Big money coming to the mountain for sewage treatment upgrades

WINDHAM―If the subject of sewage doesn’t strike you as riveting winter reading, perhaps a couple million bucks getting invested into the mountaintop will.  

As much as $5 million will be flowing into Windham and nearby Prattsville from the Catskill Watershed Corporation (CWC) to construct septage acceptance facilities.

The money comes through the New York City Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) as part of the agency’s mandate to preserve the water quality of its upstate reservoir network.

According to the CWC, its board of directors has “formally approved the Fourth Supplemental Side Agreement to the 1997 New York City Watershed Memorandum of Agreement (MOA).”

The agreement marks what the CWC calls a “significant milestone in the ongoing partnership to protect water quality while supporting the economic vitality of West-of-Hudson communities.”

Windham Town Supervisor Thomas Hoyt, hearing of the grant dollars in early December, considered it an early infrastructure Christmas.

“This is something a lot of people probably don’t give much thought to but it is important to our area and the town of Windham,” Hoyt said.

Plans to modify the kind of sewage that can be accepted at the local treatment plant has been a hot topic for several years.

Hoyt, in layman’s terms, previously explained the rationale behind the project when efforts began to secure DEP dollars for the task.

“Two years ago, [the Department of Environmental Protection]started to cut back on how much septic from private haulers they’d take at their treatment plants,” Hoyt said.

This included the Windham site.

“It was a shock for everybody. It started a ruckus because it was going to produce real problems for the haulers, needing to truck it further away, meaning it was more expensive and complicated,” Hoyt said.

“Some area towns got together with DEP and the [Catskill Watershed Corporation] to figure out if there was a way to correct the problem,” he explained.

“DEP decided to write letters to municipalities with active plants to see if they would accept the septic materials. We said yes,” Hoyt said.

“We were encouraged to submit documentation on how to proceed. CWC accepted a proposal from us to investigate,” he added, noting the effort financed by the CWC was to the tune of a $50,000 grant.

It was discovered that in order to safely welcome any foreign septic matter―especially stuff that has been sitting around a while―a mini type of treatment network needed to be created, at considerable expense.

That network would chemically acclimate any higher-intensity excrement, brought from beyond the local district, to readily absorbable goop.

“The idea is to make the bad bugs work with the good bugs, getting all the google gobbles figured out,” said Hoyt.

“An underground receiving station could be constructed with discharge into underground tanks with proper aeration and odor control. Once that septic matter is treated and becomes sludge, it can be added to what we normally do here, at the right pace and time,” he explained.

Having factored in all the google gobbles, Delaware Engineering presented their findings in the 50-page Septic Receiving Station Feasibility Study.

Experts at the DEP, CWC and Delaware Engineering, who do think a lot about what goes in one end and out the other, entered into a lengthy, ultimately productive collaboration, resulting in the $5 million.

It is expected a similarly long permitting process will now begin to unfold, involving DEP and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC).

Groundbreaking will likely occur in the late summer or early fall of 2026, leading to startup switches flipping in the first quarter of2027.

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