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Ancram culvert causes town kerfuffle

Sep 23, 2016 12:55 pm
Diane Valden reports in The Columbia Paper that after Ancram incorrectly installed a giant culvert to replace a small one, Town Supervisor Art Bassin thinks it can made made "invisible." There was once a small pipe on the unnamed tributary of the Roeliff Jansen Kill on Pat’s Road between State Route 82 and Poole Hill Road. In August, workers erroneously installed a much larger culvert, and did it a foot-and-a-half too high. At the Sept. 15 Ancram town board meeting, Bassin said the town would screen the offending culvert with plantings and cutting back the curb and wing walls “to lower the profile.” But that did not satisfy William D. Cohan, the culvert’s closest neighbor. “I remain deeply disturbed that this project was allowed to proceed, even as originally designed (forgetting for a moment the contractor’s utter unsupervised botching of the job) where a scalpel was needed, you all used a sledgehammer.” He called the project “a waste of energy and resources” and said the now scarred landscape and stream are now “destined for more scarring as the mistake gets “corrected” and the concrete wings sawed off. Bassin also said a culvert replacement project on Hall Hill Road has been postponed until next summer. Read the full story in The Columbia Paper.