Randy Woodbury

Dunkirk’s water treatment plant got another rosy review Monday from perhaps its biggest booster, city Department of Public Works Director Randy Woodbury.

Woodbury made some statements at a Common Council Finance Committee meeting that seemed directed at Fredonia, as much as the people in the room. The village’s trustees are set to decide Sept. 10 whether Fredonia should acquire water from the North County Water District, which is solely supplied by Dunkirk. Fredonia’s own water treatment plant, which has a troubled recent history, could get decommissioned.

Woodbury began by noting that he wants to repair an activated carbon filter bed that is out of service at the plant. Even though the seven other beds work properly, “to me, that’s a big ticket item at the water treatment plant,” he said. “You got a state of the art water treatment plant, but it only stays state of the art if you maintain it.”

The carbon filters remove all PFAs from city water, Woodbury asserted — even though Dunkirk recently got some settlement funds related to lawsuits over the harmful chemicals.

“It’s zero, non-detectable. We’ve had that since the ’90s,” he said of the PFAs and the filters.

The DPW chief acknowledged that the state also imposed an “expensive consent order where we were forced to upgrade” the plant in the 2010s.

Woodbury later said that even with a filter bed out, the Dunkirk plant is capable of producing 9 million gallons of water per day. If all the beds were working, it could be 10 million gallons a day. However, it is currently producing only about 3 million gallons of water per day.

Councilman James Stoyle complained at one point that there are “mixed messages” from Chautauqua County regarding the city water system. “Fredonia’s got a lot of decisions to make. We want to be there to help them,” Woodbury said.

“Their water is classified chemically as corrosive,” he continued. “Because our pH is always about 7.6, it’s not corrosive. They have to add something to their lead lines to not corrode them — orthophosphates.”

Due to the antiquated transmission lines, “Fredonia (for) probably forever more, no matter where they get their water, is probably going to have to add orthophosphate.”

Woodbury added: “You take a glass of Dunkirk water, it’s crystal clear. We’d like to sell more of it.”

As for Fredonia’s decision, “we have no interest in the nitty-gritty of what’s going on over there, but we want to be ready to help.”