Archive: Opinions

EditorialAfter more than two years of covering the Lansing sewer project Town officials killed the project because it cost too much.  I thought I was done reporting on sewer for the most part.  But in covering the Warren Road sewer project this week I discovered that sewer in Lansing isn't actually dead.  As they famously said in the Monty Python pet store routine, "It's not dead, it's just resting!"

That is not to say that an all-town sewer project is coming to Lansing any time soon, or ever.  But it does mean that people are thinking about where there is a need for sewer and how it could be achieved fairly and sensibly now that the large sewer project is dead.  Part II of my sewer article will talk about these ideas in next week's issue, so I won't go into them here.  But the Warren Road sewer project is a win-win-win-win... project, and I wonder if it is a model for the future.

I can't find anyone who has a bad word to say about the Warren Road project.  A business, Transonic Systems, Inc., initiated the project by asking for it and finding other businesses in the neighborhood willing to buy in.  A straightforward approach to the engineering potentially included others along the route who have been given the opportunity to opt in or out.  Nobody will pay more than they are willing to pay -- if it is worth the cost they will build it.  If not, not.

And the stakeholders in this planned sewer district have said that it is worth it.  Transonic in particular has put $10,000 of its money where its mouth is to pay for the engineering study that is the first major step in a sewer project.

Meanwhile the Town is doing everything it can to speed the project along, because there is no cost to the Town and there are many benefits.  Keeping a successful company like Transonic Systems in Lansing means keeping the current 100 jobs here, but also new ones the company has said they will create when a sewer makes it possible to expand their facility.  That, too, means more local jobs, plus additional property taxes that are good for the residents of the Town who pay less as more businesses come here or expand.

Tompkins County Area Development (TCAD) has been a major lobbyist for sewer to the Town and other stakeholders because it is a perfect project from their standpoint in that it will not only increase business development, but will do so in a designated Empire Zone that they administer.  The purpose of Empire Zones is to encourage new businesses, expansion, and creation of new, good, well-paying jobs.  Since those are the purposes stated by Transonic when they said they wanted sewer, the project is a perfect fit.  Although TCAD may have been preaching to the choir, stepping up in support of the project has undoubtedly lent it more authority, and helped bring it to fruition sooner, as well as providing some confidence to Transonic Systems that they could plan on staying in Lansing.

Even peripheral stakeholders such as the Village of Lansing are enthusiastic about the project.  The Village and the Cayuga Heights treatment plant has plenty of capacity available for a project of this size.  The extra fees they will collect for transmitting effluent from the Town to the Cayuga Heights treatment plant won't hurt, although they won't be much of a windfall.  But Village officials see how this project makes sense, and while they resisted the defunct town project with tooth and nail, they are downright cheerful about this one.

As I am thinking about writing Part II for next week, I am struck by the difference between the first approach that came to nothing after more than six years, and the new one that could mean a working sewer in less than two years. 

The first was virtually doomed by the politics of the Group of Six, demands by the State government, and a history that forced the project into a form that didn't make sense to a lot of people.  Despite what I would characterize as heroic efforts by the members of the sewer committee to try to fit a square peg into a round hole, that project may have been doomed from the moment the Department of Environmental Conservation said no to a standalone plant in favor of a shared municipal solution.

The second was just people who wanted to accomplish something for a specific defensible reason.  Ironically it also involves a shared municipal solution, but one that the three involved municipalities (The Town and Village of Lansing, and Cayuga Heights) -- four, if you count Tompkins County -- readily agree on.

Was the large project in vain?  I don't think so.  If you look at the history of the project, it is clear that it was something Lansing had to get through before other solutions could be considered, largely because of pressure and constraints imposed by New York State.  Even at the time you could find town officials who would privately -- very privately -- say they thought it wouldn't pass, but that smaller projects that really make sense could come from it.  And that seems to be exactly what is happening.

Everyone I talk to now has taken away the many lessons learned from that process, and as you will see in next week's article, are thinking along these new lines.  That will mean a bright future for Lansing at no cost to those who don't need or want it.

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