Above: A Google map showing a 2.1-mile stretch of Highway 30A that the NYC DEP is funding repairs to this summer. (Google Maps, whose road names can be capricious in the rural stretches of upstate New York, calls it NYC Rd. No. 6 and BWS Rd. No. 7.)
The New York City Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) announced today that they're pouring $1 million into an upgrade on a 2.1-mile stretch of Highway 30A, a city-owned road in the town of Andes that runs along the shore of the Pepacton Reservoir. The road will be getting a thorough overhaul:
The project will improve driving conditions and enhance safety, and entails: replacing the roadway and guardrails; grading the shoulders and side slopes; improving roadway markings to enhance visibility; cleaning roadside drainage ditches; and landscaping enhancements.
About time, said 86-year-old George Firment, who lives just off 30A on Firment Road on the farm he grew up in, and went to school in Shavertown, which now lies under millions of gallons of water at the bottom of the Pepacton.
"It's pretty rough," he said. "Every year it gets worse. The guardrails were falling over the bank."
The work, while funded by the DEP, will be carried out by the Delaware County Department of Public Works (DPW) and its subcontractors.
Delaware County DPW commissioner Wayne Reynolds said that the job will keep his crew busy this summer, but the work is much appreciated.
"For the drivers of Andes, it will help considerably," he said. "As far as DPW, the more work that we can spread our staff time and equipment over, the more cost-effectively we can do it. In these tough economic times, it gives us a little more money we can use to purchase material, and we can get a little more economy of scale with our operations."
Reynolds said his team should finish the work by the end of September.
Over the next ten years, the DEP announced, the city will commit to spending an additional $10 million on roadway improvements in the watershed.
County board of supervisors chairman Jim Eisel issued a quote in the DEP's press release:
"This joint venture with DEP will help us better manage our escalating costs and most importantly result in safer, smoother roads around the Pepacton and Cannonsville Reservoirs," said Delaware County Chairman James Eisel.
It's certainly good news for the Andes residents who live along 30A. But Firment said the newly improved roadway will mean more to his son and daughter-in-law, who commute on the road every day to work, than it will to him.
"I drive slow," he chuckled.
