Fifty Years Ago 36

During the first week of May, 1972, two particular newsworthy items, portents of contentious times ahead, were published on the front page of the Times.
 
In 1958, after nearly eighty-five years of unfettered growth, evidence of Livingston Manor’s unrestricted development bubbled to the surface in the form of sewage emanating from failed residential septic systems. In the past, individual septic system failures were common and in most cases easily rectified, but during the summer and early fall of 1958, an epidemic of failures brought sewage effluent flowing down the ditches lining the streets of Nitchkie, Church and DuBois. Along Rock Avenue, effluent from failed systems crossed Route 17, and flowed along the normally dry brook that ran behind Fontana’s trailer park, eventually crossing Pearl Street and into the Little Beaverkill. The episode set in motion mandates from the state health department and sanitary engineers eventually leading to the construction of a village municipal sewage system 10 years later.

However, in an effort to drive down the costs of the project and appease members of the then-growing local taxpayers association, the local poultry processing plant located below the school was added onto the proposed overall system after the initial designs for sewage treatment at the sewage plant were approved. As a result, much of the discharge that came from the slaughterhouse was “un-digestible” at the two-year-old municipal sewage plant.  

The other newspaper item having similar future repercussion throughout the community was the 1972 local school board elections. With board member Robert Barnhart decision not to seek another term, the school board election for the open seat became a referendum on the power of the aforementioned taxpayers association. With the election of candidate Robert Darbee, proprietor of a Deckertown sport shop, the majority of membership on the Livingston Manor school board had now a decidedly taxpayer association mindset.