At the Town Board’s request, the Suffolk County Water Authority (SCWA) is looking at Sachems Woods for possible wells to serve eight municipal buildings in the Town Center.
The contemplated new water supply could also provide backup for the West Neck Water system and may even provide potable water to some private properties in an area where nitrates in groundwater from aging septic systems pose a health hazard.
Supervisor Gerry Siller pointed out that the Town purchased the 36-acre woodlands between Midway and North Ferry roads in the 1960s, preserving it specifically for its potential for future public water supplies.
And he noted that the SCWA proposals doesn’t mean the Town is shifting its focus from treating wastewater in the Center. It will still pursue the proposed centralized wastewater treatment system for municipal buildings while encouraging the adoption of innovative alternative onsite wastewater (I/A) systems for private properties.
At Tuesday’s Town Board work session, Joseph M. Pokorny, an engineer who is SCWA’s deputy chief operating officer, roughly sketched the basics of the possible new public water system, drawing over a GIS map in four colors:
- a blue square (not to scale) in Sachems Woods represented an area for the well field, pump station, and support structures
- green lines along Town-owned Midway and Bateman roads and Thomas Street representing mains connecting the water plant to the Town Center
- red dots for the eight buildings served (Town Hall complex, SIPD headquarters, Justice Court, the Center Firehouse, Shelter Island Public Library, Community Center and Shelter Island School)
- a yellow line along Bowditch and Menantic roads showing how SCWA could connect the new plant to a West Neck Water system main
The illustration, Pokorny noted, is to give an idea of what could be done. “There’s nothing finalized in any way.”
The primary goal, he said, was to provide drinking water that meets quality standards to the public buildings. Further connecting the new field to the West Neck Water (WNW) system would provide the redundancy necessary for the optimal reliability of both systems.
Pokorny said the Town-owned West Neck Water (WNW) system is at capacity and can’t be extended to serve the municipal buildings. In fact, to keep up with demand, SCWA — which operates it under a lease agreement — is updating two WNW wells to expand capacity from 50 gallons per minute to 200 gallons per minute.
What might it SCWA wells cost?
Pokorny said SCWA passes on to all ratepayers the costs of developing new water systems and adding capacity to existing systems. The cost of creating the new water plant would be folded into the nonprofit’s capital budget, the burden of which is shared across all water customers.
“In any given year, we’re building new well fields and new pump stations in different parts of the county,” he said.
Theoretically, SCWA would add several wells to the Sachems Woods site, seeking to pull several hundred gallons per minute of capacity, he said. The cost of connecting the new system to the WNW system would also come from SCWA’s capital budget as a system improvement.
The municipality’s first share of the costs would be related to laying the service lines. SCWA would likely opt to connect to the designated buildings via water mains along municipal roads as this would be cheaper than digging under state or county roads.
He estimated 4,000 linear feet of water main would be required, and at $250 per foot, the supply line would cost about $1M. A second Town expense would be SCWA tapping fees of about $4,000 each for the eight buildings. These cover the installation of underground vaults for the connection valves, meters, and other devices and testing to ensure proper connections.
The town would also pay the cost of installing service lines from the vaults into the buildings and any internal plumbing alterations.
Pokorny recommended the Town seek a grant to cover its costs. Currently, the state’s Environmental Facilities Corporation (EFC) is accepting proposals for critical water infrastructure. The EFC has $425M to spend on infrastructure projects that protect public health and the environment.
After discussion, the Town Board agreed that Town grant writer Jennifer Messiano would work with SCWA to submit an application by the July 28 deadline.
“Bringing water to contaminated wells ranks high on the EFC’s scoring list when they’re doing these types of projects,” Porkony said, noting that SCWA was applying for about 50 grants in this funding cycle.
Given that the Town’s proposal would correct compliance issues with the current water supply to the municipal buildings, the Town’s application “would probably be looked at relatively favorably.”
The Town would have to come up with a matching share for the EFC grant, usually about 40 percent. For this portion (or if the EFC grant application is not successful or is only partially approved), the Town could look to other grantors or use some combination of its own Water Quality Improvement revenues and capital reserves.
Town Attorney Stephen F. Kiely said the Town Board could expend such funds via a resolution. However, if it needs to float a bond, the borrowing would have to be approved in a public referendum.
What’s the next step?
Pokorny said SCWA engineers will propose a layout of how the wells and other facilities would be placed in Sachems Woods, “so that you have an understanding of what we might build there,” he said. “I know you have constituents and neighbors, and we want to be very sensitive to all of them.”
Once the Town Board approves the layout, SCWA would drill test bores to examine for water quality and quantity. The authority would have to clear a 100- by 100-foot area to accommodate the drilling equipment, he said.
“We drill down as deep as we can, usually until we hit saltwater,” Pokorny said. “And then, we pull back up and we will test different zones to determine where the best water is and come up with an estimate of what we think we can get out of that property.”
“Hopefully, the results of that are going to be great water quality and plentiful volumes of water,” he said.
The pump station would look much like the WNW station on the public golf course in the Heights, and, as in the WNW system, SCWA would likely use submersible wells. “They’re just kind of a pipe sticking up out of the ground, so they would not be very significant.”
SCWA would also want to create underground tank storage “which is what gets you through peak periods. You have finished water ready to pump out to the distribution system.”
Councilwoman BJ Ianfolla asked whether SCWA could treat for nitrates if the Sachems Woods water turns out to contain high levels of the contaminant. Porkony said he doesn’t anticipate high levels of nitrates at the site, but that SCWA can treat the water to remove them, if necessary. The treatment is expensive and results in a waste product — a salty brine — that must be trucked to an appropriate wastewater facility for disposal.
Should such treatment be required, the proposed layout would also include space to store treatment materials and the resulting wastes, which would be pumped periodically and trucked off-Island.
What about private connections?
Pokorny said that test borings would provide the information needed to determine the system’s capacity and how much water might be available for private connections along the service lines.
The Town’s Water Advisory Committee is creating a survey to be issued to property owners in what’s known as the “Triangle,” an area that’s known to have high levels of nitrates in groundwater. Councilwoman Meg Larsen described it as a running, “as the crow flies,” from Daniel Lord Road to Fresh Pond to about the traffic circle at St. Mary’s Road, and back to Daniel Lord Road.
The purpose of the survey is to inform residents of the need to test the water quality of their private wells. It will include links to a company that can provide detailed water analysis to homeowners and share disaggregated results with the Town. In reports to the Town, identifying details would be removed to ensure results of specific wells aren’t disclosed, Larsen said.
The goal is to determine if there are areas within the Triangle with high nitrate concentrations, and where public water supply may be in higher demand, she explained.
Pokorny said SCWA would follow Town established criteria to offer public water where it is most needed, noting that the well field at Sachems Woods would not suffice to supply the entire area.
Town Engineer Joe Finora endorsed the idea of possibly connecting private properties, but said the Town should first pursue the “extremely attractive opportunity” to solve water quality problems in the eight municipal buildings “at a price the Town could never achieve on its own.”
“It’s excellent that we’re having this conversation about the broader impact,” he said. “But at this stage, our focus as a municipality should be on the infrastructure that’s presented right here in front of us.”
He encouraged the board to let the WAC continue its work to survey property owners to “understand not only what the private well quality issues are, but also to gauge the appetite of those private property owners as to whether they’d like to connect to a system like this.”
“It may be there isn’t an appetite to connect,” he said.
Why not use community wells?
Finora said it was important to note that when discussions arise about alternatives, like community wells, the Town has already demonstrated it doesn’t the capacity to manage a small system on its own.
“These are public buildings serving water to the public; our rules are different than just your regular house,” he said.
Given the high levels of nitrates in Center groundwater, the Town could end up running multiple costly individual systems to treat for nitrates. Such a system is in place at the Shelter Island Presbyterian Church, where the Town senior nutrition program is based.
“They’re expensive to operate, they’re complicated and they require a licensed operator,” he said. “So we’d be kind of backing ourselves into a West Neck Water situation again.”
The Town contracted with SCWA to operate the WNW system because “we struggled to find an operator, we struggled to find the budget and manpower.”
Finora also pushed back against the idea that upgrades to septic systems would suffice to improve water quality in the Center, where some wells have tested five or six times above the drinking water standard for nitrates. And I/A systems, especially in this densely developed area, won’t have enough space to add treatments for other contaminants, such as PFOS and PFOA.
“You can’t I/A your way out of some of the these challenges that we’re facing.”
