Larger Water Tank Now Serving Local Municipalities
A new water storage tank serving the towns of Cortlandt, Somers and Yorktown officially went on-line December 12.
The 3.85-million gallon tank, located on the Northern Westchester Joint Waterworks (NWJWW) site off Route 6 near the entrance/exit ramp to the Bear Mountain Parkway extension, replaced a tank that was built in 1969 and increased storage by 28%.
The tank cost $3.1 million and a bond floated to pay for it is shared proportionally by Cortlandt, Somers, Yorktown and the Montrose Improvement District. Based on its usage, Yorktown pays the largest percentage of the bond.
“The recent NWJWW tank replacement project is a project all our municipalities can be very proud of,” said Yorktown Supervisor Michael Grace. “It came in at budget and on time. It proves that under the right leadership government can work efficiently and effectively.”
“Cortlandt is proud to be a partner with the other communities in the NWJWW project and the fact that we were able to share these services early on before it became the norm, showed the vision that we all had to meet an unfunded mandate,” said Cortlandt Supervisor Linda Puglisi.
The NWJWW was formed in 1995 to meet a mandate from the federal Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to filter water. The three municipalities and the Montrose Improvement District collaborated to share the service in order to meet the EPA requirements.
“Working together initially as a joint waterworks allowed each municipality to pay less to meet the filtration needs set by the EPA and therefore his plan has benefitted our water consumers and taxpayers,” Puglisi explained. “We have received many awards over the years for our early shared service approach to meeting unfunded mandates.”
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