98- under Pressure-

Last night at the Woodstock Town Board meeting, which was sparsely attended by both town residents and board members, Denis Larios of the town's engineering firm, Brinier and Larios, presented some information about Woodstock's current water "emergency." He used the word emergency, and the word draught, although it seems that the emergency is caused not primarily by a shortfall of water, but rather by a plugging up of passageways down in the town's most productive well, which is called "Number Two."  Basically, Woodstock's well is constipated, and no amount of fluids from the sky seems to be enough to rectify (sorry) the situation.

So, unconstipate the wells, and everything will be fine, right? Well, not so fast.  Jeff Moran, town supervisor, asked Larios whether the town has enough capacity to supply the Woodstock Commons project with water from our now month long restricted town wells.  Larios started to chip away at the estimated water consumption, arguing that affordable housing residents use less water than people living in market rate housing.  He did not say it like that, but that is what it came down to.  He tried to characterize Woodstock Commons as "senior"  housing, comparing it to other "senior housing," and both Terrie Rosenblum and I called him on that.   I did suggest that the water demand estimates used for Woodstock Commons actually be the ones in the FEIS, that were approved already by the teams of experts RUPCO employed and the planning board nodded forward without understanding what they were approving.  Larios agreed.  So, the only thing to do now is fix the wells and then measure whether the capacity is actually there for Woodstock Commons, given the ONE THIRD of the capacity that currently is being lost to leaks or somewhere else, all of a sudden after years of only losing ten percent to leaks.  That is roughly one bathtub full of water every 90 seconds, ever day, all year long.  That is treated water we are talking about.

But on to the question of pressure.  Not the pressure Dennis Larios was under to avoid saying that Woodstock Commons would be a burden on the water district.  I'm talking about the water pressure itself.  Among the handful of attendees at last night's meeting was none other than Paul Shultis, Jr., chair of the planning board.  He volunteered a response to my concern about water pressure, even though this subject is one contained in my current lawsuit against him and the planning board and the town board and Jeff Moran.

I stated, last night, that under the Ten States Standards, water pressure in a residence should be between 60 and 80 PSI, but that the absolute minimum is 35 PSI, and that I had personally measured the water pressure at my house, and the first time I did so it was 37 PSI.  I brought up the question of whether Woodstock Commons would decrease the water pressure in my neighborhood to a substandard level. Shultis' response revealed a total lack of understanding of how water pressure in a system works.  He claimed that he saw a map, on paper, with a pressure of 65 PSI at the entrance to the proposed Woodstock Commons site.  To him, apparently, this means that water pressure at that point will always and forever be 65 PSI under all conditions and that that will never change, when in reality, water pressure in a system changes with various conditions including demand.

Shultis also said that  water entering my house at 70 PSI would break my appliances.  This is wrong.  Water pressure over 100 PSI is dangerous, but the normal, ideal range is 60 - 80 PSI.  Somebody sold Paul Shultis, Jr. a bill of goods, why I don't know.  But he is now on record as having as good as no understanding of water pressure, and is the person ultimately in charge of approving the probable tripling of water demand on my extension of the town water main.

I also brought up the fact that there was no simulation of water demand done for the potential expansion of the water district to Woodstock Commons, but instead the 1996 expansion down Route 375 was included instead.  However, there was simulation data about firefighting pressure, so there must have been some research done, and I asked the town to try to dig up whatever research had been done.  Of course the data came from RUPCO.

Anyway, more about this later.  For now, I'd like to say that I believe that everybody, including me, and perhaps especially me, appreciates that Paul is trying to do the right thing. Thanks for speaking up, Paul.