Town of Ellicott and city of Jamestown officials will meet to discuss the preliminary steps for a possible Jamestown Board of Public Utilities water line extension project along Fluvanna Avenue. P-J photo by Dennis Phillips

A project the town of Ellicott supervisor has wanted since he took office may have new life.

Last month, Patrick McLaughlin, Ellicott town supervisor, told the Ellicott Town Board he has talked to Jamestown Mayor Eddie Sundquist about the possibility of extending the Jamestown Board of Public Utilities water line to possibly provide service along Fluvanna Avenue.

‘It’s a project we’ve been trying to do for the last five to six years now,” McLaughlin said. “I updated (the board) that I had talked to Mayor Sundquist and we are going to revisit that project. We will have to meet to review the options we have as far as financing, the costs for the town and the city, and Mayor Sundquist agreed to meet.”

McLaughlin said town officials would like to extend the BPU’s water service along Fluvanna Avenue to Fluvanna Townline Road. He said they would also like to have BPU water service along Strunk Road as far as Interstate 86 and along Old Fluvanna Road. He added that there would be about 100 customers in these areas that the BPU’s water service could be extended to serve.

McLaughlin said about five years ago, town officials surveyed possible customers in the proposed area, and 90% of them wanted BPU water service. He said it will be a costly project, which was estimated five years ago to cost between $1.5 million to $1.7 million. He added town and city officials will have to apply for federal and state grants to do the project.

“They would like the municipal water service there,” he said. “It’s time to revisit this project.”

In January 2015, shortly after McLaughlin was sworn in as town supervisor, he discussed his water service line extension with The Post-Journal. He said Fluvanna Avenue and Strunk Road could become a corridor for commercial infrastructure if they were connected to the BPU’s water line along Washington Street in Jamestown. As it currently stands, the water lines along Fluvanna Avenue and Strunk Road are smaller and older, and do not provide enough water pressure for commercial growth.

In other business, McLaughlin also informed the board that no permits have been issued to the town or the village of Celoron for herbicide application this summer. He said a survey was done that shows there is very little Eurasian milfoil, which is the only herbicide permit town officials applied for with the state Department of Environmental Conservation. He added that there is reportedly a lot of curly-leaf pondweed this year. Unfortunately, McLaughlin said town officials didn’t apply for a herbicide permit to treat curly-leaf pondweed.

“Normally (curly-leaf pondweed) blossoms and grows, but usually by July it dies,” he said. “When it’s up and going it has a shorter lifespan than the milfoil.”

McLaughlin said town officials plan to apply next year for herbicide permits for both the Eurasian milfoil and the curly-leaf pondweed like they did last year.

“Next year we will try to be on top of it to get applications for both species like we did in 2019,” he said.