Hot spell is good for one thing, at least

AMENIA — Neighborhood lawns were bone-dry last week, carpets of grass browned to a crisp. Blame the suffocatingly hot weather, which didn’t offer a raindrop of relief until the weekend.

The heat kept many indoors and drove many more to take full advantage of their water supply, making it an interesting past few weeks for Amenia’s water district operator, Marco D’Antonio.

As D’Antonio reported at the July 8 Town Board meeting, water usage was way up in June, with 121,000 gallons being used compared to 99,000 in May.

Because so many people are using water to combat the unusually dry summer months this year, D’Antonio said that other counties have declared water emergencies due to low supply levels.

“In other counties, wells are running dry,� he told the board. “We’re meeting all demands in Amenia, but if we conserve now we can keep ourselves out of that situation.�

The really hot weather is good for at least one thing, D’Antonio added: spotting leaks in the water pipes.

With the aforementioned dry lawn so fashionable this summer, suspiciously lush patches of green, healthy grass are a good indication that not all is well with the pipes under the ground.

“When I drive around and I see a completely green lawn, I think, ‘Well that person’s watering their lawn.’ When I drive by a brown lawn with one green patch in it, I think ‘There’s probably a leak there,’� he said after the meeting.

Three significant service line leaks have been discovered in the past few weeks, including one with an inch wide hole that D’Antonio estimated from the line’s water pressure rating was leaking 1 million gallons of water per month. The real kicker is how long he thinks the pipe was leaking: five or six years. That’s a lot of lost water.

The problem with service lines is that they’re usually about 20- or 30 years old, he added and the copper material has either eroded away the outside of the pipe or clogged up the inside. Bad news either way, but the sooner you notice the leak the better.

“If you notice green grass in one patch, puddles, water bubbling out of the ground, call me,� he said. “The ground is so dry right now, leaks are easier to notice.�

In other water district news, the town’s new billing software was used for the first time this quarter. D’Antonio noted that there may be a few issues with tax addresses being confused with billing addresses in the system. Call Town Hall at 845-373-8860 to clarify any billing disputes.