Regional water projects can work too

At a meeting with officials from the American Water Works Association years ago, those in attendance were advised of an old saying in the west: "Whisky is for drinking and water is for fighting." We're fortunate in this region to have a range of plentiful supplies of quality drinking water but that doesn't mean we've been able to work out our differences over how to protect it and how to deliver it and with whom it should be shared. In communities like Hillsboro, Oregon, the key to their economic success was the fact that the region acted together to create a shared water system that had far more capacity than they needed at the time.

Locally, the City is facing $13 million in expenses to rebuild dams that have been neglected for decades. The Town of Queensbury will also eventually need to spend money to upgrade its intake system and some of its residents live in "harms way" should one of the City's dams be breached. Just to the east in Washington County, the towns of Kingsbury and Fort Ann could benefit greatly from an expanded regional water system. If you look at a map of the current water systems, their integration on a regional basis seems to make even more sense. The ability to spread current and future capital charges out over a larger customer base means that everyone benefits as we have the ability to expand this system, to protect the supply, and to better afford all related charges.

Just recently, the ARCC spent some time talking and meeting with folks in Suffolk County and Cayuga County to see how their regional water systems were setup and what lessons we could learn. The bottom line is that our region has many options to create a regional system for providing and protecting this most precious resource but do we have the political will to explore these options. Here's hoping the Governor's stated desire for regional solutions spreads real soon to infrastructure so that local officials don't repeat the failed policies of the past.