Diving deep into Bolton Point water system

With the news of harmful algal blooms (HABs) being ever present during modern summers on Cayuga Lake, we’re taking a deep dive into the water we drink and use every day.

The Southern Cayuga Lake Intermunicipal Water Commission (SCLIWC), or Bolton Point, is a joint entity of the town of Lansing, village of Lansing, town of Ithaca, town of Dryden and the village of Cayuga Heights.

The municipalities banded together with the goal of creating a safe, reliable water system for residents, and the initial design, planning and engineering of Bolton Point started around 1974, according to General Manager Steve Riddle. And by the end of 1976, the majority of customers were receiving water.

Today, the plant produces, on average, about 2 million gallons per day, the same amount its 30,000 consumers use, but it has the capability to create 8 million gallons per day. And in addition to the amount produced, SCLIWC also has the ability to store a great amount of water.

“Unlike the city and Cornell, we have 24 water storage tanks,” Riddle said. “So, where most systems have one or two, we’re spread … so far, and the typography requires that many storage tanks. So, those tanks range anywhere from 250,000 gallons to 3 million gallons. So, the capacity here [may be] 2 million a day, but we’ve got a ton of capacity out in the system.”

While 2 million gallons may sound like an ocean, it is a miniscule amount compared to Cayuga Lake’s volume.

According to the New York State Department of Conservation (DEC), Cayuga Lake has a volume of approximately 2.5 trillion gallons. For comparison, an Olympic-sized swimming pool holds about 660,000 gallons, so over 3.7 million Olympic swimming pools could fit in the lake.

“We take so little compared to the volume,” Production Manager Glenn Ratajczak said. “We are regulated by the DEC how much we can take from the lake that we’re permitted for. So, it is monitored by them, and they set the limits. But impact on the lake? I think we’re just a drop in a bathtub.”

On average, the five municipalities who get their water from Cayuga Lake are only using .00008% of the lake daily for all their water needs and, over the course of a year, only .03% of the lake, which is constantly refilling naturally through the water cycle.

As for HABs, Ratajczak said they have not been in the plant yet but that staff remain vigilant, knowing it is a possibility, especially with hotter weather.

“They are getting worse, especially this past year,” Ratajczak explained. “So far, we’ve seen quite a few but haven’t seen anything within our plant yet. But we do have a plan in case we do. … Our biggest thing with that right now is we just monitor the lake. We have a drone that we fly over the lake and look at our intake. Luckily, our intake is pretty deep [about 65 feet]; it’s not close to shore where most of your blooms are happening, so we’re a little bit protected there. But it’s still a good possibility it could get into our plant. And our operators monitor this source water constantly. Data on that is collected every five minutes, so we get constant data on source water quality, so if it changes, we’ll know something’s going on.”

Ratajczak also volunteers for the Community Science Institute (CSI) to take samples and monitor the shoreline by Bolton Point’s raw water intake. Through this, he also gets access to all their data via real-time bloom reports, so he can see where the blooms are and track their development.

“We do a lot of collaboration with [CSI] for HABs and other things like hydrilla,” Ratajczak said. “They do the sampling for the herbicides that they use, so we make sure that we don’t get any of that in our intake.”

If the water coming through the intake were to become unsafe, Ratajczak explained what would happen at the plant.

“So if HABs or pesticides or other foreign, potentially hazardous matter were to become a major concern, the first line of defense, if there is not an immediate need to produce water, is to shut the plant down and wait it out because the bloom will die out at night,” Ratajczak said. “If that’s not an option, because we don’t have enough water in the system, then we have to modify our treatment process — where we add chemicals, what chemicals we add, basically slow the whole process down as low as we can to allow more time to settle the cells out.”

Ratajczak said this process would be done hand in hand with the Tompkins County Health Department.

“The big thing would be, it wouldn’t hurt us as much if we get it in the raw water, but if we see it in our unfinished water, then that becomes an issue where the Health Department would actually take over and tell us what they want us to do then,” Ratajczak said.

In addition to dealing with the potential for HABs and foreign matter, Bolton Point has had to figure out how to keep the water flowing during the pandemic.

“When COVID hit, we were really, really nervous because it was something that could take everyone out,” Riddle described. “And the number-one thing to protect yourself from COVID was to wash your hands. We really couldn’t shut down. … We limited staffing, but all of the same work still has to get done. … And the other side is it’s really skilled work, to be able to shuttle water throughout this system, to be able to know what’s going on in the lab or repair things out in the field. It’s not like we could just pull people from a temp agency to take care of this work. It’s really hard to find operators that are trained and certified.”

Luckily, SCLIWC has not had any major shutdowns related to COVID-19, and its staff of just 20 continue to provide the area with the water it needs every day, explained Distribution Manager Gregg Weatherby. This includes all administrative work, monitoring and producing water and maintaining the over 350 miles of water main, 7,000 service connections, 1,600 fire hydrants, 2,400 valves and 24 water storage tanks so residents have access to clean water.

“It’s 24/7,” Ratajczak said. “Whether it’s Christmas, whenever it happens, we work through anything.”

Visit boltonpoint.org for more information and to view the 2021 Drinking Water Quality Report.