TUPPER LAKE — The Tupper Lake village board is set to interview engineering firms at a meeting tonight as it looks to get new advisors in its long and ongoing project to source clean drinking water for its 2,200 water customers.

Village Mayor Mary Fontana said the village is looking for a firm that is more local and offers less expensive solutions to their discolored water problem. She also said that with the project looking more expensive than initially estimated, the village is considering ways to clean the contaminating iron from its wells instead of returning to the lakes to source its water.

The village’s previous engineering firm drafted a preliminary design for a new water treatment facility on the lakes last month, but the projected cost of this building hit $14.8 million — much higher than the initial estimate of $9 million, not counting the costs of operating and maintaining the plant each year. Fontana said this is what pushed the village to look for a new firm, as well as alternative options for sourcing the water.

The 4 p.m. meeting tonight is an executive session, meaning the public is not allowed to attend, since the board will be interviewing the contractors.

Fontana said they need a firm that when the village asks it to jump, they say “how high?”

“This is an emergency for this community and it needs to be treated as such,” Fontana said. “For the village of Tupper Lake, this is a massive project.”

For years, Tupper Lakers have had discolored water from iron-rich wells dug in 2018. These wells were dug because the previous sources for village water — Big Tupper Lake and Little Simond Pond — were producing potentially cancer-causing byproducts.

The iron is not a health hazard, but it is unsightly. Over the phone on Tuesday, Fontana shook a water sample from well number two that she has on her desk.

“I mean, it’s brown,” she said. “I wouldn’t put that in a cup and drink it.”

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New firm sought

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The village terminated its contract with the C2AE engineering firm on July 10. C2AE is still the village’s firm for other water- and sewer-related projects in the village.

Fontana said there had been some turnover in staff at C2AE, including the project engineer.

“We thought it was time to look for a firm that was someone local,” she said. “While C2AE is a wonderful firm, we just wanted someone a little bit closer to home.”

C2AE has an office in Syracuse but is based in Michigan.

The village put out an “request for proposal” earlier this month seeking a new firm and got six responses. Fontana said the board is interviewing their top three firms at the meeting tonight. She’s not able to reveal who these firms are currently.

Fontana was not sure if the board would take a vote on selecting a firm after the interviews tonight or wait until their next regular meeting.

“We’re probably going to deliberate a little bit … but I don’t know if we’re going to be taking a vote,” Fontana said, but added. “I don’t want to slow this process down any further. … The sooner we secure a firm, the sooner the ball starts rolling again.”

The village water department Superintendent Mark Robillard will not be at the meeting, Fontana said, but another department member will.

The village’s RFP requests the new firm to produce a report 60 days after the contract is signed. Fontana said it should not take too long to do.

“Because we’ve been working on this project for so many years we have an awful lot of data that we can turn over,” she said.

It will take a lot of “data dumping” to bring them up to speed, but after the engineers get the lay of land, she said they’ll be expected to give the village options.

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Options

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The tentative plan has been to retrofit the village’s currently defunct water filtration plant on Maddox Lane, on the shore of Big Tupper Lake off state Route 3, into a higher-tech microfiltration plant.

This system is currently being tested with a pilot plant on Maddox Lane, seeing if a new, stronger filtration system will produce acceptable water from Big Tupper Lake. But currently, Fontana said the village is running this itself with help from the state Department of Health. It needs engineering experts to look at results.

But with C2AE recommending a new building, the cost of the plant appears to not be sustainable. Fontana said the village is reconsidering what is the best option.

“It’s not so much the water itself. We know the available technology and treatment options. It’s, what can this community afford to build? And what is sustainable long-term?” she said.

In either case — well water or open source water — the water will have to be treated. If the village sticks with its wells, it will need to sequester the iron out of the water to make it presentable. If the village returns to getting its water from the lake, it will need microfiltration to stop potentially cancer-causing byproducts from forming as tiny organic material interacts with chlorine in the treatment phase.

The village has been awarded a $2.46 million grant from the state Department of Health, a $4.8 million grant from the state’s Water Infrastructure Improvement Assistance fund and another $200,000 from the DOH. In total, it has around $7.46 million for a project expected to cost between $9 million and $15 million.

Fontana is hopeful the state can fund the rest. The village could borrow the money and pay it off with taxpayer funds over many years, but that is not a solution anyone in town wants.

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Brown water

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For years, village water customers had been getting letters from the state DOH telling them their water had chemical byproducts that could cause cancer. When organic material, drawn in with water from Big Tupper Lake and Little Simond Pond was mixed with chlorine, it produced trihalomethanes and haloacetic acids, which are linked to an increased risk for cancer after prolonged exposure.

The village sought to fix the issue, and at the time, the state was only offering grants for underground wells in an effort to move away from groundwater sourcing. The wells were dug in 2018 for $11 million.

Hydrologists did tests and didn’t detect iron at the well sites at the base of Iron Mountain. But after around 18 months, the water started carrying iron into people’s homes.

“Iron is one of the most common elements in the Earth’s crust,” Fontana said. “So it’s not unexpected.”

On top of that, the wells don’t produce enough water for the whole village, so the village has been blending this well water with supplemental water from Little Simond Pond, which still mixes organic material with chlorine, producing the same carcinogenic byproducts that got them cited by DOH in the first place.

The Facebook group “Tupper Lake Water Issues” is full of photos and videos of residents showing off yellow, brown and cloudy water from their faucets during particularly bad times.

Village residents have talked about the iron drastically shortening the life spans for their appliances, staining laundry and how they buy pallets of clean water for drinking and cooking.

In July 2023, around 80 locals attended a meeting to discuss the 15 years of bad tap water they’ve dealt with.

Last year, Robillard estimated the iron problem affects around one-third of his customers.

The water quality is currently about the same as it has been.

At a recent meeting, Robillard said the iron readings from the wells were coming back lower than before. But the intensity of the discoloration varies depending on location and time. Downtown in the Junction — closer to the Pitchfork Pond wells — has more of an issue. Uptown, closer to Little Simond Pond, has less discoloration, but does have the carcinogenic byproduct issue.

The water in the village is a blend of the wells and pond, but ends of town get more of one or the other depending on which it is closer to.

Fontana said they are looking for new technology and new ideas from a new firm.

She’s confident one of these three firms will be a good fit. They are large, relatively local and “certainly qualified.” She said they’ll have to figure out which one “clicks” best and call their references from previous projects.