Newburgh to purchase reservoir level monitoring system

NEWBURGH – The City of
Newburgh will spend over $12,000 to purchase a remote reservoir level
monitoring system. The city’s drinking water comes from Washington
Lake with a backup source at Brown’s Pond.
Monitoring of the water levels is a little more archaic, Assistant City
Engineer Chad Wade told the city council.
“We have a scribe line on each gate house and a person goes out every single day with a tape measure and measures down to the water level from the scribe line and he records the measurement and there are also alarm conditions on these monitoring devices so in the event we have a high water condition where the spillway and hopefully water doesn’t overtop the dam, we would be notified of the levels as they approach those elevations,” Wade said.
City Manager Michael Ciaravino told the council the new device would
provide an early warning system in the event of a water main break or
flood condition, but Councilman Cedric Brown challenged that.
“We would have an early warning. There would be water all over
the street and there would be phone calls. I don’t see that it is
that important. In fact, Brown’s Pond dam has just been refurbished
so that there would be no breach, especially with that dam and we spent
a ton of money on that,” Brown said.
Despite his objections, the city council approved the purchase and the $1,000 per year fee by a five to two vote.