Village Considers Using Composting Toilets

Village Considers Using Composting Toilets
by Liz Schevtchuk Armstrong

The Cold Spring Village Board Tuesday night took initial steps toward allowing use of composting toilets at parks and similar sites within the village.

At its Feb. 2 workshop session, the board reviewed a proposed law that would change the village code by exempting composting toilets from the requirement that all properties – whether private residences or outdoor public recreation sites -- install toilets hooked up to public sewer lines.

Unlike a typical toilet connected to plumbing and a public sewage system, a composting toilet, in the words of the draft amendment, uses “an aerobic processing system” to treat waste and either needs “no water or small volumes of flush water” only.

Even if the village changed the law, “you’d still have to get county approval; you’d still have to get planning board approval” before installing a composting toilet, Mayor Seth Gallagher explained. 

Under the draft amendment, composting toilets could be installed at parks, outdoor recreation facilities, outdoor museums, or school athletic fields if the Cold Spring Planning Board granted a special permit. To be eligible, the composting toilets would have to meet various criteria, including compliance with the standards of the National Sanitation Foundation and avoidance of any threats to neighboring residences and soil and ground water.

Village consideration of the legal change follows a request from Scenic Hudson to install a compost toilet facility at its West Point Foundry Preserve, on land once occupied by the 19th-century iron factory near the Hudson River.

“The board thought it made sense down there” to allow use of composting toilets, the mayor said. But the board did not want the owner of a home or business to be able to use the composting-toilet approach as a way of evading the requirement to connect a premise to sewer lines, he added.

“If these things are run right, they work great,” Trustee Gordon Robertson said of composting toilets.

The board also talked about charging a fee – in legal terminology an “undertaking” – as a form of “performance bond” or “deposit” to ensure that organizations installing composting toilets maintain them.

With input expected from other village entities, such as the planning board, involved in such issues, the village board took no immediate action.

Turning to another potential change to village code, the board discussed raising from $20,000 to $35,000 the monetary limit before competitive bids are required for public works projects. The State of New York recently enacted such a change in regard to municipal law.  

“These outdated thresholds have imposed rigid requirements on essentially every project local governments engage in, as the total cost of all but the most minor of procurements exceed the current statutory parameters,” the New York Conference of Mayors (NYCOM) said in endorsing the state change. The mayors’ group said that the unreasonably low limits “decrease local government efficiency and yield additional expenses for local governments and their taxpayers” by complicating the bidding process, imposing mandatory waiting periods, and “drawing out the procurement of uncomplicated transactions for weeks at a time.” 

The board expressed its informal interest in pursuing the change and consulting with the village attorney toward that end.

In other business, the mayor read a Jan. 26 letter from the Town of Philipstown Board inviting village board members from Cold Spring and Nelsonville and officials of local fire departments and other emergency services to team up with the town board in applying for a New York State Local Government Efficiency Grant and “look at ways to improve those services and contain costs.”

“It’s important that we, as the leaders of our local governments and leaders of our emergency service agencies, work together to assure the quality capabilities and the future of our emergency services,” the letter stated.  According to the town board, the grant program “will allow us to jointly examine current emergency service delivery capabilities, current and future service demands, public expectations, and the fiscal abilities of this community to meet those expectations.”

If successful in obtaining the grant, the town proposes to engage a consultant in the emergency services field and, ultimately, “conduct a joint planning process” with citizens and emergency service providers, in an effort “that challenges all to work together in the best interest of the entire community for the provision of cost-effective, efficient and safe emergency services.”

Along with the involvement of the mayors and trustees of Cold Spring and Nelsonville, the town board sought the participation of the North Highlands Fire District and North Highlands Engine Company, Garrison Volunteer Fire Department, Cold Spring Fire Company, Continental Village Fire Department, Philipstown Volunteer Ambulance Corps, and Garrison Volunteer Ambulance Corps.

The village board also began work on an updated agreement with the Cold Spring Farmers Market for its 2010 outdoor season, expected to get underway at a new location. The village officially sponsors the market, which had been using the parking lot at The Nest child-care center on Chestnut Street.

Mayor Gallagher said that Paul Gallaro, the owner of the old Butterfield Hospital property, has agreed to let the market use the hospital grounds, although legal details need to be finalized.