Fredonia made a couple key moves in its water saga Monday, authorizing an engineer for its plan to link with the North County Water District — and hiring lawyers to defend a lawsuit over the plan.

The Fredonia Board of Trustees approved LaBella, already the village’s “engineer of record,” to work on engineering for the water connection project. Mayor Michael Ferguson was authorized to do a contract with the company, which previously conducted two high-profile studies of the village water system.

The board also hired Lippes Mathias, a large Buffalo-based law firm, to defend Fredonia in state Supreme Court against a lawsuit over the project. Three village residents sued to turn back the Board of Trustees’ Sept. 10 move to decommission the Fredonia treatment plant and reservoir and buy water from the North County Water District.

No costs or dollar figures were quoted in either resolution.

There’s a hearing set for Friday in the latest lawsuit, but the hiring of Lippes Mathias throws that into question. “They’re going to have to get an extension on that, but until they’re officially on board, they can’t make that phone call,” Trustee Jon Espersen said of the law firm before the vote to hire it.

Ferguson said, “They are environmental specialists, and have an entire team of environmental specialists, and were suggested to us. We greatly appreciate that.”

The village’s official law firm, Webster Szanyi, lost a previous lawsuit against a December 2023 Board of Trustees resolution to shut the plant and reservoir and buy water from Dunkirk. Judge Grace Hanlon, who is also hearing the latest lawsuit, overturned the resolution on the grounds that it did not follow State Environmental Quality Review procedures.

Espersen said hiring Lippes Mathias “is not a reflection at all on Mark (Guglielmi) or that firm, we just felt it was in our best interests to retain environmental attorneys for this one, because this is a lawsuit we can’t afford to lose.” Guglielmi unsuccessfully argued the village’s case in the first lawsuit.

The plaintiffs in the latest lawsuit are represented by Lippes and Lippes, a small Buffalo law firm apparently unaffiliated with Lippes Mathias. Lippes Mathias has a nationwide presence, with 17 offices in the eastern U.S.