WHITE PLAINS – The federal EPA Monday filed a lawsuit against the Town of Newburgh and then signed a consent decree with the municipality for it to build a water treatment plant for its drinking water system by May 1, 2013.

The town gets its drinking water from the New York City Delaware Aqueduct that runs through the town.

The settlement also requires the town to pay $100,000 in civil penalties and to undertake three supplemental environmental projects valued at about $912,000 to improve the quality of the town’s water.

The town distributes unfiltered drinking water to some 23,000 people and adds chemical disinfectants to make it potable.

The EPA charged in the lawsuit that between 2005 and 2007, the town’s drinking water repeatedly exceeded maximum contaminant levels for certain disinfectant byproducts, namely haloacetic acids.

The feds also charged the town failed to comply with an EPA administrative order requiring the town to monitor drinking water quality and report the results to the Orange County Health Department.

The town also failed to provide public notice every time the water exceeded the maximum contaminant levels for those byproducts.

As part of the consent decree, the town will buy vacant undeveloped land around the Chadwick Lake reservoir, an alternate water source, to protect the watershed.          

It also agreed to connect residential and commercial properties in the town along North Carpenter Avenue and West Stone Street to the City of Newburgh’s sanitary sewer system. That project will prevent waste in septic systems from discharging directly into the ground, and in some cases, running above ground to other bodies of water in the area.

The town also agreed to replace existing catch basins connected to pipes that discharge into Orange Lake with new catch basins equipped to prevent sediment and floatable debris from flowing into the lake.