Pat Clune, village of Homer deputy mayor. (Photo provided by the village of Homer).
The village of Homer is still seeking funding for its water tank replacement project.
Officials said at a Tuesday meeting the village had missed out on grant funding from the state’s Water Infrastructure Improvement Act (WIIAH). The funding would have helped install a new water tank to replace two older ones as part of the larger infrastructure overhauls planned at the municipal level.
The buildout of the 400,000-gallon water storage tank was projected this summer to cost $4 million, but the actual installation is beyond the established scope of the project. The new tank would be located on Wolf Road. Barton and Loguidice, a Syracuse-based consultant helping with the project, is set to continue applying for grants to help see the project move forward.
“We have two older water tanks on the east side of 81, one of which we're no longer using and the other one is leaking,” village Deputy Mayor Patrick Clune said Wednesday.
The leak on one of the tanks on the east side, Clune said, “is pretty significant.”
“However, that doesn't impact the overall quality because we have excess capacity in the other working tanks,” he said. “If needed, we could shut down the old tank, and there would be no issues. But we’d like to have redundancy. That's why we're looking at the new tank.”
Going forward, Clune said it will continue to look for grant funding to lighten the costs of the replacement project.
“We are eligible for zero interest loans, so that's also something we're looking at now,” he added.
Clune said the village is being proactive about its infrastructure.
“We’ve been working on upgrading the sewer system before we have significant issues. We’re looking at replacing another water tank, so we have redundancy and there are no future issues down the road,” Clune said. “We also submitted a request for proposal for a waterline survey analysis. We're trying to be proactive and identify and fix problems before they become problems.”
