Building up, digging down or elsewhere? Those are among the variety of options and the dilemma facing Sleepy Hollow, which is in dire need of an expansion or replacement of its old, existing water storage tank. It is a need Mayor Ken Wray has called “critical,” based not only on the village’s current population, but its anticipated river front development.

The current storage facility in the Rockefeller State Park Preserve does not even meet New York State’s requirement that municipalities have a full day’s water reserve should the supply be cut off.

Despite the quandary, surprisingly few residents showed up at a mid-January hearing held by the Village Board, the project’s lead agency to present the options available to the village. The hearing was scheduled to continue and likely conclude the last week in January.

“If the water is delivered and safe, it appears that the public may not consider it an issue,” Village Administrator Anthony Giaccio said, commenting on the small turnout at the earlier hearing. However, he noted that “the most interested parties attended.”

A number of alternatives have been discussed, including borrowing down on the current site or building a higher tank within the present footprint, constructing a second tank built on the premises of Phelps Memorial Hospital, or a new, larger tank about 200 feet west of the existing facility, as part of a land swap with the state. Building on low ground at Phelps would necessitate a two-zone water storage system, likely maintaining the present tank on the park preserve as well.

One party, however, presented its preference regarding the proposed new site in the park via a letter to Wray; the New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation. It reiterated a statement made by an agency official back in 2006 that became part of the then Final Environmental Impact Statement. “It read.”... in the strongest terms possible that this proposed water storage facility is viewed by this agency as a significant intrusion into the Park Preserve and that it will have a significant adverse impact both during construction and during its operation.”

The agency instead suggested considering a “new possible alternate site...just off Route 9 in the Rockwood Hall portion of the park, essentially across from the Archville Fire Station.” Wray was not enthusiastic about that location on the northern reaches of the village, although he said the village would take a look at it. “It just doesn’t make sense to have another site which is equivalent to the Phelps site,” he said.

The village contends that an earlier proposal to build a tank on Phelp’s property would not meet the needs of water use on both sides of Route 9 because of its lack of height, and it would be costly. “We would still have to maintain a high pressure tank ,” Wray noted, referring to the present facility to service water users east of Broadway. That tank, now badly in need of repairs, was built in 1926 on the then Rockefeller estate following a property easement granted to the village, (then North Tarrytown), by John D. Rockefeller.

Wray emphasized that Sleepy Hollow has the right to build what it needs on the footprint of the present tank site, “forever,” according to the easement. “If an alternative site does not present itself, we will go ahead and build right where we are now,” he stated. “The most cost effective solution is for us to build a tank within the existing tank and go up,” he added. That would, based on engineering estimates, require a high tank in order to accommodate the 2.4 million gallons of water the village needs. It would be less of an intrusion to the park landscape, for the village to dig down for a new, partially underground tank, but considerably more expensive.

Another location previously explored and where the mayor believes would work out well for a new tank lies on land controlled by the Rockefeller Brothers’ Fund. It is an area located off County House Road, near what is referred to as the “Sisters’ Gate,” that once led to a Convent. “It is high enough to have a single tank, so that we would not have to maintain two water reservoirs,” Wray explained. It is also close to the Sleepy Hollow pump station.

“If we could build there,” Wray said, “we would relinquish our easement in the park reserve, knock down our existing reservoir, and abandon the underground piping. That would be important, for the state and Friends of the Park Preserve, by removing a man-made structure from the park, and leaving a more natural habitat.” He saw the location as a “real possibility.”

Building the reservoir at “Sister’s Gate would cost an estimated $2,823,150. Expanding the present tank’s capacity by excavating within the existing footprint, would be $5,100,000. To build up some 90 feet within the present tank, estimates place the cost at $2,329,250. Phelps construction would be about $4,801,000, with pumps and piping accounting for about half the cost, and an estimated annual expenditure of $91,000 in order to both maintain that facility and the existing tank in the Preserve.

Whatever alternative is selected, Wray said it would be followed quickly by a findings statement, and the necessary paperwork to get matters moving within the next few months. “We need that additional capacity right now,” the mayor declared. “We have had too many close calls on shutting down the water supply.”