Displaying items by tag: Marissa Mackay
Saratoga Water Services, Inc. Doubling in Capacity
MALTA — Saratoga Water Services, Inc. the company that provides drinking water for residents in the towns of Malta and Stillwater, is almost doubling in capacity in order to provide water to the growing amount of clients and residential developments in the works. In 2017 water consumption totaled in 195,461,050 gallons.
“We are permitted to pull so much water out of the ground and then that water is allocated to certain developments be it commercial or residential. In order to draw more that requires a new well or in our current case, a well pump upgrade to almost double the capacity of that well, how much water it can pump per minute,” said Marissa Mackay, Executive Vice President of Saratoga Water Services, Inc. and President of Luther Forest.
Saratoga Water Services located at 2 Stonebreak Rd. in Malta provides water to approximately 7,000 people, 45 businesses and 7 industrial customers, including Luther Forest Technology campus, home of GlobalFoundries.
“We need to store enough water for one full day’s use. When our average day of use gets close to our max tank capacity, we will need to invest in storage. Similarly with our pumps... we need to be able to pump enough water out to our customers, which is usually measured in Gallons Per Minute (GPM),” Mackay said.
The company gets roughly 500 GPM out of their current pump and hopes this upgrade will bring about 1,260 GPM.
“We recently invested in our distribution pumps to increase that capacity at our Cold Springs location,” she added.
Earlier this year the company added two more 50 HP distribution pumps to Cold Springs Pump House (CSPH), totaling five distribution pumps. Including another pump house the company has, Saratoga Water Services, is at a grand total of 3,585 GPM. The average demand is 506,370 gallons per a day.
Mackay says the cost of something like this is dependent upon the upgrade. “Storage, well pumps, distribution pumps or electrical or even controls... So many variables. We might have a minor communications upgrade that costs less than $10,000 or even less than $5,000, but on the other hand we may have a tank rehab/integration project that is close to $500,000 or even a full overhaul that will be upwards of $1.5 million,” Mackay said.
Hanson Well Drilling and Pump Co., with locations in Nassau, Chatham, Schenectady and Troy, is in charge of the well while Stilsing Electric, Inc. located in Rensselaer is working on the electrical side of things. The upgrade should be completed by the end of this week.
Chronicling Luther Forest’s History
Photo by Larry Goodwin.
SARATOGA SPRINGS — Luther Forest and the entities that followed, spans close to 120 years. In honor of this milestone the Mackay family has teamed up with local historian Field Horne to document its history.
“Our father found Field or Field found my father and the project began. It’s really interesting to see it written down. Although it is in draft form still, the memoir is important to our family and to the community,” Marissa Mackay said.
“It’s a large chunk of this area’s history and the choices that were made by our predecessors had a huge impact on the evolution of this area,” she added.
The Mackay family is a family of entrepreneurs and were pioneers in the sustainable forest management movement.
“The thought of looking to the future, spanning the five generations, starting with our Great-Great Grandfather Tom C. Luther and his acquisition of land over time, planting of millions and millions of trees that to this day his family enjoys and manages sustainably,” Mackay said.
“There are some things that have been uncovered that are new in this archival documentation but in all honesty, we must have always just spoken of it often... The documents and photos came mostly from our storage here at the office or at our Grandmother’s house,” she said.
According to Mackay, her family saves everything especially when it has to do with work.
“It has been on the ‘to do list’ so to speak, to have the files put in safe storage,” she added.
Mackay and her older brother Cailean Mackay took over for their father three years ago. Cailean also currently manages Saratoga Lake Golf Club, which was built by their father Alec Mackay and opened in 2000, while Marissa manages Saratoga Water Company and the siblings come together for the forest.
“The water company was created to service the development that our Grandfather, Bill Mackay began and our father, Al Mackay completed,” Mackay said.
What’s next for the family? “That is a loaded question,” Mackay said.
“Luther Forest, the simple answer is diversify while maintaining a strong hold on where we come from, meaning our forestry background and sound management of the property,” Mackay added
As for the water company, it continues to see growth of about 3 percent annually, according to Mackay.
“We have a lot of capital improvements on the horizon. In the next month we will have out permanent backup supply service to Global online. In the next year, we will oversee at least two water main extensions, a well pump upgrade and begin the process to integrate another 250K storage to our Fox Wander Facility as well as do a significant upgrade to the controls in that facility,” Mackay said.
Both Marissa and Cailean hope to have a similar, lasting and positive impact during their time at the forest.
