The next time snow and rain make getting things done tough for you, stop and think about how Gil Davis and his highway department are getting along: while they plow the streets and try to make sure Wawarsing is able to stay up and running during a storm, their building's roof leaks, their water drainage system is blocked off, and they lose any heat they get from their old furnace through the single-paned windows. To put it bluntly, while some progress has been made, the building that houses the department is a mess, and it's not likely to change any time soon.

At the February 7 Wawarsing town meeting, Highway Superintendent Gil Davis asked the town board about the purchase of a new waste oil furnace and four-season windows for the department's building in an effort to try and keep his employees in a better work environment. The waste oil furnaces help conservation efforts because it runs on oil from the department's equipment.

"By burning the waste oil, it helps the environment because you're not spilling it, you're burning it, finally getting rid of it," said Councilman Tom Geelan.

"It's very fuel-efficient, and very clean-burning," adds Superintendant Davis. Additional benefits come from the elimination of having to haul waste oil away, which would have increased the department's costs. "You're saving money all the way around," says Davis.

The new windows will help keep that heat in, further cutting the potential spending and waste of the now-universally expensive oil.

The board unanimously approved Davis's requests, with the furnace not to exceed $9,000, and the windows estimated at $2,676.18. But their approval is only one small piece of the highway department building's puzzle.

Years ago, officials from the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) came to the building to investigate its drainage system, and discovered that, because of the building's age, it was unknown as to where the system drained out. This caused a potential environmental hazard because of oil and other chemicals that could be mixed in with water that melted from the department's snow-covered winter-work vehicles.

By way of a solution, the DEC blocked up the drainage system with concrete. Without anywhere for the liquid to go, the system now backs up, causing inches-worth of water in the building where the crew works when not on the streets. The department gets the water out of the building via pump, which can take a long time to get up and running, and which causes a hazardous work environment.

But the department's water-woes don't stop there: the leaky roof is at the end of its lifespan, according to Superintendant Davis.

"The engineer said, 'Don't call me back, because I can't do any more,'" said Davis, in reference to the last time an engineer came to patch up the roof.

The drainage system and the roof are both very large projects that don't seem to have any solutions in sight. At least in the case of the roof, Davis hopes to get another engineer to take a look and give an estimate, either to see if there could possibly be any way to patch the existing roof, or how much it would cost to replace the roof entirely. However, winter makes such an estimate impractical, as the roof provides for difficult and dangerous terrain with which to contend because of snow and ice. As for the drainage system, fixing that problem seems quite out of reach, with a cost that neither Davis nor Councilman Tom Geelan were willing to even take a guess at.

"It's just what it is — an old metal building," says Davis. "You can see on the outside that the metal is actually rusting from the bottom up. It's nobody's fault, just the years of neglect."

"I'm trying to make the conditions in here a little better because I've got a very hard working crew. The other night they just worked 24 hours straight without stopping, they just kept right on going…and I'm very proud of my crew."

COMMENTS about this article (2)