The Town of Bethany has declared a State of Emergency for water services during a year-end meeting on Thursday due to the town’s inability to provide water services to the affected parcels of approximately 100 residences and two dairy farms in the town.
All things considered, Bethany Town Supervisor Carl Hyde was in fairly good spirits Tuesday evening after making phone calls to Bethany residents for three hours to, as he put it, serve as an early Grinch and rob them of their holiday.
Those people had been planning on celebrating Thanksgiving at the town’s Community Center because they didn’t have water in their own homes. On Tuesday morning, the Community Center went dry as well.
Bethany Town Supervisor Carl Hyde Jr. would like all town of Bethany residents to know that there will be a first come-first served opportunity for them to fill up their 250 and 500-gallon totes from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday.
NOTICE OF PUBLIC HEARING TOWN OF BETHANY: NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN that a public hearing pursuant to Town Law § 193 will be held by the Town Board of the Town of Bethany at the Town Hall located at 10510 Bethany Center Road, East Bethany, New York on
Bethany town residents will be able to fill their water totes for the last time from 6 to 8 p.m. Tuesday at the town hall, Supervisor Carl Hyde Jr. says.
All but a few of about 200 residents were on board with creating Water District #5 in the Town of Bethany, and after the Town Board approved a resolution for a revised water district Wednesday evening, those property owners have 30 days to challenge the move or let it ride into the next phase of development, Supervisor Carl Hyde Jr. says.
As town officials and residents work through a water shortage brought on by drought, all of them have said it has been the worst they have ever seen since living in Bethany, many of them for decades. Fill dates are being scheduled week by week from a tanker that was provided by the state Office of Emergency Management.
Santa came early again for a visit Friday morning in the form of a donation of four pallets of bottled water all ready to be distributed to residents, Supervisor Carl Hyde Jr. said. Operations Manager Eric Santos of Casella Waste Systems had heard about Bethany's plight and showed up with his crew and the much-welcomed donation of water at town hall, Hyde said.
Super sweet country ranch that’s meticulously maintained and move in ready! This solid home has so much to offer-great spacious layout, extra large eat in kitchen with tons of cupboards, cozy wood burning/coal fireplace, that leads out to fully windowed 3 season room that overlooks a beautiful park like
Tuesday afternoon was unexpectedly busy and gleeful for Bethany Town Supervisor Carl Hyde Jr.
And while still being embroiled in town residents’ plight of dry wells and being in need of daily water supplies, he found something to smile about, he says.
“We’re on the list,” he said about the town’s placement on the state’s Water Infrastructure Improvement Award approvals. “My phone’s been ringing off the hook. I heard from Steve Hawley and J.W. Cook from the governor’s office. He called to say congratulations, you got your grant. I’m very happy.”
Declaring a State of Emergency hasn’t produced a miracle in terms of water for the dehydrated town of Bethany, Supervisor Carl Hyde Jr. says, but it has established the seriousness of what town residents are facing for their future needs.
Today we received a tanker of water from the NY State Office of Emergency Management to temporarily provide water to our residents experiencing dry wells.
For those residents affected, please call 585-343-1399, Ext. 202, and leave your full name, address and phone number. You will then be contacted
Water donations kept coming to the Town of Bethany on Saturday, as 18 pallets of bottled drinking water were delivered by Food Link from Wegmans Food Markets and four pallets of drinking water came from Tops Friendly Markets to the town hall.
NEW! Super sweet country ranch that’s meticulously maintained and move in ready! This solid home has so much to offer-great spacious layout, extra large eat in kitchen with tons of cupboards, cozy wood burning/coal fireplace, that leads out to fully windowed 3 season room that overlooks a beautiful park
Even many of Bethany's oldest residents, said Town Supervisor Carl Hyde, have come to accept the unpleasant but unavoidable and undeniable reality of the situation. The old Town Hall, built in 1832, must come down.
The town is currently accepting bids from demolition contractors.
Jerry Kujawski had no trouble with Saturday’s rule of first-come, first-served to fill up his 300-gallon water tote. In fact, he made a return trip to fill it up a second time to help out a neighbor, and he was only the third or fourth person who had been at Bethany Town Hall to do so for the two-hour fill-up period.
When it seemed as though there would have been dozens of people clamoring for a go at the pump connected to a tanker of water to shore up their dried-up wells, the parking lot was empty most of the time.
Town Supervisor Carl Hyde Jr. had put out the notice that anyone with no water could get their totes filled between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. Saturday at the town hall, and he and members of the Bethany town board and fire department stood at the tanker ready and waiting.
One’s lifestyle most definitely changes without running water, he said. You microwave your meals, eat on paper plates and use plastic cutlery. Showers are taken at obliging family members’ homes, and dirty clothes are taken care of at a laundromat.
There’s no turning on the tap, hopping in the shower or taking anything for granted when it comes to a steady stream of that liquid gold labeled H2O.
Water — whether there’s too much of it through flooding out west or not enough with the drought right here in Bethany, or the materials used for it, such as the case in Newark, NJ, which spent nearly $200 million to replace residents’ lead water lines, and now has become
In a move that would surely come as no surprise to many folks in Genesee County, the United States Department of Agriculture has declared the county as a drought disaster area, qualifying farm operations for emergency loans to recover from any drought-related losses.
With so much talk about global warming and climate change, that would seem to be the likely culprit for drought so extreme it has dried up dozens of wells in pockets of Genesee County.
However, Stephen Shaw, associate professor for environmental resources engineering at the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry, says it might be much more random than that.
Shaw has just completed a 20-year analysis and a report about dry wells across the entire northeast. He found that a drought in 2016 was “pretty intense,” especially across Western New York and Buffalo in particular. That didn’t match what these towns — the volume of households — in Genesee County have experienced, he said.
Genesee County's agriculture community came together at the Alexander Fire Hall on Saturday for the Celebration of Ag Dinner, with more than 300 people in attendance.
This was the 20th year for the event.
The Cupicha Family Farm of Bethany was this year's Conservation Farm of the Year.