Septic fails and Eldred takes another financial hit

By DAVID HULSE

ELDRED, NY — Financially, it’s been a bad century for the Eldred Central School (ECS) District and things didn’t get better on February 10 as officials learned that four septic fields at the MacKenzie Elementary School in Glen Spey have failed, some 12 years after installation.

The $5.4 million school building has been plagued with building problems since its opening in September of 1995. District voters in 2002 approved a $1.25 million bond to fund repairs to MacKenzie in the first phase of a planned three part, four-year $4.5 million infrastructure rehabilitation project.

Portions of the work have since been completed, but in the past year ECS has been unable to find a masonry contractor willing to complete the work within the bounds of some $200,000 remaining in the bond funding. No additional funding help was possible, as voters panned the second phase of the project, a proposed $1.5 million bus garage. School officials have not recently mentioned the original third-phase bond, which was to rehab the 64-year-old secondary school.

In the meantime, Eldred was party to a successful tax appeal filed by the Mirant Corporation on its Mongaup hydroelectric facilities and the district is being forced to refund over $1 million based on the appeal.

Continuing problems eroded voter support, prompting the failure of the ECS budget in its initial vote last spring, the only budget in Sulllivan County to fail.

School officials recently learned that their 2005-2006 budget will share a ballot with a $17 million BOCES construction bond question.

So Thomas Group construction consultant Craig Lamereaux’s announcement last week that repairing or replacing the MacKenzie septic fields would cost a minimum of $300,000 seemed like pouring salt in a wound. “The taxpayers are going to say ‘how does this happen?’” said board member Andrew Boyar.

Lamereaux said Thomas’ engineers believe that the clay-like soil excavated for the construction of the school building was used to cover the sewage drain field instead of more porous material. Unable to drain through the dense soil, components of the fields have burst from the ongoing pumping pressure. The problems were not in the engineering or the district’s planning. “The system should have lasted 40 or 50 years. It just wasn’t installed properly,” Lamereaux said.

“We have been battered and it just doesn’t stop,” Boyar replied.

Boyar recommended that the board see engineering specifications before deciding on a repair plan.

Superintendent Dr. Ivan Katz said the concern is that a future board does not get hit with this problem again in another 10 or 12 years.

Lamereaux said engineers would have to provide a time estimate to complete the repairs. The district is not in violation of Department of Environmental Conservation regulations because they are aware of the problem and addressing it, he said.

Lamereaux had more bad news, reporting that the district was again unable to solicit bids for the MacKenzie masonry repairs. He was not asked about alternatives for future re-bidding of the work.

Lamereaux did locate a masonry firm willing to undertake repairs to the deteriorated western façade of the secondary school in Eldred and recommended a $198,400 proposal, which the board then approved.