By DENISE A. RAYMO
Staff Writer
MALONE — Word of a final $558,300 grant ends an eight-year quest by the Village of Malone to replace its entire 120-year-old water system.
The village was the only North Country community to receive water-project funds under the 2010 competitive round of applications for a State Division of Housing and Community Renewal Community Development Block Grant.
But housing-rehabilitation grants were awarded to Constable ($280,000), the Village of Saranac Lake ($400,000), Schuyler Falls ($220,000) and Westville ($400,000).
And the Town of Ticonderoga received $599,984 in grant funds for its public-sewer system.
Total water-system upgrades in the Village of Malone have topped $5,670,000, an expense Mayor Brent Stewart said village residents would never have been able to afford without grants.
The urgency to replace the aging system came to light in 2002 when the State Department of Health found contamination in pre-treated water in the village's uncovered Pinnacle Reservoir.
The village was awarded a low-interest $4.6 million loan from the state's Drinking Water Revolving Fund to start the work in 2004 at its Chasm Falls site.
Malone soon after had the ability to supply more than 2.8 million gallons of clean water to the system's 13,000 users.
Nearly half the cost is paid by the State Department of Corrections, which taps into the village's water system for its three prison sites in Malone, the mayor said.
The second phase of funding for the water system was awarded last year for $515,000, which paid for replacement of the feeder line under the Main Street bridge.
That line was prone to winter freezing. The water-delivery line now bypasses the vulnerable point and loops around in a semi-circle from Main Street to Duane Street and connects with a line at the Pearl Street bridge.
The final $558,300 phase will replace the water line that comes from Chasm Falls to a pumping station right near the Malone Recreation Park and also ends at the Pearl Street bridge.
E-mail Denise A. Raymo at: draymo@pressrepublican.com
