All municipalities that receive drinking water from Skaneateles Lake – which also includes the city of Syracuse and the village and town of Skaneateles – are required by Federal law to install treatment plants by March 2012. The newly constructed LT2 plant in Elbridge, located on Kingston Road, is the first of its kind in Onondaga County.
“We decided to bite the bullet and get it done right away, so we’re ahead of the game,” said Fred Weisskopf, acting mayor of Elbridge. “We’re the guinea pigs.”
The mandate stems from the paramecium Cryptosporidiosis, which sickened thousands of people in Rochester in 2005. The microorganism has yet to be traced to Jordan-Elbridge.
Water systems were evaluated based on size of population serviced. Elbridge was required to treat its water because it shares a water line with the city of Syracuse.
“If we had our own [water supply] – because we have such a small population – we would not have to do this,” said Tom King, head of public works for the village of Elbridge. “But since we [were evaluated as] part of that population, we have to treat it.”
The project took unprecedented coordination between the villages and town, who together obtained a New York State Department of State grant totaling $600,000. Each village received $90,000 toward the project in Onondaga County Community Development grant money.
How it works
The LT2 facility in Elbridge uses two Trojan UV Swift light reactors – one of them as as a backup – to treat the estimated 40,000 cubic feet of water that comes through daily.
“It will alter the DNA so the virus or the bacteria can no longer reproduce, and then obviously it just dies,” said Trojan senior service technician Steve Birbaumer. “It doesn’t add any taste to the water,” he added, “it doesn’t change the water, there’s no by-product of using UV.”
