Residents on Smith Road were greeted to a pleasant, if noisy scene on Friday morning — Highway Superintendant Gil Davis and the rest of his Highway Department crew arrived to replace an old, rotted out drainage pipe on the road to help reduce the area's overflow of water.

"This pipe was here for years," said Davis on Friday, referring to the old pipe. "It was completely gone and rotten." Davis pointed to a metal grate in the asphalt, saying that, years ago, the town highway department had filled over a catch-basin in the ground, though he didn't know why. "So the people pumping water in the street — it had nowhere to go. So we're just giving people something to pump into that'll carry the water over into the stream."

Then Davis pointed to a front-loader dumping crumpled and rusted-out metal bits and pieces into a dump-truck.

"That's what's left of the pipe," he said. "I think they said it was put in there in the '70s."

The new pipe is made of plastic, which Davis said would "last forever." Metal pipes, apparently, are highly susceptible to rusting out over time, which is exactly what had happened to the pipe on Smith Road. Making matters worse, of course, is the dramatic yearly flooding the residents there experience, which many attribute to the cracked and leaking Delaware Aqueduct which runs underneath the town of Wawarsing. When the floods hit, the residents pump water out of their basements, but unfortunately, the rotted out pipe in conjunction with the tarred-over catch-basin made it so that the pumped water would only get shifted from property to property.

"It's neighbor pumping onto neighbor," said Davis. "Here, they can get rid of it."

The catch-basin and pipe will lead the water to the stream behind the road, which Davis labeled as something of a swamp. He said that the area has always been plagued by water problems, and that "It was a damp, swampy area when they built [the development]."

"The people were so appreciative," said Davis of the support he and the crew got from the residents. "They brought coffee, they made breakfast for the guys. They thanked us, they hugged us; they were just so appreciative that the pipe was finally being put in."

The good feelings expressed by the residents likely came as a result of a long and arduous process they have faced in having their flooding problems addressed by the town, and even more importantly, by New York City's Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), who owns and maintains the underground aqueduct.

Last week, it was reported that the town distributed a release form absolving the municipality from responsibility and liability regarding the flooded area's problems in exchange for acting as facilitator for a $5,000 clean-water fund — a fund supplied by the DEP to help the flood-victims whose wells have become contaminated with e.coli and coliform bacteria as a result of the area's distorted water table. According to Town Supervisor Ed Jennings, an estimated 22 of 34 households have signed the release to participate in the program, which will allow for three months' worth of water delivery from Leisure Time Spring Water, Inc.

"Some of them have pulled out of the program, and the majority of them have stayed in it," he said on Tuesday. Last week it was reported that some of the residents had requested their releases back from Supervisor Jennings, but despite this, the majority of the homeowners are looking to get the clean water which has been paid for by New York City while the DEP continues to work with engineers to determine what role the aqueduct plays in the flooding problem.

"Anybody who wants [the releases] back, I'll give them back," said Supervisor Jennings. "We don't have a dog in the fight. If people want them, fine, if they don't, that's okay too. We're just acting as a conduit on this thing. We have nothing invested in it whatsoever."

As to whether or not the release's language would be changed, the supervisor said that the board had decided to keep the release as is during the workshop before their biweekly meeting last Thursday.

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