As The Village of East Williston pursues a lawsuit against the Village of Williston Park over the water rates its neighbor village is charging, the village board is actively looking for a new source of water.
East Williston is currently seeking to strike deals for alternative water sources with Old Westbury, Albertson, Carle Place, and Mineola, according to East Williston Mayor David Tanner.
“We all believe the water rate’s too high,” said Tanner. “At this point, we’re a captured audience. We have no choice.”
Tanner said he intends to continue exploring that option with Mineola even though that village’s board of trustees left no doubt last week that they weren’t interested.
Part of the reason for the reluctance Mineola board members expressed at a Wednesday night meeting last week was the suit East Williston filed against Williston Park in Nassau County Supreme Court.
“Our job is to provide for our residents. I would never want to be in the position to choose between our residents and someone else,” said Mineola Deputy Mayor Paul Pereira. “And we’re talking about litigation between East Williston and Williston Park.”
Thomas Rini, Mineola superintendent of public works, said the added demand for East Williston – which used 140 million gallons of water last year – would “stress” Mineola’s water system, and noted the existing interconnect between the two municipalities would have to be enlarged. Rini said he doubted there would be any significant financial benefit to the village and also noted the prospect of legal problems in the future.
“Now we have a situation where they’re suing the people supplying them water. If we would take that over, we would almost certainly be in the same position at some point,” Rini said.
Fred Booher, supervisor of Mineola’s water and sewer department, concurred with Rini’s assessment.
“I don’t think it’s in Mineola’s best interest to supply water to another village, for a number of reasons. I don’t think hydraulically it could work, and work adequately,” Booher said.
East Williston is at a higher land elevation than Mineola, exacerbating the problem of pumping water between the two municipalities. Two more interconnections would be needed between the two towns, according to Booher, who estimated the engineering costs at $100,000.
The existing interconnect is in place to handle emergency situations between adjacent communities.
Rini said Mineola’s projected demand of 1.2 billion gallons this year was close to the state Department of Environmental Conservation’s 1.4 billion cap on the village’s water usage. Exceeding that cap would trigger DEC sanctions, Rini said.
Rini recalled that a 2006 study East Williston commissioned from engineering consulting firm H2M indicated that neither Williston Park or Mineola could adequately supply East Williston water under peak demand conditions.
Rini said East Williston officials approached Mineola, Albertson, Carle Place, and Old Westbury at the time, and all four communities chose not to pursue a water deal with East Williston.
When asked about those circumstances after Monday night’s board meeting, Tanner said, “That was a different time. Things change.”
But nothing has changed in Mineola, as Mayor Scott Strauss made clear at the end of his village board’s discussion.
“We’d certainly like to be the good neighbor and help them out if we can but we seem to have concerns that just don’t seem to be working out right now,” Strauss said.
The change that prompted the lawsuit East Williston brought against Williston Park was a hike in the water rates last spring from $2.99 per thousand gallons to $3.83 per thousand gallons.
“Williston Park is now charging us the retail rate that they are charging their commercial customers,” Tanner said during the meeting.
Responding to questions from residents, Tanner said that current water rates in East Williston – $5.47 per thousand gallons up to 100,000 gallons and $5.72 per each thousand gallons over 100,000 gallons – were set to build up a fund with revenues above the rates being charged by Williston Park for research that will be required as a prelude to a new deal with any other municipality.
“So we’re being charged for research and water,” one resident said.
Village of East East Williston Trustee Michael Braito said that any municipality East Williston would seek a deal with would require East Williston to conduct a feasibility study at its costs before a deal could be sealed.
Village of Williston Park Mayor Paul Ehrbar recently said he instructed village attorney James Bradley to contact East Williston village attorney Jeffrey Blinkoff to set up a meeting between the two village boards to discuss the water rate issues and attempt to settle the matter out of court. At a recent board meeting, Ehrbar said East Williston officials had been unresponsive to Bradley’s invitation.
Tanner has said he is interested in meeting with Williston Park officials.
Tanner and Blinkoff acknowledged the approach from Bradley, but said they were awaiting Bradley’s counter-filing in the court case in response to East Williston’s initial court filing to determine what the other village’s position was on the water rate issues before pursuing talks on the matter.
