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