“Town officials came to a fork in the road last week and took it.
The town is now officially moving forward on two options designed to find a new drinking water source for the 178 users of the water district.
The first is to drill a series of test wells at Begg’s Point, the site of the current pumping station.
Officials voted unanimously to give the greenlight to Ormsby’s Well Drilling to see if the shoreline site will reveal a possible source under a layer of shale.
Costs for the drilling, which began on Monday, clocked in at $8,980, the lowest bid the town received.
The second option is to drill up to six wells at Florence Hathaway Park in Willsboro.
The total cost for that project, which will be performed by Aztech Technologies, is $16,925.
Once potential yield and quality is determined — between 40-50 gallons per minute is promising, say engineers — the question then becomes whether to take preliminary samples and to drill production wells.
Susan Kennedy, an engineer with the state department of health, urged town officials to move forward with the full understanding that one option will not work out.
“The town board really needs to take some action, and aggressively take action,” said Kennedy.
