$3M Grant to Improve Newburgh Drinking Water

NEWBURGH – The City of Newburgh is pleased to announce the award of more than $3 million for improvements to the City’s drinking water infrastructure. The funding was made possible through the Water Infrastructure Improvement Act and the Intermunicipal Water Infrastructure Grant Program, and will be used to make state-of-the-art updates to the City’s drinking water filtration plant located on Little Britain Road, which treats an average of 2.8 million gallons of water per day.

The grant will facilitate upgrades to much of the water treatment plant’s technology which was originally installed in the 1960’s and is still in operation today. The plant currently employs a series of mechanical and chemical treatments to remove color, odor, and tastes along with organic material, dirt, and particles. Water passes through a series of sand filters and a granular activated carbon (GAC) system, followed by disinfection, fluoridation, and treatment by corrosion inhibitors before it is sent to homes and businesses for consumption.

The funding will provide for the replacement of mixed-media in the plant’s sand filters, along with the replacement of the existing filter underdrain system that uses a backwash method to clean filters every 90 hours. The water treatment plant will also receive improvements to instrumentation and control systems including the addition of automated valves, as well as integration of the Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) communication network that is currently spread throughout the plant. The SCADA upgrade will give management and water treatment plant operators a central location to track data, monitor treatment plant functions and change process controls. The $3,000,000 grant will offset the plant upgrade project’s total estimated cost of $5,070,00.

The City of Newburgh would like to acknowledge the overwhelming support it received from its partners on the County, State and Federal levels.

The funding is provided by Environmental Facilities Corporation (EFC), a public benefit corporation that provides technical and financial assistance to municipalities for water infrastructure projects, and was announced by Governor Cuomo in December as part of $416 million awarded to communities across New York State for water infrastructure improvements.

A complete list of awardees and their projects can be found at www.efc.ny.gov .