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Earlville, NY | Oh boy. We just did a big manure storage with mostly nrcs funding. We are in the Susquehanna River basin, there's lots of funding for runoff control. Storages have to be concrete, government approved design, inspections etc. Hard to turn down with amount of money involved though.
What a circus!
Original design was approved just before Covid shutdown, that delayed start two years.Then, NY requires a 'survey' be done for indigenous artifacts, make sure you aren't digging up Indian burial grounds etc. They did one, lost it and had to do another before we could start work. That dragged us too far into fall to begin any work that year. Local nrcs lady was moved to a different district, replacement was brand new to the job. Wouldn't approve final build for funding. Had to get our design engineer (he's done 50 or 60 manure storages) together with the state engineer to resolve. Took 2 or 3 weeks to get list of a couple changes we needed to make, the contractor did it in one day. Then there was a series of paperwork issues; lost forms, form was submitted with wrong year on it etc. Told us not sure if funding would come through before Dec 31st so messed up our tax planning, ended up having to borrow on operating loan, payment finally came through 3 weeks into January, cost us a few thousand in interest. That's a very condensed version.
This is our 4th project in past 20 years with them. I won't say it's the last, but...All the others went pretty well, this one was a real stretch on my patience. Sign of the times I guess. Fewer and fewer farms, fewer people with experience or desire to run these rural projects. Fewer people with common sense or guts to make decisions.
Hope you get a satisfactory outcome. | |
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NRCS Woes
