Every Drop of Water :
Malone’s Waterworks Today
Calvin Luther Martin, PhD
September 14, 2024
Notice the rectangular building on the map, above. (Look closely within the red circle being pointed to by a red arrow, with the caption, “The water treatment plant is here.”)
This is it. Could anything look less interesting? Looks like a giant warehouse, right?
It is in fact a warehouse. For water. It’s a colossal swimming pool — except no swimming is allowed.
Did you take a shower this morning? Yes? Every drop of water you used came from this warehouse. Did you make coffee this morning? Did you buy coffee at Maplefield’s? How about the shower you took 10 years ago? Or when you washed your hands at Donovan’s Restaurant on August 5, 2010? Every drop of water came from this warehouse.
Every drip & drop of water used in the Village and Town (that is, the commercial district along Rte. 11, extending to the Meehan Rd.), and every drop used in the prisons and jail, since 2005, came out of this building.
This is what’s inside: catwalks over a fairly shallow pool. The water is crystal clear. It undergoes no further treatment (chlorine or filtering) before being sent to your faucet.
These photos give you a sense of the “piping” and “delivery” process, from the 3 separate well-heads to the building where all 3 well water mains unite (across the street from the huge reservoir). Lots of pipes and valves. The flow, throughout, is controlled by computers.
DANC
Managing the water plant at Chasm Falls is a tricky business. The NYS Dept of Health (DOH) monitors the water plant and delivery system to ensure the Village will have sufficient water should one of the pumps fail, plus ensure that the numerous valves and pressure pumps and holding tanks (Franklin St, Pinnacle, and one on Porter Rd) are in good operating condition.
In 2021, a DOH engineer did a comprehensive inspection of the system and notified the Village that it must install a third water well, as explained in the letter to the right.
Note that the state (DOH, in this instance), can demand something like a new well, and yet it doesn’t provide the funding — which happened to have an $8.7 million price tag. Mayor Dumas has, to date, secured a $5 million grant toward the $8.7 million, and her staff continues to look for more grant money to cover the remainder.
I should add that DEC and DOH require a host of licenses by the water operators (Chasm Falls). There are parallel requirements for wastewater operators (Sewage Treatment Plant). It takes years to earn these licenses. Not surprisingly, the Village found it could not keep up with the requirements using in-house staff.
The Village solved the problem by hiring the Development Authority of the North Country (Watertown NY) to manage our water and wastewater plants. (The initial agreement was signed in January 2018 by Mayor Riccio, and has since been renewed and expanded by Mayor Dumas.)
The waterworks (Chasm Falls) and wastewater plant (Public Works Drive) are now under the expert direction of two remarkable young men, Dave Rohe and his assistant (and soon to be his replacement) Lucas Garrand. Both are ably assisted at the wastewater plant by Curtis Rottier, who carries the title “Operator,” with 14 years experience at the plant and a fistful of DEC and DOH certifications.
Curtis, God bless him, is the man who held the line at the wastewater plant when Tropical Storm Debby tore through the North County several weeks ago, sending 6.47 million gallons of water through the plant—a deluge that included large stones that severely damaged clarifiers, snapped an augur, and busted augur chains, to the tune of $265,000 in repair costs. (The Mayor is looking for FEMA funds to cover the repairs.)
Dave, God bless him, is the man who raced into Malone at midnight, from his home in Gouverneur, when a valve malfunctioned over Memorial Day weekend a year ago — and the Village water reservoirs failed to replenish — and we lost our water. Dave — I jokingly say he was in his pajamas! — had to override the computer system at Chasm Falls and manually turn the valves to get the water flowing into the giant Chasm Falls reservoir. Then the lines had to be bled throughout the Village.
All this happened because of an archaic system which DANC (Dave and, now, Lucas) have been checking, fixing, and maintaining day by day.
The Village pays DANC $174,000 per year for its water & sewer supervisory services. The Mayor tells me this represents an annual savings of roughly $200,000/annum to the Village when one calculates what the costs would otherwise be if we used strictly in-house staff. It’s a bargain.
Dave, incidentally, holds a B.A. degree in Environmental Protection and Management from the Univ. of Maryland. He had plenty of hands-on experience while in the U.S. Army, stationed in Germany. Lucas holds a B.A. degree in Geology (minor in Archaeology) from SUNY-Potsdam and is completing the remainder his water & wastewater certification requirements at the North Country Community College.
It’s obvious that I think highly of these two men. I understand microbiology. (I used to be a biologist, even through graduate school.)
Sewer management is all about microbiology, which is why I was fascinated by the tour given to me by Dave and Lucas earlier this summer. When Dave talks hard-core microbiology (literally, “shit”) at the Village board meetings, I know what he’s talking about.
For me, there’s much more going on here than a couple of guys managing a bunch of pipes and water tanks, or a couple of guys figuring out how to zap E. coli. (which is what poop consists of). All this is impressive and Dave and Lucas—and DANC, their employer—does this expertly.
What moves me is water. Allow me to capitalize the word: Water. For it is sacred.
Forgive me; I’m a historian. I hurl my mind back to when the earth coalesced out of the swirling dust and debris of the Big Bang—the act of an Intelligence Principle we can in no way fathom. Some people call this Principle, God. In Sanskrit it goes by the name, Brahmin: The One. The Good. Beauty.
Surely water is the most remarkable, palpable, playful and rapturous emanation and manifestation of the Intelligence Principle. In the opening line of “The Flow of the River,” the archaeologist, Loren Eiseley, writes, “If there is magic on this planet it is contained in water.”
Eiseley, invoking Thoreau, sees humans as “animalized water” that has changed “its shapes eon by eon to the beating of the earth’s dark millennial heart.”
This is the magical substance—the shape-shifter—these two young men are handling, moving it carefully and expeditiously from a Pleistocene glacial aquifer through our bodies and beyond, back into the earth’s mysterious, magical domain: the Salmon River.
Water. It is a gift. The Gift. It is our connection to the Good, the great cosmic Beauty. The One. The unfathomable Intelligence.
Water is the earth’s compass.
Surely it is ours, as well.
2 thoughts on “Every Drop of Water”
Good morning, Dr. Martin,
Thank you for your article.
Our excellent water service is more than just a convenience—it’s a cornerstone of our community’s health and quality of life. It supports everything from our local businesses to our schools and healthcare facilities.
The Village of Malone remains committed to preserving and improving our water services. We recognize that clean, safe water is essential for our community’s growth and prosperity.
Together, we can ensure that Malone’s pristine water continues to flow for generations to come.
Editor’s response: Andrea Dumas is the Mayor of Malone. A fine mayor!
With a tear and a sigh, water…nature’s blood. Thank you for reminding us.