Chester town board considers the ways of trails and wells

Planning board chair Don Serotta brought copies of the Oak Woods subdivision map to a recent Town of Chester board meeting and gave a presentation about a proposed trail.

Oak Woods consists of six lots and 15 acres of open space. Adjacent is a smaller lot. The NY-NJ Trail Conference wants access to the property and then through the smaller piece in Monroe. Chester wants to own the little piece out to Lakes Rd., so the NY-NJ trail conference can run the Highlands Trail through both properties.

Planning board chair Don Serotta asked Bob Valentine to write a letter to Monroe’s Supervisor Tony Cardone to give the small piece of property to Chester to enable the Highland Trail to cross all properties. The NY-NJ Trail Conference would maintain the trail.

Tracy Schuh, who runs the Preservation Collective, commented about this subdivision at the beginning of the meeting. Schuh asked the planning board to be flexible and consider the proposal by the NY-NJ Trail Conference trail blazers since they don’t usually follow straight lines as shown on the map but rather design trails considering the terrain.

She also asked the board to resume a preservation plan committee in the near future to determine the priority open space first and then develop around that, so community benefits like trails are not squeezed in as an afterthought when site plans are already engineered.

Also at the meeting, Robert Valentine announced that two vehicle charging stations are coming to Chester as result of grant applications. One will be installed at the senior center. One will be installed at the Sugar Loaf Performing Arts Center.

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Part-time water administrator Tom Becker gave the following water report:

“The Step test at Walton Lake Estates has been completed. During the test 76 gallons per minute were produced and water quality samples were taken. With the recovery data from the test, we may be able to get permitted from DEC for 60 GPM. I am working on getting three price quotes for the additional well we need as a backup supply.

At The Sugar Loaf Water District, the pump went bad on the primary well. We had to use the backup well to serve water to the district until a replacement pump could be installed. This well was only run during the time the water operators could monitor it. During the replacement process Daryl Quackenbush had difficulty removing the old pump, as part of an inline check valve broke off and became lodged in the pitless adapter, keeping it from detaching.

After multiple times trying, he was able to free the pump and complete the replacement. I will be meeting with Tom Cusack next week to go over information needed to find an additional well for the Sugarloaf water district to replace the existing E Coli well. We need to consider who will do the engineering for the Walton Lake Estate’s project so we can start that process.”

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