Politics & Government
South Huntington Talks Meter Changes, New Trucks
Water quality and contaminants reviewed.
The board of commissioners discussed water quality, new trucks and radio-read meters at its meeting this week.
Water quality was high on the board's agenda. Due to the nature of aquifers, the water that the South Huntington Water District initially handles is affected by contaminants from approximately 60 years ago.
Despite the challenges that this presents, the board is hopeful that since a lot of toxic farming practices are dying out and farms are increasingly becoming more organic, the South Huntington water will continually improve and significantly less contaminants will infiltrate the aquifer. They expect the amount of contaminants to decrease throughout the next 30 years.
CPA Bob McGrath from Albrecht, Viggiano, Zureck & Co., P.C. also attended the meeting to provide the board with accounting and financial advice. The board plans on receiving monthly reports on revenues and expenses for capital projects. They also discussed switching over to paperless record-keeping in order to conserve trees.
In addition, the board discussed the need to turn over two trucks in 2011. The trucks are expected to arrive at either the end of January or beginning of February. The water district generally tries to turn over two trucks a year.
One of the final items of discussion was the water meters. South Huntington has started to convert water meters over to automatic, radio-read meters. This allows them to collect meter statements quicker because they are not forced to read meters manually, which is beneficial especially in busy, time consuming areas and during periods of inclement weather. Currently, only 26.7% of meters in South Huntington are radio-read meters.
“It’s time consuming,” superintendent Kevin Caroll said. “You can’t read the meters through the snow. [Because of the snow] most bills are estimated right now.”
South Huntington hopes to convert to 100% radio-read meters in the upcoming years.
The board, which consists of commissioners Paul Tonna, Ciro DePalo and Dominick Feeney, meets Tuesdays at 8:30 a.m.
