Manhasset-Lakeville Water District officials on Tuesday agreed to remove from the district’s Munsey Park property a 195-foot-high communications antenna that had drawn angry complaints from residents concerned about their safety and the lack of notice they received.
In a prepared statement read at the water district’s public meeting, Commissioner Donald O’Brien said work to remove the antenna would likely be completed by the end of November as part of an accelerated plan to replace the village’s water storage tank, which has stood for more than 70 years.
O’Brien said the agreement is an attempt at more transparent interactions between the water district and the municipalities and residents it serves.
Village officials and Munsey Park residents had complained that they were not informed of plans to build the tower until work began on Oct. 14, Columbus Day.
“Our board values the input and energy that the community has brought to this issue, and believes that the decision that we are now making is a better decision because it factors in the community concerns that we did not anticipate,” O’Brien said.
The tower was erected to continue the water district’s ongoing improvements to its communications infrastructure, O’Brien said.
Manhasset-Lakeville in 2010 raised its first antenna on a water tower in Great Neck’s Village of Thomaston in an attempt to connect 13 other district supply sites. The district then installed a monopole at Great Neck South High School in 2011 to eliminate radio communications issues it experienced in the southern part of the district.
After a tower was erected at Manhasset-Lakeville headquarters in Great Neck, workers in 2012 attached an antenna to the Munsey Park water tower. Testing revealed the location could receive communications from locations in the north and south to serve as the district’s main control site.
“In addressing plans for placing the radio equipment on the Munsey Park tank location, we considered our recent experience in accomplishing elevated tank painting at Thomaston,” O’Brien said. “Mindful of the significant expense to taxpayers required to temporarily position communications equipment required to be removed from elevated tanks, we sought an alternative approach.”
But after discussions with its engineers and consultants, O’Brien said, the water district determined its best opportunity for limiting communication disruption and saving money would be to install a permanent antenna tower at Munsey Park.
“We now know we miscalculated on that score,” O’Brien said.
O’Brien said Manhasset-Lakeville gathered design plans for the tower as well as its foundation and conducted an environmental analysis of the area before declaring itself the project’s “lead agency” and announcing its intentions in April in writing to trustees in Munsey Park and Flower Hill, which borders the area.
After a bidding process, Manhasset-Lakeville awarded the project to Mayday Communications, Inc., O’Brien said. The tower took a little more than a day to build.
Village of Munsey Park Mayor Frank DeMento said he received calls from residents near water district’s property, who informed him of the work.
After learning the water district raised the tower, DeMento spoke with O’Brien, who agreed to stop all work on the tower that had not already begun, and the two met that Saturday for water district officials to explain the details of the water tower project.
The next afternoon, dozens of residents accompanied Munsey Park trustees to the water district’s meeting to question how the district could build the tower without first giving notice to the village.
Chris Prior, the water district’s attorney, said last week that Manhasset-Lakeville had notified the villages of the project in advance to allow officials time to obtain any additional information they wanted.
Prior said water district officials even attended a Munsey Park trustees meeting earlier this year to discuss the matter, shortly after DeMento, Deputy Mayor Sean Haggerty and Trustee Patrick Hance were elected.
When Manhasset-Lakeville did not hear from Munsey Park and neighboring Flower Hill, Prior said, the water district assumed there were no objections to the work and went ahead with the project.
“Because it was built on the parcel that already contains the elevated water tank, the district did not think the pole would become that problematic,” Prior said.
On October 23, the Munsey Park board of trustees held an emergency meeting to update residents of the water tower’s status and discuss the village’s options in handling the situation moving forward, which included sending letters from residents to Manhasset-Lakeville officials and the possibility of litigation against the water district.
Village of Flower Hill Mayor Elaine Phillips and counsel Jeffrey Blinkoff were in attendance as well.
Officials said at the time they could not provide many of the project’s logistical details because they had not yet received the water district’s documents, which had been requested through the Freedom of Information Law.
Residents in attendance were concerned that strong winds could knock the tower over and onto people’s houses, though Munsey Park officials said they were told by water district personnel that it would take 200 mile-an-hour winds for the tower to fall.
At the meeting, DeMento announced he and O’Brien met on Oct. 19, and the board made public an e-mail from O’Brien saying the water district would hold a meeting within the next week to explain their plans for the tower’s future.
At the water district’s meeting, held Tuesday, O’Brien said the tower was coming down and that Manhasset-Lakeville would begin a year-long project to replace the Munsey Park water tower much sooner than it initially planned. Officials said the tower would likely take an entire year to replace.
“We have had many conversations with residents and elected officials in recent weeks, and we look forward to working together as we move into our Munsey Park replacement project,” O’Brien said. “We will involve all the neighbors as that process moves forward and we look forward to the support of all of you as that necessary project takes shape.”
DeMento said the resolution was the result of the water district’s willingness to negotiate the tower’s future over two weekends, saying he met with O’Brien last Saturday as well.
Taking down the tower, DeMento said, was always the main priority of the meetings.
“I think this hopefully starts a relationship of transparency and good will between the water district and the Village of Munsey Park,” DeMento said.
Residents in attendance at the meeting were still concerned about the safety implications of the tower remaining up until the end of November, but were glad the two sides were able to come to an agreement and involve them in the process.
“Although we remain concerned about the interim safety of the tower, we applaud the efforts of our village government in working with the water authority toward removing the tower as soon as possible,” said John Lippmann, a resident who said he can see the tower from the backyard of his Eakins Road home. “We appreciate the willingness of all parties to work together.”
Mark Shackel, who said he has lived on Eakins Road since 1988, said that even though the new water tower would take time to replace, he supported the decision and elected officials in working together toward more transparent and efficient government process.
“We’re looking forward for the future of the water district and for the community,” Shackel said. “It may be painful to start, but the first guy through the wall always gets bloody. But what they’re doing is not going to just affect us, this tower is going to be there for the next hundred years of the community. Let’s do it.”
