Bedford Central: Joint town/school sewer project is dead

By JEFF MORRIS

The joint project between the town of Bedford and the Bedford Central School District that would have included Bedford Village Elementary School in a new Bedford Village Sewer District appears to be dead.

The agreement’s demise was made public by Superintendent Robert Glass at the BCSD Board of Education meeting Wednesday, Jan. 15.

“The town’s been a great partner over the last two years in applying for grants to try to create a sewer district in Bedford Village,” he said at the meeting.

Glass said they were unsuccessful two years running in obtaining the grants, and he had just learned that “they again did not receive the grant that was necessary to enable the partnership and the project to move forward.”

As early as 2021, the Bedford Town Board had requested an engineering study regarding options for wastewater treatment in Bedford Village, based on the need to upgrade the Bedford Village Elementary School wastewater plant, and concern among local property owners about existing wastewater infrastructure. 

The firm Woodard & Curran reported in January 2022 that BVES was working on upgrading their treatment plant, and had approached the town, asking about interest in local properties using additional capacity that could be built into their system. The school was at that point in design phases of upgrading the capacity of its system.

By February 2023, Town Supervisor Ellen Calves was optimistic that a joint project involving BVES and the Bedford Village Business District would move forward, calling it “the chance of a lifetime.” 

By July, the town was proposing a plan in which the school would be tied into a new wastewater treatment plant the town would build on an unused parcel of land owned by the school district, which would also serve the Bedford Village Neighborhood Business District and the Bedford Presbyterian Church property. 

At its July 25, 2023, meeting, the town board voted to authorize the issuance of $1.1 million in town serial bonds to pay part of the cost of the establishment of the sewer district. It then approved requests to submit applications for both New York State Department of Environmental Conservation Grant Funding and New York State Water Infrastructure Improvement Act Funding for the Bedford Village Wastewater Project. And in August of that year, the town and BCSD each approved an inter-municipal agreement, with BCSD agreeing to “transfer ownership or provide a permanent easement to the town with respect to the parcel” with the town leading the process to construct and operate the plant. The maximum estimated cost was stated as $7,270,000; of that, $6,170,000 was anticipated to be paid “with grants-in-aid monies to be received by the Town and contributions from the Bedford Central School District.”

In November 2023, the town applied to the state comptroller for approval of a Bedford Village Sewer District, after a referendum was approved by the majority of property owners in that district. All that remained were the grant applications.

At last week’s Board of Ed meeting, Glass said the school district had a contingency plan all along that if the grant failed two years running, they were prepared to construct their own wastewater treatment plant. 

“That is not the preferred option,” he said, “but without that grant we are unable to move forward.”

He said he appreciated all that the town has done. While he understood the town was continuing to question the granting authority to see if there is any future opportunity, “based on the fact that it has been a long time that we’ve been out of compliance and needing to have this wastewater treatment plant taken care of, we feel that we now need to move into a phase where we plan and budget for doing this ourselves.”

Glass added, “That is going to put some pressure on our budget and is going to require some time and effort on our part, but it is something we must do, and we will do.”

Trustee Steven Matlin emphasized that they have been out of compliance for over 10 years, and have an edict to do it. 

“This is not anything that we can kick the can down the road any further,” said Matlin. “We have been told by the Westchester County Department of Health we must do this, and sooner rather than later.”

Glass said the town had asked if they would be willing to explore another extension of the health department deadline, but he felt, and informal discussions with others confirmed, that it was highly unlikely that was going to be successful, and even if it were granted, after “two bites at the apple” all that will happen is that costs will escalate. “The belief is it’s got to be done, so we’re going forward now with engineering.”

In fact, that very day town officials were meeting with the DEC in an attempt to find out why the town’s Water Quality Improvement Program grant application had been rejected. On Friday, Calves sent an email to Glass, copied to the town board and other town officials, informing him of the result. The Recorder was given access to that email.

“Although the application scored well technically,” Calves said, “the application did not earn enough points in the areas that DEC explained were the priority focus this year, including proof of failing septic systems or other immediate environmental threats requiring improvement.” 

Calves said that since the DEC does not disclose their “priorities” until after application decisions are made, “it is very difficult for us to anticipate whether the various aspects of this project will fall into a priority category in the future.” She said that last year they were told the priority focus was disadvantaged communities, and apparently they improved their score in this area “by showing downstream impacts of the current pollution on disadvantaged communities, but Bedford Village is not able to score any points in the ‘service to’ a disadvantaged community category.” Without guidance as to what the priorities will be next year, Calves said she lacked confidence the project will be fundable through a reapplication to the state program. That, she said, also did not bode well for an appeal to the county Department of Health to further prolong the school district’s coming into compliance with its permit.

“Unfortunately, this is the only grant program that could provide the funding necessary to do this project as it has been imagined,” said Calves. “I believe we are at the end of the road on this project that would have resulted in a town solution to the wastewater problem.”

Calves expressed disappointment with the outcome. 

“Many people have worked very hard on forging a potential solution that would benefit the school district as well as the local businesses and the environment, and I deeply appreciate all that you and your team have done to work towards this goal,” she said.

As recently as Dec. 3, the town board reallocated some ARPA funds that comptroller Brian Kenneally said he had held off assigning because they were hoping to use them to supplement the Bedford Village sewer project. After being informed early in 2024 that it had not been successful in obtaining grants for that project, the town had revamped and resubmitted the grant application, but any answer was going to come too late for the deadline to commit ARPA funds by the end of 2024. As it turned out, the answer came just weeks later, and was another no.