WHITE LAKE, NY — On August 8, the Sustainable Bethel Committee held a sustainability forum, where participants learned about varied sustainability measures and heard from local officials about sustainability efforts at the town, county and state level.

Sustainable Bethel, a volunteer-led town committee, put on the event at the Dr. Duggan School. The forum included tabling in the school gym, where organizations such as Delaware Valley Solar, NYSEG and Cornell Cooperative Extension, as well as the Town of Bethel and Assembly Member Paula Elaine Kay’s office, were handing out information and discussing sustainability. In the town meeting room, speakers were presenting on sustainability-related topics, including legislation focused on reducing waste, sustainable building methods and water studies done by the county government.

“I think we provided really good information,” said Jeffrey Allison, who serves as the chair of the Sustainable Bethel Committee. “I was very proud of the vendors, the tablers who came, and the subject matter and the speakers were things people really engaged with.”

Allison said that the turnout was less than they were expecting, due to what he believes was the manner in which the public was informed about the event, and added that this is only the second year of this forum, so these kinks are being figured out. 

“This is only our second one. We tried it in June the first year; we tried it in August the second year,” he said. “I think last year there were more people, but this [year’s] was a better forum.”

Allison also said that in addition to the forum, the committee is looking at other ways of furthering their mission of spreading information about sustainability and environmental issues. He said that the committee will be looking at other options, including having a speaker series instead of just one event, or having another forum in the winter with a remote option.

“We have to get together and decide how to keep presenting information,” Allison said. “Because our mission is to inform the public about environmental [issues], climate change and how to decrease their own individual impact on the environment.”

Sullivan County, studying water

The first speaker of the forum was Sullivan County’s Commissioner of Planning and Community Development, Heather Brown. She was there to discuss a recent study highlighting the county’s water infrastructure.

Allison said that Brown was the “key” speaker of the event and that he hoped everyone would see and take away the most from her presentation.

“Water is an issue. It is a big issue everywhere,” he said. “I think she gave us really incredible information and understanding that the county is working very hard on these water projects and studies, and it should give them comfort.”

Brown, who was born and raised in Bethel, said that when she became commissioner she realized that Sullivan needed information on the state of infrastructure in the county. This included electric infrastructure, water infrastructure, wastewater infrastructure, broadband infrastructure, and roads and bridges. So the county began collecting data, which resulted in the County Assessment of Potable and Wastewater Infrastructure (CAPWI). 

“Potable water supply and wastewater management are essential services that, in Sullivan County, are provided by a variety of different arrangements,” the county’s website reads. “In support of our efforts to aid municipalities in the County in the collection and centralization of data regarding water and sewer systems, the Division of Planning, with the support of Delaware Engineering, D.P.C., undertook this Countywide Assessment of Potable and Wastewater Infrastructure.”

“We need to address our infrastructure if we’re going to be poised for sustainable growth going into the future,” Brown said.

Brown said that as the county is seeing more development, unified studies are important because the more local sources of information can be scattered and of varying degrees of quality.

“In small communities like [Bethel], when you ask for data, you can get anything from a really detailed [Geographic Information System] layer that’s got, you know, latitudes and longitudes at the points of the wells and everything, right down to ‘Well, if you go down and talk to Bob, he’s been doing this for 50 years, and he’s got all the information right here and possibly scribbled on a napkin that was developed over a roast beef sandwich,’” Brown said. “That’s the range of quality of data that we were kind of working with.”

“If we want to support our local businesses, if we want to support our residents, our businesses, our visitors, we have a stake in making sure that that infrastructure is well maintained, that it’s available, that has adequate capacity, and that it’s going to be around not just today or for the next five years, but 20 years from now.”

Brown also touched on the topic of package plants, which the Environmental Protection Agency defines as “pre-manufactured treatment facilities used to treat wastewater in small communities or on individual properties.” Brown said that there are concrete steps municipalities can, and in some cases must, take to regulate these plants and make sure they are running effectively. 

Delaware Engineering D.P.C, the engineering firm that supported the creation of the study, also did a free training with the county for municipal officials and the public on the topic of package plants; they said that if properly used, package plants can be beneficial. Brown shares this opinion.

“I’m going to say something really unpopular right now. In and of themselves, package plants are not necessarily a bad thing, and in the right application, they can actually be very useful in protecting the water quality surrounding a development,” Brown said. “That being said, they have to be built properly. They have to use the right materials. They have to be operated properly.”

According to Brown, the study has been well received. She said that this is because the plan is based on the hard data and not politicized.

“There’s not a whole lot of opportunity to be subjective. It’s like this is what the flow is. This is how old the infrastructure is. This is what the size of the pipe is. This is what this is where it is,” Brown said.

This idea, that the water and data are not subjective or political, was something that was a conscious decision and acknowledgement in the formation of the plan, with Brown saying that “water does not care about your politics.”

“I think that we wanted to recognize in that particular volume that water does not care about municipal boundaries. If the Town of Bethel is neighboring to the Town of Thompson and the Town of Liberty and the towns of Highland and Tusten and Cochecton, they all need to kind of have an idea about what each other is doing.”

Bethel goes electric

Outside of the forum, the Town of Bethel displayed electric equipment recently purchased using grant funds. Bethel Town Supervisor Dan Sturm gave the River Reporter a tour of these new pieces.

These pieces of equipment include an all-electric mower, snowblower and utility terrain vehicle (UTV). The big-ticket item is an all-electric police car, which was free to the town as it was financed by grant funding through the state’s Climate Smart Communities (CSC) program. 

“We’re a climate smart community, and that allowed us to apply for points, and we got a certain amount of grant funding,” Sturm said. “So in the past round, we got $150,000 that we could use for energy-efficient things.” 

Sturm said that the police car was one of the more exciting purchases, and touted the uniqueness of Bethel having an electric police car. “I think it’s unique because it’s the first one in Sullivan County, and the fact that we worked hard to get the points that allowed us to have the grant funding,” he said.

Sturm also said that the other equipment has received positive reception from town employees, saying that they love the new equipment. He also emphasized that all the equipment was basically free for the town.

“We bought all that with grant funding, no match. We didn’t have to pay anything,” Sturm said.

Sturm added that now the town is looking at using grant money it received to do building upgrades, which they have already been planning for several town properties. He also said that Bethel, which was recertified as Bronze in the CSC program, is aiming higher.

“We did recertify Bronze last year,” Sturm said. “Now we’re aiming for Silver.”