In little more than a month, residents of Troy will elect a new mayor. After the city’s latest water main break, both candidates say they have plans for dealing with infrastructure.
The Collar City has been plagued by water main breaks for years. A network of century-old water and sewer pipes buried beneath city streets can burst without warning, succumbing to rust and time.
In January 2016, a 33-inch, then-110-year old ruptured main spilled 8 million gallons into the streets of Lansingburgh. It took weeks to repair.
Five years later the city launched a $40 million infrastructure project, a multi-year effort to replace critical water transmission lines that connect the city’s Tomhannock Reservoir to the Water Treatment Plant.
Democratic Mayor Patrick Madden pointed out that when the weakest link in the system is fixed, a new link becomes the weakest one.
A September 18 break, again in Lansingburgh, sent a torrent of water into the streets and was descibed as a "raging river" by Republican City Council President and mayoral candidate Carmella Mantello.
“There are preventative measures that we can take. For instance, there is new technology that can work deep down into the underground pipes, and at least categorize these pipes all throughout the city,” said Mantello.
Democratic Rensselaer County legislator Nina Nichols says if elected, infrastructure will be a key priority for her administration.
“For a safer cleaner, greener Troy, we must have good roads, sidewalks, lighting, and safe water infrastructure," Nihols said. "And that includes pressing forward with an aggressive lead service line replacement program, which is, alongside our failing infrastructure, a key concern of people in the city of Troy.”
When it comes to changing out the old water and sewer lines, Nichols pledges to "aggressively pursue" all available funds.
“Hire a sophisticated and savvy grant writer, and possibly a team of grant writers so that we don't leave any money on the table that would be available for a number of different priorities that the city has, including dealing with our infrastructure. So that would be part of my plan. Another piece of my plan has to do with not playing politics with our city workforce. We need to have key leaders in place in all our departments, “ said Nichols.
Mantello says hiring someone to write grants would cost the city in terms of salary, benefits and retirement. She would prefer to connect with an engineering firm that would perform pro bono grant writing for federal and state money that she says her administration would "aggressively pursue."
“You're not talking a million here, 2 million here, you're talking tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars when you're looking at citywide. So federal and state dollars are critical and we'll aggressively pursue federal and state grants,” Mantello said.
Mantello noted that while visiting the Lansingburgh site another pipe broke a few blocks away. The candidate vows she will not place addressing the aging pipes on the backs of taxpayers.
“It's going to be a $25 million program and I have made a pledge to replace these pipes citywide within my first term. It's a very aggressive and ambitious goal, but I believe very doable," Mantello said. "You know, there's a lot of opportunities on the state and federal level I'll aggressively pursue but bringing it back home, I will do everything humanly possible to adopt preventive measures and new technology to ensure that we do the city wide assessment of our underground pipes, much like we have a city wide assessment of our streets, you know, where they rank from zero to 10. So that's critical, because when you're applying for federal and state dollars, that will give us that much more ammunition to get those dollars.”
Nichols also says taxpayers have nothing to fear.
“I think what the residents want and need is the assurance that their property and certainly their lives are going to be safe. And what happened with that water main break caused a lot of damage. And we need to do our very best to stay on top of our infrastructure concerns. So that that doesn't happen in the future. I do think that there's new technology that is really just now coming online to do a better job of being able to monitor those main water service lines. And we would want to be able to take advantage of that technology and improve our ability to monitor what's happening and to stay ahead of potential threats like that,” said Nichols.
The general election is Nov. 7.
