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City’s DPW Hit with Unforeseen Expenses

June 20th, 2019

HORNELL, NY – It was announced Thursday morning at the monthly Board of Public Works meeting that a water leak on Seneca Rd. has finally been fixed. According to Cornish, they had to shut the water off to fix the leak, and there were no shutoff valves in the vicinity so they had to call in Line Stop Company at an added expense. Cornish said that minus any overtime and man hours, the 2 day job was around $16,000 to repair.

Also the DPW garage had a mishap as a 300 gallon oil drum rusted through and leaked all over the facility floor. That became an expensive endeavor as the DEC had to get involved because of the amount. Cornish said that they had to use a special clay and then barrel up the debris and send it to a landfill in Buffalo. With the cost of disposal and new oil storage tank the city is looking at an expense of around $15,000.

On a better note, Cornish said that they had a bid opening for the Seneca St. and East Main St. bridge projects and was pleased that the bids came in much favorably this time around. The original bid came in at $1.6 million and $1.5 million respectively, and Cornish said that was too steep for the city’s budget. He then packaged the 2 bridges together and got a lower bid of $2.2 million and the city was pleased with that figure as it was $300,000 under budget. Buckley added that the city plans on doing 3 bridges next year; Seneca St., Canisteo St., and the Box Culvert over Chauncey Run.

Cornish finished by saying that the DPW has also been busy replacing storm sewers. “Most of our storm sewers were put in in the early 70’s, and this year so far we have had to replace storm sewers on Lincoln St, Crosby St. along with a few others. My budget for that was only $1000 and I am way over that at the moment. Everything is getting expensive to replace these days and this is no exception.”


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