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A project that will bring sewer to the Town of Lansing while expanding the Village of Lansing's sewer service was presented at a Town Board working meeting in the Village of Lansing March 7th.  The joint project between the two Lansings and the Village of Cayuga Heights is the result of about two years of negotiations between the three municipalities.  The new infrastructure will benefit eight properties in the Town of Lansing, and extend Village sewer along Cayuga Heights Road in the west of the Village.

"This sewer business has been a long, long path," said Village mayor Donald Hartill. "Somehow the stars have aligned well enough that it looks like we have a path forward.  Due to a lot of people's efforts we're making good progress.  One question is, is there enough capacity at the Cayuga Heights plant?  The answer is yes."

The three major projects in the Town that will receive sewer service are the 102 unit Cayuga Orchids townhouse project on Triphammer Road south of Asbury Road, the 117 unit English Village (59 town homes and 58 single family homes off of East Shore Drive), and the RINK/the FIELD, along with a few adjoining properties. 

Cayuga Orchid project engineer Tim Buhl said his project is the only one that has yet been approved, and the municipal sewer solution makes sense for the development.  English Village developer Jack Young and the Cayuga Orchids developer plan to make significant contributions that will not only cover the cost of the Town sewer, but also contribute to the Village project.

"What we proposed is to do this totally privately, at no cost to any of the residents of the Town," Buhl said.  If there are any current costs it will be the responsibility of the eight parcels involved to cover them.  We'll be building what is basically a no-cost sewer district in the Town, but also contribute towards the Village sewer construction as a charitable donation.  The combination of those two expenses from the private side will not only help the Village get its project done, but also start the first step in getting Sewer District #1 established in the Town."

He said the logic behind the donation was that a municipal sewer lasts longer, and does not carry the costs of maintenance a private plant would require, as well as removing the possibility that a developer may go bankrupt or out of business in the future, leaving the Town to pick up the sewer treatment costs.

"My client said if I'm going to spend significant capital dollars on investing in a (private) treatment plant that's going to have operating costs and maintenance and electrical costs and chemicals, might my money be better spent contributing towards a community sewer project which would not only benefit our project, but some of the ones nearby?  We met with Jack Young (who is developing the nearby English Village project), so when the two private guys started talking to the two public guys, things started to gel," Buhl said.

Limited treatment capacity at the Cayuga Heights sewer treatment plant will constrain Town usage to 33,000 gallons per day, which is enough for the eight properties currently included in the project.  Officials said that if sewer is to continue to grow in the Town there would have to be demand by residents to join the sewer district, plus the plant would have to agree to expand.

Hartill said that the Village system can sustain the Cayuga Heights Road addition with better monitoring of Infill and Infiltration (I&I), which would reduce storm water leakage and illegal sump pump connections to the sanitary sewer lines. 

"The other thing that's happening is that, primarily due to the Village of Lansing, there's been a serious look at what's called I&I," Hartill said. "If you have a very cold, dry day the flow through the plant is about 400,000 gallons.  There has been as much as 9 million gallons a day through that same plant.  There is a fair amount of work to be done.  There is no magic bullet.  You have to go through your system, look at it very carefully.  We're installing more meters so that we can monitor things more carefully."

He added that a new bypass could deflect some of the effluent to the Ithaca sewer plant.

"There are several strategies," he explained. "The Cayuga Heights plant has not been very careful about maintenance.  That is now being done carefully.  An engineering firm is looking at the plant itself and that's being fixed.  The other big piece is the I and I.  A well designed system has at most a factor of three from the dry flow to the peak flow.  We're a long way away from that.  Several municipalities are involved: the Town of Ithaca, the Town of Dryden, the two Lansings, and Cayuga Heights."

Hartill added that repairs to a sagging sewer pipe that crosses a gorge are on the docket for this construction season.  He said that a well engineered sewer system with plastic pipes and well-engineered manholes has an expected life span of at least 50 years.

Properties within the Town sewer district pay for operation and maintenance, which means that Town property taxpayers outside the sewer district do not pay for the sewer.  The Village doesn't have districts, so it charges its sewer users a surcharge above and beyond what it has to pay the Village of Cayuga Heights for sewage treatment.  That money funds the operation and maintenance of Village sewer pipes and pumping stations.

LaVigne says the project is a win-win-win for the three municipalities because it will bring more income to Cayuga Heights to allow them to upgrade their plant, income and new sewer for the Village, and a sewer district that has been a long time coming for the Town.

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