Ancram moved a portable toilet at Town Hall away from a flood-prone stream after heavy rain last week triggered a flash flood warning across Columbia County and brought rising water within feet of the structure.
By the morning of July 30, Ancramdale had received 4.17 inches of rain, according to the National Weather Service. The downpour swelled an unnamed tributary of the Roeliff Jansen Kill that runs through the forested area behind Town Hall’s approximately 16,950-square-foot parking lot.
On the afternoon of Wednesday, July 29, floodwater came within approximately 14 feet of the portable toilet.
Asked by the Herald whether the toilet’s placement could pose an environmental risk, Supervisor Colleen Lutz said it could create problems if the structure were to topple during a storm. She later ordered it to be moved.
“If anything happens to the tank or it gets tipped over, your sewage, which is what’s being held within it until it gets popped, can infiltrate the ground and then you have that going into your water body,” Lutz said. “It can be a real problem. There’s farms that use that water as part of their irrigation and so if you’re using potentially contaminated water, that’s not good either.”
On Wednesday, Aug. 5, Superior Sanitation moved it further from the stream to the edge of the parking lot.
“Where that unnamed stream comes down that’s technically the edge of that parking lot, just off from there, where it drops down, that’s the floodplain for that unnamed stream,” Lutz said. “While it may not be a protected water body floodplain, it still is a floodplain for that stream.”
Portable toilets typically require Planning Board approval as part of site plan review for commercial recreational facilities, Lutz said. The town’s zoning law also requires a 150-foot buffer along all streams and floodplains, a provision adopted as part of a 2021 zoning update.
Lutz said because the toilet is self-contained and not permanent the 150-foot mandate in the zoning law does not apply.
“The 150 feet regulation pertains to site disturbance and the placing of permanent structures or uses within the floodplain, especially uses that disturb soils and have open runoff,” Lutz said. “This is neither.”
Lutz said the amount of rainfall last week was not something the town regularly experiences.
“However, with the way that our climate is changing, I think it is going to become more frequent,” Lutz said. “So I think that it might have to be addressed.”
The town rents a portable toilet each year for children attending its summer camp and residents using the playground, Lutz said. Most participants use the restrooms inside Town Hall when the building is open, she said.
“To my knowledge, the portable toilet has been placed in that location since the camp has used the playground,” she said. “I would estimate that to be about 10 years, and prior to the 150-foot buffer zoning change. The camp director orders them each year and most likely, Superior puts them where they have been instructed in the past.”
The original location was chosen, Lutz said, to keep potential odors away from the building and to allow access for the truck that pumps out the toilet’s tank.
“[Moving it is] hopefully fixing a potential problem that we haven’t seen in the past, but of course things are changing,” Lutz said. “We have to adapt, and this is a way to adapt.”