Wallkill Valley Times Dec. 13 2017

T IMES WALLKILL VALLEY Vol. 35, No 50 3 WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 13, 2017 3 ONE DOLLAR Living history museum Page 34 www .W allkill V alley T imes . net Town pressed to preserve farmhouse Walden to By JASPREET GILL [email protected] Preserving the history of the Town of Montgomery is becoming an issue for concerned residents. During last week’s town board meeting, Montgomery resident Bruce Shafer aired out his frustrations with the current state of the Benedict Farm house located at 1675 State Route 17K. “The Benedict Farm house is owned by the taxpayers of the Town of Montgomery and what has happened there is sick,” he says. According to Shafer, since Eden Benedict’s passing in 2002, the Town of Montgomery has not been taking care of her house properly. The Benedict property was formerly used as a dairy farm and in 1999, the Town of Montgomery purchased the 102-acre property to construct a upgrade sewer system Continued on page 2 By TED REMSNYDER Direct from the North Pole Jaspreet Gill Tractor embellished with holiday decorations drives down Pine Bush’s Main Street during the annual Crawford Country Christmas Tractor Parade on Saturday. Story, photos on page 5. The sewer system in Walden is poised for an upgrade as the village has secured a New York State Community Development Block Grant worth $75,000 to bolster its infrastructure. The CDBG funds will allow the village to fix problem areas found in the underground system. “It’s going towards re-lining the sewer mains in the area of Valley Avenue,” Village Manager John Revella said of the grant. “We’re not allowed to start until we actually get the grant documents. We’ll also be doing smoke testing in conjunction with that to determine the best areas for the lining and to see where there may be potential infiltration.” In a parallel matter, the Walden Village Board unanimously approved a resolution during its Dec. 5 meeting to approve a village settlement of $10,000 with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation for sanitary sewer overflow violations cited by the state agency. According to the consent order with the NYSDEC, the agency documented 13 sewer overflow violations in the village in a time period between January 2013 and July 2016. The agency also documented that the village “had two prohibited bypasses from Pine Street Pump Station on August 9, 2013 and Route 52 Siphon on March 12, 2014.” The village has reached an agreement with the state to complete a checklist of items to renovate its sewer system, and as part of the settlement, an additional $10,000 civil penalty against the village has been suspended as long as Walden follows the schedule of compliance found Continued on page 4 SERVING CRAWFORD, GARDINER, MAYBROOK, MONTGOMERY, PINE BUSH, SHAWANGUNK, WALDEN AND WALLKILL