Archive: Around Town

The public was treated to an open house at Bolton Point Friday, as the water facility opened its doors to celebrate the opening of its new office wing.  The staff offered refreshments, kids activities, and tours of the new wing as well as the water treatment plant that services the Towns of Lansing, Dryden, and Ithaca, and the Villages of Lansing and Cayuga Heights.  "When we first started in 1976 there wasn't an office, there wasn't a desk, there wasn't a chair in this place," says Bolton Point's General Manager Paul Tunison.  "30 years later we finally got the offices."


When the facility was planned in 1974 an office wing was part of the plan.  But when the project went out to bid the cost was significantly more than budgeted, so the offices were eliminated.  When the plant opened in 1976 there were no offices at all.  Employees had to improvise, making spaces in the plant, stairwells -- any place there was a corner to put a desk.  

"We bought some used furniture at Cornell University.," Tunison says.  "Then over time we purchased 2x4s and homosote.  We put up a wall here and a wall there, and rearranged them as the commission grew.  It was really cramped, really inefficient.  It wasn't a good atmosphere, literally speaking, because there were chemicals from the plant, and really no air conditioning.  We could never get our copiers to work because it was too humid.  The paper would curl and stick together."


The new facility is spacious, clean, and comfortable.  Office pods are open to each other, but provide privacy and more than three times the work space employees had in their makeshift spaces.  The two storey facility includes a new microbiology lab, a work space for electrical and mechanical technicians, as well as a large conference room and an employee kitchen.  

That is a big improvement over the cramped makeshift spaces the water staff used before.  Tunison says that old office space was humid and smelled of chlorine.  Electrical and mechanical technicians were stuffed into a space at the top of a stairwell.  "Before this addition we had one rest room for 19 employees," Tunison  says.  "Now we have four rest rooms, and locker facilities for our employees."


To celebrate, the staff offered refreshments in the new conference room, and conducted tours of the facility as well as face painting, activity books, and water-related stickers for kids.   "We want to show off our new office spaces, and we also wanted to take the opportunity to bring the public in to show them what we do here, the equipment that we use, and what it takes -- they turn on the tap and water comes out," Tunison says.  "We want to show them what goes in to doing that."


The Bolton Point plant is a combination of a pumping station and a giant water filter with staff constantly monitoring the quality of the water it pumps to municipalities.  Some of the water is stored in water towers such as those in the Village of Lansing.  The water comes from a single 36 inch pipe in Cayuga Lake, and is filtered through the plant before being pumped to the municipalities.  Last year the facility won a taste test with its water named the best tasting in four counties.  Staffer Joan Foote says that the facility pumps between two and a half to four million gallons per day, and that last year the outflow was nearly a billion gallons.


Employees were clearly delighted with the new office wing.  Tunison says that the facility now has room for expansion both for added water capacity and additional staff.  "We can add several more employees and still have room for the offices," he says.  "We shouldn't have to do this again for some time."

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