Scotia village officials want the town of Glenville to assume oversight for the sewer district that encompasses the local industrial park because of the huge amount of wastewater coming from the facilities.
Andrew Kohout, public works superintendent for the village, said the issue is that waste emanating from the businesses in the Glenville Business and Technology Park is increasing the amount the village discharges into the Schenectady County Wastewater Treatment plant — exceeding the limits and resulting in an extra fee assessed on Scotia.
“Last year, we got a bill for $80,000,” Kohout said.
However, because these businesses properties in the industrial park are not located in the village — even though it is in a village sewer district — Scotia officials have no jurisdiction to regulate them, according to Glenville Public Works Commissioner Tom Coppola. Because there are not individual flow meters on the businesses, it is very difficult to determine the source of the waste, he said.
“You don’t know when the dumpings may occur,” he said. “At this point, there’s nobody to point a finger at.”
Therefore, the surcharge cannot be passed along to the individual businesses, according to Town Attorney Michael Cuevas. “You need to find the source,” he said.
It would be very expensive to set up effluent meters on the individual businesses, Coppola said.
Town Board members were skeptical about taking over the district, however. Supervisor Chris Koetzle suggested that the village keep oversight of the district but Glenville assist in trying to investigate the problem.
Unlike the Rotterdam Industrial Park, which has one sewer meter to measure the effluent for the entire site, the Scotia-Glenville Industrial Park has a patchwork of different sewer operators.
Town officials are going to explore the issue further to decide on a possible course of action.
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