A Helping Hand

Several months ago at a Town Board meeting, shortly after Tom Fox resigned, Anne Henderson, chair of the Water Protection committee, made the announcement that doing the Aquifer Protection District (APD) was going to involve so much work that she didn’t think they would be able to get it done this year. It was obvious that the loss of key Town Board member and Water Protection committee member Tom Fox was a great loss to her efforts. The Town Board was also suffering the loss of both Tom and Linette Currie, two new and vigorous members that are sorely missed. I sat in my chair watching Betty bravely move on with the business of the town and an idea started to ferment in my mind.

Was there something I could do to help our town?

During the Flying J fight we amassed the great resources of Preble’s best minds. Lawyers, professors and lay people who became very knowledgeable about Preble’s laws, plus state and federal laws too. The APD was a subject I was very familiar with as I researched both Homer and Cortlandville’s APD laws a year ago and even have copies of them on this site. The key element in doing an APD for Preble was getting the help of Dan Dineen, Cortland’s Planning Department Director. It is Dan Dineen who comes to the committee meetings and gives advice and counsel to all of the towns in Cortland county. I gave Dan a call and outlined my plan to help Preble. He was eager for Preble to implement an APD and offered his advice and counsel on this project. I also contacted others in the legal profession who live in Preble and they too offered their help. Several lay people like myself also stepped forward and offered help. It was with this core of Preble people, working together for the greater good that the idea of the addition to the web site was born. But back to the APD. We all worked on the Preble APD using the Cortlandville APD as a starting basis. Dan outlined some changes that had to be made to avoid some problems Cortlandville ran into, and our lawyers contributed legal advice. I took all of this information and worked it into the Preble APD which was presented to Supervisor Pitman before it was made public here on the site.

The Preble APD, as presented, needs only some minor tweaking and the Town Board‘s approval to be put into law. However, I expect and hope that the entire town will have some input before that is done. I will be using the new section of the web site to discuss these and other issues that affect the future of Preble.

The Aquifer Protection District is important to all of us who think our water supply should be protected, and who could possibly think otherwise?

Frank Hogg

View the web page copy of the APD

Download the Microsoft Word copy of the APD (Better formatting if you can view it.)