town Board recently awarded a $479,293 contract to Trinity Construction of Selkirk to construct the East Line Road connection. Work hasn’t yet started and it isn’t yet known when it will be finished, but Ballston is under contract to start paying the authority for 150,000 gallons a day at the standard rate of $2.05 per 1,000 gallons starting July 1.

Meanwhile, the corporate giant that will one day be the authority’s biggest water customer is building its connection line.

The GlobalFoundries computer chip plant in Malta will be using at least 3.1 million gallons a day when it goes into production in 2012. The water demands of the $4.2 billion chip plant and the commitments made because of its promise of 1,400 new jobs are one of the key reasons the county water system got built, at a cost of $67 million.

Currently, the GlobalFoundries plant is under construction. This spring a contractor has been installing 7,000 feet of water line to connect the factory to the county system near its new water storage tank in Stillwater.

The authority and the village of Stillwater are meanwhile in the final stages of negotiating a contract that will have the authority selling water to Stillwater once transmission lines are constructed.