Town may expand Bellvale Water District

WARWICK-The Town Board may vote next Thursday on whether to expand the Bellvale Water District. Town Supervisor Michael Sweeton said that the town has followed the State Environmental Quality Review Act procedure and a decision will be made soon. "We will go over this again with our planner, Ted Fink," said Sweeton, "but I anticipate we might entertain a motion to expand the district at our next meeting." He said there will be an opportunity for the public to comment, as there always is at the Town Board meetings, before the board acts. Residents of the Bellvale area have been watching closely, as two applications have been before the Planning Board to build a total of 60 homes on Route 17A near Bellvale Boulevard. Some residents of the hamlet, which has about 100 homes in total, have said this little farming hamlet is not capable of adding another 60 homes. BCM and the Gables are those new developments and the developers would like to tap into the Bellvale Water District. In return, the district would receive two new wells. "These two wells would provide an ample supply of water with no dissolved uranium," Sweeton said at the public hearing last September. Bringing in the new wells would alleviate the higher dissolved uranium levels found in the existing wells. The town looked into a filtration system but it was very costly, he added. Both of the new wells are on the BCM site. The water will be pumped to storage on the Gables site, where it would be blended with the existing district wells. If the district is expanded, the result would be a replacement of the 40-year-old system with new storage capacity. The cost would be shared with the new homeowners. Sweeton called it a "win-win" for everyone. He had met with residents of the district and most were in agreement with the plan, he added. Adding the new homes to the district would lower the cost for each of the homeowners in the district for the district improvements, which includes a new water holding tank with twice the capacity of the current one. The original plan was to refurbish the existing holding tank next year and build a new one the following year. Now the plan is to build the new holding tank first and refurbish the old one next year.