Sweet Sue's pancakes in happier days. Photo by Flickr user millhouseloves; reproduced with permission.
Sweet Sue's owner Suzanne Taylor says it will be a long time before her famous pancakes are back on the menu.
Last Friday, the Ulster County Department of Health shut Sweet Sue's down for a flood-related septic system failure. Speaking with us by phone this morning, Taylor said that in the best-case scenario, it would be at least three weeks before she could open again. Worse, she added, since her lot (like the rest of downtown Phoenicia) is subject to frequent flooding, there are no good options for repairing her septic system.
"We either have to wait for everything to dry out -- which, with the stream, might not happen -- or I'm looking at an above-the-ground system," she said.
Taylor said that the engineer she'd hired, Rex Sanford in Boiceville, told her an above-ground system would be vulnerable to future floods.
"I don't know how to proceed," she said. "I'm trying to just keep my spirits up about this, but it's not pleasant."
Like many Phoenicia residents, Taylor is angry with the state Department of Environmental Conservation, which has so far refused to approve a permit for the town of Shandaken to dredge the Stony Clove creek for flood mitigation. (Last month, some Phoenicia residents were talking on a local Facebook group about organizing a rock-moving party in the creek if the DEC refused to allow dredging.)
Meanwhile, a proposed sewer treatment plant that the New York City Department of Environmental Protection wants to build -- which would solve downtown Phoenicia's widespread septic problems, but which some Main Street business owners worry will cost them in the long term -- is still in limbo.
Taylor said she doesn't want to move Sweet Sue's or close up shop, but that it's becoming increasingly difficult to run her business.
"I've thought about it. But I've been there 27 years. It would be a really hard thing to do," she said. "So many locals are like family."
*UPDATE, 4:30 PM: Alan Rosa, executive director of the Catskill Watershed Corporation, told us that the CWC would be discussing Sweet Sue's at their next meeting, Tuesday, April 5. Rosa said he hoped the CWC could offer Taylor some kind of assistance.
"I can't move any faster than that," he said. "If there's anything we can do, I plan on putting it on our wastewater agenda for our April meeting."
