LAKE PLACID – The village board voted Tuesday to approve a $283,300 bid by the Tracey Trombley construction company to complete work on a village fire station addition and a new roof for the Beach House.

The work at the Beach House building will cost $194,300, and the firehouse work $89,000.

The board also approved a maximum cost of $36,000 to provide new radio equipment for the village fire and police departments.

Four contractors had submitted bids to do the work on the firehouse and Beach House.

When the Beach House was rebuilt nearly two decades ago, roof shingles were installed, but they didn’t hold up, Mayor Craig Randall said.

The new roof will last much longer, village Trustee Peter Holderied said at the board’s Jan. 4 meeting.

“Thirty years from now, they are going to be very happy with us,” he said.

At the Jan. 4 meeting, Randall said the board chose to install a standing seam metal roof system because installing standard shingles on the roof would have cost an additional $25,000.

“The way I look at it is that the (metal roof) is a 30-year shingle warranty-wise,” he said.

Mirror Lake testing

The village board also voted Tuesday to pay $1,500 the Mirror Lake Watershed Association asked for additional testing.

The town of North Elba’s board already approved $2,000 for the additional testing at its Jan. 12 meeting, when Brendan Wiltse of the Ausable River Association presented the group’s latest testing with MLWA President Bill Billerman present.

The MLWA also received $1,000 in private funding.

“I think the value they are going to provide us is going to be invaluable,” Trustee Jason Leon said Tuesday, “so closing the gap seems appropriate.”

Late last year, the Ausable River Association issued a Mirror Lake Water Quality Monitoring Proposal outlining how 2015 sampling efforts and research in the lake show road salt pollution is negatively affecting the bottom waters of the lake. The association says the results of the study show a higher salinity at the bottom of the lake than at the top due to road salt pollution, and that the bottom waters have a lack of oxygen for much of the summer season. The association and the MLWA say the funding for additional winter and spring testing is necessary to validate the preliminary 2015 results.

“If these conditions continue to get worse Mirror Lake may not be able to support healthy fish populations, may lose its cold water fish species (lake trout and rainbow trout), experience algal blooms, and be more vulnerable to invasive species infestations,” the Ausable River Association wrote.

Billerman said the testing will also provide a more solid database for the village’s future plans to replace its old stormwater infrastructure beneath downtown.