Morris: “… stakeholder
feedback …”
MIDDLETOWN – The Orange County Water Authority, Planning Department and local partners kicked off the first meeting regarding their efforts to create a Monhagen Watershed program Wednesday.
The Monhagen Brook Watershed covers approximately 17 square miles, running through three municipalities and is a tributary of the Wallkill River. It has recently been designated by the New York State DEC as being phosphorous impaired.
In light of this, the DEC has granted $50,000 through the Hudson River Estuary Program for Orange County, and its stakeholders, to create a viable plan for the watershed.
“Today we’re announcing the purpose of the project and how we’d like to get people involved,” said Noah Meyer, district technician for Orange County Soil and Water Authority. “We’ve already met with a couple of the municipalities to try and get them on board. Now that we’ve met with them, we can go through with forming committees to advise on writing the plan. We can start going out into the field to identify the actual issues. We can start our [water] sampling plan once we have enough volunteers,” he said.
So far, the municipalities of Town of Wawayanda, Town of Wallkill and City of Middletown have signed on to participate in the formulation of the plan, along with a number of interested locals.
Senior Orange County Planner Kelly Morris said it is important to have
the public input when creating such a plan, rather than just having officials
design the process themselves. She said although there is some work involved,
it will benefit the community to be involved in the long run.
“There’s a little bit of homework, but usually they’re very good discussions and it’s important to have stakeholder feedback and not just have agency folks, like us, write a plan that doesn’t mean much to the local communities because they weren’t involved,” said Morris. “So, we really stress the importance of getting input from a wide variety of stakeholders.”
Ultimately, the goal will be to provide local contacts and resources,
give input on outreach as well as moving forward, identify potential public
access points, and help with implementation within the community.
There is still a need for local volunteers for water sampling and various input throughout the forgoing process. Those interested in getting involved are instructed to visit the water authority website at: waterauthority.orangecountygov.com, or reach out via the water authority’s Facebook page dedicated to the Monhagen Brook Watershed Planning Project.
