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By Denise Civiletti - August 27, 2024
It was a sight to behold. And one that was a long time coming.
Suffolk County Water Authority contractors who are installing mains that will carry clean drinking water to homes in a remote section of Manorville crossed into Riverhead Town from Brookhaven yesterday.
Four residents who were instrumental in the years-long fight for access to public water gathered midday on Wading River Manor Road and River Road to witness what was for them a momentous occasion.
Ron Martz, Kelly McClinchy, Clare Bennett and Toni Pawlson live in the southwest corner of Riverhead Town, in homes nestled in the Pine Barrens. It’s an area that’s largely undeveloped, comprising hundreds of acres of preserved woodlands. Quiet country roads wind their way through the deep woods.
Once upon a time, the surreal stillness and silence of the area would be intermittently fractured by the roaring engines of a supersonic F-14 fighter jet taking off from the nearby Naval Weapons Reserve Plant, a facility leased to the Navy contractor Grumman Corporation, which assembled and tested military aircraft and equipment there.
The ear-splitting noise of those military flights ended almost 30 years ago, when the military contractor, now known as Northrop Grumman, vacated the 2,900-acre Calverton site. What the company left behind there includes contaminated soils and a toxic soup of chemical contaminants that polluted the groundwater below the site has been migrating south toward the Peconic River.
Homes with shallow private drinking water wells lie in the path of the plumes of contaminated groundwater flowing toward the river — part of a protected estuary system designated as one of national significance that includes the river, creeks and bays around which the villages that would later form the Town of Riverhead developed in the 18th century.
Sixty-four homes in that remote corner of the Town of Riverhead and another 28 homes to their east in Calverton draw their drinking water from wells polluted with a variety of contaminants, which run the gamut from MTBE and arsenic to PFAS.
Martz, who built his home on River Road in 1993, said he’s been asking for public water for nearly 30 years. He worked for the Suffolk County Water Authority and had his well water tested shortly after moving into his home. He didn’t like the results. While he didn’t originally consider the well water to be a health hazard, he kept asking for public water.
“I went through three water district superintendents. I went through four town supervisors,” Martz said. “We were told for 20 years that we will never see public water here.”
Over time, Martz and his neighbors came to believe the contaminants in their drinking water actually did present a health hazard.
“I mean, out of 64 homes, 22 people had or have cancer,” Pawson said.
“This is supposed to be the core of the pine barrens,” Bennett added. “And here I am with some of the most contaminated water — in the pine barrens which are supposed to preserve the aquifer. Oh, my God, I got PCBs, MTBE, acetone, benzene,” she said.
The State Department of Environmental Conservation installed carbon filtration systems in Bennett’s and Pawson’s homes. They still can’t use their well water from outdoor spigots, which are not attached to the filter. That means no vegetable gardens and no swimming pool.
Other residents use bottled water for drinking and cooking, but still must shower with their well water. It’s unsettling and worrisome.
Time dragged on, without a permanent solution in sight.
Though the homes in the area are in the Town of Riverhead, they were not within the Riverhead Water District and nowhere near a Riverhead Water District main that could be tapped to bring public water to the area. That meant a water district extension would be a very expensive undertaking and way beyond the ability of the small number of households — or the cash-strapped town —to carry the cost of.
The county water authority had a main much closer to the area in need and was willing to take the project on — but a turf war, of sorts, got in the way. The Town of Riverhead did not want the county water authority, which serves Brookhaven and other municipalities, making an incursion into Riverhead.
“That was the big fight,” Martz said yesterday. “They said, no, you’re not in the area, but we don’t want the water authority coming in here.”
An extension crossing town lines to serve the Manorville homes could have implications for the future of the service to the former Grumman site, which is now owned by the Town of Riverhead and its future industrial development a potentially lucrative source of business for the town water district — as well as for the county water authority.
Residents kept at it, holding rallies for clean water and attending many Town Board meetings to demand public water — never getting any satisfaction. Then they met with the Suffolk County Water Authority.
“Then I think they got a little nervous,” McClinchy said. “I think they started taking this seriously when they knew we had a meeting with the Suffolk County Water Authority. That was when, you know, their eyebrows kind of went up, and it was like, ‘We better pay attention here,’” McClinchy said.
She said getting the outspoken clean water advocate Adrienne Esposito of Citizens Campaign for the Environment interested in the cause made a big difference.
“Adrienne stuck with us. It was really lucky, because I don’t know if we would have made all the right decisions along the way,” McClinchy said.
Once the county water authority stepped forward to say it could and would serve the Manorville homes, the Town of Riverhead in February 2020 ordered the preparation of a map and plan for a Riverhead Water District extension to serve the area, at a then-estimated cost of about $4.8 million.
Then the pandemic struck and in its aftermath the supply chain disruptions that would double the cost of the extension by the time the project was bid and work got underway more than four years later. The town found itself scrambling to try to find enough grant money and low-interest or no-interest loans to fund the work, all the while pressuring the Navy to come up with funding to correct problems believed to be caused by the Navy’s use of the site.
Testing by the Suffolk County health department in 2020 confirmed that roughly 15% of the homes in the area had PFOS and PFOA in their wells, in addition to other contaminants.
The Suffolk County Water Authority meanwhile moved forward with a water main extension to serve up to 78 homes with private wells in the Brookhaven portion of Manorville, adjoining the Riverhead area. The water authority made grant and loan applications to the same government agencies that Riverhead was soliciting. The water authority completed the extension in the Brookhaven portion of Manorville in February.
The water authority and the town reached an agreement in 2022 to work together on the Manorville extension in Riverhead. The water authority would install the water main infrastructure and supply and meter the water to the homes. Although the residents would be SCWA customers, but the area would be part of the Riverhead Water District.
Even after the town and the water authority reached an agreement, the funding still wasn’t there to undertake the work.
“The Town of Riverhead secured $3.6 million in funding from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) that was sponsored by Senator Charles Schumer, Senator Kirsten Gillibrand and former Representative Lee Zeldin. In addition, a $3.8 million grant was awarded through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. Suffolk County agreed to provide $1.3 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds to cover the cost of installing private service lines at each of the homes. Finally, SCWA’s Board approved a $2.4 million credit towards the project, which fully funded the project and allowed residents to connect at no cost to them,” the water authority said in a press release last week.
“Looking back, should we just have gone to the Suffolk County Water Authority and bypassed Riverhead? Maybe,” McClinchy said. “I don’t know if that would have been a better plan, but it’s been quite an adventure.”
Even after all the negotiating, the fund-seeking, and the puzzle pieces finally being set into place, McClinchy said, “When did we know it was actually going to happen? When we saw these guys pull up,” she said, pointing to the backhoes and construction crews working in the road.
Last week, the water authority broke ground on the new extension, and yesterday, the work crossed the Riverhead Town line.
Residents went to the work site to watch the trench that will house the water main cross over the town line. They were elated.
“This is an overwhelmingly happy victory, but honestly, it shouldn’t be this hard,” Esposito said.
“Communities have a right to clean safe drinking water, and this community had to fight for that right,” Esposito said. “Fortunately, they won. I’m excited for them. I’m happy to be a part of the historic moment. But it really is a struggle for communities to get the various levels of government to collaborate together,” she said.
“It shouldn’t be this hard. It’s just, I mean, when we first started this, we thought maybe it would be two years,” Esposito said. “What’s it been? Eight years now?”
A meeting she set up for the community with the county health department and Sen. Chuck Schumer’s office was a turning point, Esposito said.
“I think once the health department got to hear directly from the community, that really got the ball rolling. And they also know that if I’m involved, we’re not going away. We’re going to continue to advocate for this until success is achieved. We don’t get into something and then walk away. We follow it to its conclusion,” Esposito said. “Once the test results came back, we had a meeting again. Everyone joined in again, and, you know, embarked on a journey to get funding to get these homes hooked up,” she said. “And it was unbelievably complicated. This campaign had the makings of a TV movie,” she said.
McClinchy said another important benefit of public water mains in the roads — not to be underestimated — is access to water for firefighting. There are lots of hydrants being installed.
Manorville was the scene of a major wildfire in April 2012 and firefighters’ efforts were hampered by the lack of water sources for battling the blaze. Fire department tanker trucks had to drive nearly to Route 25 to be able to draw water from a hydrant. Firefighters drew water from a resident’s inground swimming pool. Planes called in from other parts of the state flew overhead to drop water on the burning scrub pine forest. All 109 fire departments in Suffolk County responded to the scene.
It took two days to get the fire — then the seventh largest in New York State history — under control. By the time it was over, the flames, fed by 25 mph winds and 40 mph gusts, had scorched 1,100 acres in the pine barrens, destroyed three homes, one commercial building and several vehicles — including fire department brush trucks. No one was killed, but one firefighter sustained second-degree burns and was admitted to the burn unit at Stony Brook University Hospital for treatment.
Through the efforts of County Executive Ed Romaine, then a county legislator, the county funded and installed six fire suppression wells in the pine barrens to assist firefighters battling wildfires.
The pine barrens are a fire-dependent ecosystem and wildfires are always a risk. Water mains and fire hydrants throughout the area will greatly aid firefighting efforts, McClinchy said.
Water main installation and hookups of private homes is expected to be completed in November, a Suffolk County Water Authority spokesperson said today.