08/26/2026
I would like to provide essential context and historical clarity regarding the recent statements concerning the Gloversville Water Department. While it is vital to routinely evaluate municipal operations, it is equally important that public conversations be guided by accurate historical timelines, legal frameworks, and operational realities.
1. Historical Foundation and Legal Autonomy
To understand why the Water Department operates under its current structure, we must look at the timeline of our community’s founding.
• 1871: The New York State Legislature passed an act authorizing the village to secure a "pure and wholesome" water supply.
• 1873: The Gloversville Water Works was formally incorporated.
• 1877: The gravity-fed water system became fully operational.
• 1890: The City of Gloversville was officially incorporated.
The water system predates the incorporation of the city itself by more than a decade. It was built as a dedicated, self-sustaining utility designed to power the thriving leather industry. Because our infrastructure was engineered to support massive industrial mills, we possess the capacity to produce up to 12 million gallons of water per day, alongside 930 million gallons of raw water storage.
2. The Economic Impact: Turning Surpluses into Direct City Revenue
When the leather industry moved overseas, Gloversville was left with an infrastructure built for a booming industrial era but facing a declining local revenue base. To adapt, the City of Gloversville, Fulton County, and the Board of Water Commissioners entered into the SMART Waters Agreement in 2015. This allows the department to sell surplus water outside city limits up to 2 million gallons per day.
To address the question of what the city directly receives: In February of this year, the City of Gloversville received a revenue-sharing check for $750,000 as a direct result of this agreement. To date, the city has received a total of $6,739,900.99 since this agreement was signed.
This is direct, non-tax revenue that goes straight into the city’s General Fund to help balance the municipal budget. This revenue carries absolutely zero overhead or operating cost for the city side. The Water Department bears 100% of the burden to source, treat, distribute, meter, and bill for this water, while the City of Gloversville directly benefits from this agreement.
Supporting the City Through Waived Costs
It is also vital to note how the Water Department directly supports city operations. We do not charge city properties or municipal projects for water consumption. This includes providing millions of gallons of treated water annually for fire protection and community recreational assets like the splash pad. By absorbing these costs entirely within our utility budget, we provide an immense financial benefit back to the City every single year.
3. Reinvesting in Aging Infrastructure
Gloversville has experienced a steady loss of tax revenue and water users due to residential decline and the departure of major commercial entities.
The upcoming Niagara Water Bottling Agreement—a nearly $200 million investment bringing approximately 100 jobs to Fulton County—is a critical lifeline.
What does the city get in return? It gets a stabilized utility system. The revenue generated from this agreement will be reinvested into our aging infrastructure. This revenue allows us to:
• Replace century-old valves and non-working fire hydrants.
• Upgrade water pumps and maintain safety standards at our dams and gatehouses.
• Modernize our 1939 filtration plant and its nearly 100-year-old pipe gallery.
When local industries left, the Water Department had to rely on sustainable timber harvesting on our watershed properties to balance budget deficits. It is also important to note that the Water Department pays all property taxes on the roughly 3,000 acres of watershed land it owns, relieving city taxpayers of that burden. Merging or absorbing the Water Department's finances to patch a short-term deficit in the general budget would critically endanger the long-term safety and viability of our city's drinking water infrastructure. Tax dollars fund public safety and roads while water usage rates exclusively fund water infrastructure.
4. Operational Efficiency and Fiscal Restraint
Contrary to the assertion that the Water Department is expanding into a larger, bloated bureaucracy, we have aggressively consolidated and downsized our operations over the past decade:
• Distribution: Reduced from six licensed water maintenance mechanics to four.
• Metering: The meter department has been reduced from two employees to zero.
• Watershed Management: Just two employees handle the massive physical maintenance of our 3,000 acres.
• Filtration Plant: This is a 24/7, 365-day critical treatment operation, run off only four licensed operators.
The Gloversville Water Department is not an outside entity draining resources from the city. It is a lean, highly efficient utility that keeps water affordable for residents, actively injects hundreds of thousands of dollars into the city's general fund through smart regional partnerships, and independently funds millions of dollars in mandatory infrastructure repairs. We remain fully committed to protecting Gloversville's greatest natural asset while continuing to be a primary contributor to its fiscal stability.
Superintendent Eric Lentini
