Engineer to lead Saratoga County Sewer District

PHOTOGRAPHER: Stephen Williams

Share on Facebook

Save

A consulting engineer from Clifton Park will be the new executive director of the Saratoga County Sewer District.

Chad M. Cooke, 37, who currently works for Boswell Engineering of Albany, will replace James DiPasquale as head administrator of the 65,000-customer district. DiPasquale is retiring at the end of the year.

The appointment was announced Wednesday and will be voted on Tuesday by the county Board of Supervisors in Ballston Spa. The county Law and Finance Committee approved the appointment unanimously Wednesday.

“I’m looking forward to it. There will be some challenges for sure, but I’m up to it,” Cooke said.

Cooke, who was one of four finalists for the position, will earn $93,468, according to the county Personnel Department.

He will start Nov. 14 and work with DiPasquale through the end of the year, learning about the 43 million gallon-per-day sewage treatment plant in Halfmoon and the collection system that stretches from Wilton to Clifton Park. A $52 million expansion that doubled the size of the treatment plant — giving it enough capacity to handle industrial wastewater from the GlobalFoundries chip plant — was completed earlier this year.

Cooke, a native of St. Lawrence County and graduate of Clarkson University, has been a consulting engineer in the Capital Region for the last 15 years. He has worked for Boswell Engineering as a project manager and head of its municipal engineering department. Before that, he worked as a project engineer for Clough Harbour & Associates of Colonie.

The county received applications from across the nation for the position, said Jack Kalinkewicz, the county personnel director.

In other news, Delaware Engineering of Albany, which has recently helped the Saratoga County Water Authority deal with high levels of chemical by-products in its water, will become interim administrator of that authority.

Authority Chairman John E. Lawler said Delaware has been hired as the temporary replacement for executive director William Simcoe, who retired at the end of September. The firm will be paid $6,700 a month, which Lawler said is less than Simcoe’s salary with benefits.

The authority is producing about 2.2 million gallons per day, selling it to the town of Clifton Park and to the GlobalFoundries computer chip plant in Malta.

The towns of Ballston and Wilton, which also have contracts to buy water, stopped purchasing in September because of high levels of a chemical chlorination by-product in the water — a potential human health hazard. In the last month, following recommendations made by Delaware Engineering, the levels of the by-products — called haloacetic acids — have been brought back within the standards set by the federal Environmental Protection Agency.

Lawler said the authority will continue working with Ballston and Wilton officials.

“We feel as though we’re in compliance now, but if they have reservations, we want to respect their concerns,” he said.