![]() Today, the well's sole purpose is to grow tomatoes in the little depression around the well head it dried up in the late 1970's.Īs the water table fell in 1983, the district declared a drought emergency, which lasted until 1986: outdoor water use and new building permits were banned. A picture on a wall of the pump house office from the 1960's shows a beaming water board inaugurating one well, which drew 45 gallons a minute and had so much pressure that it overflowed. ![]() In time, the lake silted, and wells were drilled near the pump house. Shenorock had a little bottling company, with a logo of an Indian chief: "Shen-O-Rock Ginger Ale, Dry and Aromatic," an old label reads "Made from famous Shen-O-Rock Spring Water." And birch beer was sold by the Baldwin Place Water Company near the present Superfund site.Īs more houses were built around man-made Lake Shenorock, homeowners formed the water district, tapped the lake and installed a system of pipes. A family of swans had hatched this spring the cygnets had managed to evade the snapping turtles and were already being shooed away into self-sufficiency by their testy parents.īefore the Shenorock Water District was created in the 1930's, residents relied on wells. Just across Route 202, meanwhile, the 14-acre Lake Shenorock, which supplies two-thirds of the Shenorock district's water, was looking as full as ever, while playing host to great blue herons and snowy egrets, some of whom may have been driven north from the dried-up marshes of the Amawalk. In mid-September, the northern, shallower end of the Amawalk Reservoir, part of the New York City water system, consisted largely of mud flats. "We have to build a plant, or we have to get a better water supply," he said.Īt first glance, it is hard to imagine a problem. The existing plant can provide cleaner water only by processing it more slowly, stopping the pumps to back flush filters twice a day, for instance. "We have always had a borderline water supply," said Councilman Andrew Pecunia of Somers, adding that he has had to deliver gallon water jugs to friends in Shenorock during particularly dry summers.Įven if Shenorock's wooded fringes remain vacant, its water needs will increase, the Superintendent said. Such areas include Horton Estates (itself a tiny independent water district), several houses in Granite Springs and the area east and south of Baldwin Place, where a defunct shopping center is a state Superfund site and whose neighboring homes have been plagued for years with chemical pollution in their wells, believed to have come from a dry cleaner. There is also a need to provide alternative water sources for nearby residents whose wells are polluted or depleted. Smith said the plant's aging equipment could no longer meet the latest environmental standards through more repair and upgrading. The district is under Federal and state orders to improve its water quality, and Mr. Smith told her.) But dealing with the drought is a minor water issue for Shenorock. The community attitude was perhaps summed up in a phone call from a woman who wanted to know if it was all right to hose away the disintegrating bird's nest that was staining her wall. "We've had a substantial decrease in water usage," said Mr. Those mandatory restrictions are in addition to the county's voluntary ones. Watering plants is permitted, but only from watering cans. 30, homeowners in the Amawalk-Shenorock Water District - an independent water district that lies within Shenorock, an unincorporated hamlet in the town of Somers - have been forbidden to water lawns, wash cars, fill swimming pools or wash down their driveways. Just "neighbors snitching on their neighbors," the superintendent said. Not even a laundry-laden family pleading for mercy. When the three commissioners of Shenorock's 647-house, 84-hydrant water district, one of Westchester's smallest, imposed their own restrictions in late August, Superintendent Adam J. SMALL-TOWN neighborliness and nosiness - have their advantages in a drought.
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