Pat Reidy, water quality specialist for the Cortland County Soil and Water Conservation District, addressing the Cortlandville Town Board Wednesday evening (Peter Blanchard/Cortland Voice)

Correction: A previous version of this article misidentified Ann Hotchkin as Mary Ellen Roodenburg, who serves as secretary to the county planning department. Hotchkin is chair of the county planning board.

CORTLANDVILLE, N.Y. — On Wednesday, the Cortlandville Town Board discussed lifting a moratorium on new gas stations above the town’s aquifer, which supplies drinking water to the city of Cortland, the town of Cortlandville and several other municipalities in the county.

The proposed law would permit gas stations on an additional 700 acres of land in 11 different areas of the town, according to Dan Dineen, director of the Cortland County Planning Department, who was invited by the town board to talk about the law at Wednesday’s meeting.

The current moratorium on new gas stations was adopted in 1988 after officials uncovered environmental contamination in the aquifer due to improper disposal of waste from the former Smith Corona factory.

In October, the county planning department analyzed the proposed law and included several clerical recommendations related to the location and operation of “retail petroleum sales” in the town. The following month, the county planning board voted unanimously to send those recommendations to the town board on the belief that it was a clerical effort to clarify language in the Cortlandville town code.

After a more careful review of the law, however, the board recommended at its March meeting to prohibit any gas stations above the aquifer from the city of Cortland line south to the town of Virgil boundary.

Since then, the proposed law has remained in limbo.

At Wednesday’s meeting, Dineen discussed both the planning department’s recommendations to the town and the planning board’s ultimate decision not to support the law.

“The board felt that essentially not only should the gas station law not be adopted, but new gas stations should be prohibited anywhere in the aquifer protection zone,” Dineen told the town board.

Town Supervisor Dick Tupper dismissed the recommendations made by the planning board and called into question the professional qualifications of its members.

“How many hydrologists are there on the county Planning Board?” Tupper asked Dineen. “How many experts on water?…Who’s on the county planning board? Business people? Housewives? It’s just a normal group of private citizens, none of whom have any expertise in hydrology.”

Ann Hotchkin, who chairs the county planning board and attended Wednesday’s meeting, said she was taken aback by Tupper’s comments.

“I thought it was very disrespectful.” Hotchkin said. “If you look at our planning board, we have code officers, engineers, people that have to go through all kinds of training. There’s a ton of expertise on the board.”

Concerns over risk to public water supply

Critics of the proposed law say lifting the ban and allowing new gas stations in the aquifer zoning district would put the public’s water supply at greater risk for environmental contamination.

Pat Reidy, a water quality specialist with the Cortland County Soil and Water Conservation District, was also invited to speak at Wednesday’s meeting.

Reidy told the town board that gas storage facilities have a number of built-in protections, including leak detection systems, to prevent spills from occurring.

“Human error is probably the biggest risk with gas stations,” Reidy said.

Reidy added that New York State does not provide guidance to communities on what to do with gas stations located in a well protection area.

During the privilege of the floor portion of Wednesday’s meeting, Pam Jenkins, a Cortland resident who recently won a lawsuit against the town board in a separate matter involving the expansion of Leach’s Trash Service operation, signed up to speak about the proposed law but was told by Tupper that there is a “suspension on discussion” of the law.

In her written comments, Jenkins stated that the proposed gas station law was inconsistent with the town’s Aquifer Protection Plan, which was adopted in 2002.

“Our aquifer is too valuable to gamble with,” Jenkins wrote, adding that there is no evidence of demand for more gas stations above the aquifer.

“We are left wondering if the gas station law as previously proposed is being done as a special favor to some person or some people, who wish to remain anonymous, but who own land that would be developable as gas stations, should this gas station law go into effect,” Jenkins said.