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MAYVILLE - After a brief delay, village officials are moving ahead with its new water project.
The Mayville Village Board recently held a special meeting with Matthew Zarbo, with Barton and Loguidice. Zarbo has been helping village officials with its $9.5 million water project.
At the regular village board meeting on Aug. 8, officials refused to vote on a resolution that would permit exploration of groundwater and preliminary designs. Trustee Mark Perry expressed reservations about going outside village limits looking for water. He also said the option of treating one or both of its wells that has perfluorononanoic acid (PNFA) in it should be further explored.
Because village officials did not pass the resolution, Mayor Rick Syper called for a special meeting where Zarbo was present to discuss questions by Perry and other trustees about the options for seeking new wells versus treating contaminate water.
At the special meeting, Syper noted the village received federal funds to seek new wells. "I believe that looking for clean water is a very important factor in this $2 million grant," he said.
Zarbo said because they haven't done the groundwater investigations yet, they don't know how much it will cost to bring that water to the village and what quality it will be. He said it's very possible that transporting groundwater from the town of Chautauqua to village users may be more cost effective in the long run than having to replace the carbon filters needed to filter out the PNFA.
That's why Zarbo supports seeking a new well source. "Right now the board doesn't have all the information. We don't know if there's groundwater out there. There's no guarantee we're going to find a great source. There's no guarantee the source isn't going to have other issues; we do have a few areas we want to target for groundwater investigations so my recommendation is the very first step in this process is get all that information," he said.
Zarbo estimated the groundwater investigations will cost $60,000 to $150,000. Even if they don't find good water, that information can be stored for future uses. "You're going to have data and that's what you're paying for - the data," he said.
Once the information is collected, Zarbo said at that time board members can decide if they want to move forward with groundwater or if they prefer to build another filter plant on one of the existing wells that has been contaminated. He said he will be willing to do a cost analysis for both options.
Zarbo also said they do negotiations ahead of time with property owners that are getting test wells drilled so the village knows ahead of time what they might have to spend to buy the property.
After the discussion, the village board unanimously approved the resolution authoring the water project to move forward. The resolution allows for Barton & Loguidice to spend up to $526,000 for groundwater investigations and the preliminary design phase.