Water and Sewer Infrastructure

New Castle’s built envi­ron­ment is sup­port­ed by a mod­el water sys­tem, pri­vate wells and sew­er infra­struc­ture sys­tems, includ­ing pri­vate­ly owned sep­tic sys­tems. Rough­ly 80% of New Castle’s land area is sup­plied drink­ing water through the New Cas­tle-Stan­wood Water Dis­trict. Well water serves the remain­ing land area and in these areas, pro­tec­tion of the potable aquifers requires enhanced mea­sures and reg­u­la­to­ry tools. As was advo­cat­ed for in the TDP, much of the Town has remained dis­con­nect­ed from a sew­er sys­tem due to the high cost asso­ci­at­ed with con­nec­tion and region­al capac­i­ty issues. While there are some areas, main­ly in and around the Chap­paqua ham­let, that are sew­ered, a major­i­ty of the Town relies on sep­tic sys­tems for sub­sur­face waste­water dis­pos­al. This has ham­pered poten­tial land use devel­op­ment in the Mill­wood ham­let and has forced depen­dence on aging sep­tic sys­tems in neigh­bor­hoods that would great­ly ben­e­fit from access to san­i­tary sewers.

span class=“Apple-converted-space”> the Town’s request that Westch­ester Coun­ty expand the Saw Mill Riv­er Sew­er Dis­trict to allow waste­water from the Ran­dom Farms Waste­water Treat­ment Plant (serv­ing the Ran­dom Farms Con­ser­va­tion Sub­di­vi­sion) and the Fox Hol­low Waste­water Treat­ment Plant (serv­ing the River­woods Con­do­mini­ums and the Yeshi­va Farm Set­tle­ment) to be divert­ed to the Yonkers Waste­water Treat­ment Plant owned and oper­at­ed by Westch­ester Coun­ty. This request was gen­er­at­ed due to the his­tor­i­cal evi­dence of dif­fi­cul­ty with the oper­a­tion and main­te­nance of the exist­ing pack­age waste­water treat­ment plants. The Town also obtained a com­mit­ment of $10 mil­lion of the Westch­ester Coun­ty Water Qual­i­ty Improve­ment Pro­gram Fund (East of Hud­son Fund) to par­tial­ly fund the $25 mil­lion dol­lar project to con­struct infra­struc­ture to con­nect the new areas of the sew­er dis­trict with­in the Cro­ton water­shed to the County’s waste­water treat­ment facil­i­ty in Yonkers. Nego­ti­a­tions between the New York City Depart­ment of Envi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion, Westch­ester Coun­ty and the Town are ongo­ing for addi­tion­al monies and addi­tion­al fund­ing sources are being explored. This Plan fur­ther rec­om­mends under­tak­ing fea­si­bil­i­ty stud­ies for installing san­i­tary sew­er sys­tems in res­i­den­tial areas where fail­ing sep­tic sys­tems have caused or may cause neg­a­tive envi­ron­men­tal impacts. The same stud­ies should be con­duct­ed in and around the Mill­wood Ham­let to deter­mine the form and shape of revi­tal­iza­tion. In ear­ly 2017 the New Cas­tle Town Board con­tract­ed with Woodard and Cur­ran to under­take the Mill­wood San­i­tary Sew­er Dis­trict Fea­si­bil­i­ty Study to eval­u­ate alter­na­tives for pro­vid­ing future san­i­tary sew­er ser­vice to the Mill­wood San­i­tary Sew­er Dis­trict (MSSD). The analy­sis con­sists of a plan­ning lev­el project which will eval­u­ate the options avail­able to the Town of New Cas­tle, includ­ing pre­lim­i­nary project cost esti­mates and schemat­ic lay­outs. It is the pol­i­cy of this Plan, as it was stat­ed in the TDP, that the expan­sion of waste­water sys­tems and oth­er asso­ci­at­ed pub­lic infra­struc­ture should not take place main­ly to allow for addi­tion­al devel­op­ment and high­er densities.