Village of East Williston trustees said Monday they hope to meet with Williston Park’s Village Board following what they see as a disagreement on water chlorination.
Williston Park’s trustees want the villages’ water-service agreement to include language requiring East Williston to build its own emergency chlorination system, East Williston Mayor David Tanner said, a request the Village Board said is a step backward in negotiations.
“I am very disheartened, personally, by this,” East Williston Trustee Robert Vella said at Monday’s Village Board meeting. “I had hopes that we could have a concrete agreement settled on all terms, and it seems as if not only do we not have an agrement right now, but one of the essential terms has been changed.”
Tanner said the emergency chlorination system would likely be built at Devlin Park, the same site East Williston trustees have proposed for the village’s own water supply system. It’s uncertain what it would cost, Tanner said.
Williston Park never expressed in writing any concerns about its ability to chlorinate East Williston’s water in case of an emergency, Vella said. And the village is entitled to the same chlorination service as any other Williston Park water customer, Tanner said.
“They can chlorinate our water as they chlorinate theirs,” East Williston Deputy Mayor Bonnie Parente said. “This almost doesn’t make any sense. It’s, ‘We’re going to do this because we can,’ which is very symptomatic of how the negotiation has been all along.”
Williston Park Mayor Paul Ehrbar said it wasn’t a Williston Park request but a Nassau County Department of Health requirement that East Williston have its own emergency chlorination system.
East Williston may currently be violating that regulation, he said.
“They’ve known about this. This is nothing that we put on them,” Ehrbar said. “It’s something that the Department of Health has told them that they need to do.”
Ehrbar said Williston Park will continue chlorinating East Williston’s water and do any emergency chlorination it’s able to.
After speaking with Tanner Tuesday morning, Ehrbar said, the village boards plan to meet in person “in the very near future.”
Williston Park’s providing chlorination was one of the terms of a proposed water-service agreement the two villages reached at December negotiation meeting.
Under it, East Williston would buy water exclusively from Williston Park for 25 years starting at the current rate of $4.33 per thousand gallons, which would be locked until June 2018.
Any future rate hikes would have to maintain the current ratio of East Williston’s rate to Williston Park’s residential rate, and East Williston officials would get to give input with Williston Park’s board before a public hearing on an increase. East Williston would also continue maintaining its own water infrastructure.
Williston Park approved an agreement Jan. 4 containing several provisions not discussed in December, including clauses that would let the village to opt out with 12-months notice to East Williston if it can’t meet its own water supply demands; indemnify Williston Park for damages or injuries resulting from East Williston’s water use; let Williston Park’s village code determine penalty payments; and set a minimum usage of 99 million gallons for East Williston.
Those clauses raised concerns among East Williston residents and trustees at a Jan. 12 public meeting, where the Village Board presented the draft agreement, along with plans for the $7.5 million water supply system, before sending proposed revisions to Williston Park.
Ehrbar said Williston Park would likely to respond to East Williston’s revisions by Feb. 10.
