The Town Board has opened a public hearing about using Water Quality Improvement (WQI) funds to pay for additional design costs for its proposed municipal wastewater treatment facility.
Input from one speaker — an eminent professor commissioned by Friends of Coecles Harbor (FoCH) — may provide a key to unlocking density limits that curtail development opportunities, such as the Town’s long sought Community Housing.
An expert in harmful algal blooms, Christopher J. Gobler, Ph.D., leads the New York State Center for Clean Water Technology at Stony Brook University.
FoCH, an organization with three publicly-identified members who refuse to give media interviews, said in a letter to the Town Board it commissioned Gobler to provide an “independent assessment” of the proposed facility.
Two representatives from local environmental groups also spoke, seeking assurances that WQI funds go to allowed purposes.
Gobler said he’s concerned the proposed facility at 16 Manwaring Road, designed to serve eight municipal buildings in the nearby Town Center, might not adequately mitigate risks to neighboring properties and Gardiners Creek.
He believes high nitrates in the Town Center drinking water can be solved cost-effectively with modernized septic systems and a new idea: install urine diverting toilets at the eight municipal buildings and truck the collected urine away for disposal or recycling into fertilizer.
The first recommendation asks Town Board members to reexamine alternatives they’ve already rejected. The latter suggestion offers a more theoretical solution — no U.S. town operates a urine diversion and collection system for a municipal building, much less multiple buildings.
But given its potential to protect drinking water while allowing for greater density, the idea may merit further investigation.
Purpose of the public hearing
The public hearing — which remains open — is to seek the public’s feedback on using WQI funds to pay unanticipated design costs beyond what’s covered under a combined county and state grant. The grant was expected to carry the plan through the conceptual and design phases.
But during the conceptual phase, the Town Board agreed to move the proposed project from Klenawicus Airfield, a site purchased for open space preservation. And the school district agreed to join the project. So the consulting engineer — Pio Lombardo of Lombardo Associates — returned to the drawing board, incurring additional design expenses. Estimates for permitting costs also rose.
To cover the shortfall, the Town Board wants to use $96,646 in WQI funds. The public hearing is an administrative function of disbursing funds.
Notably, the Town Board is not the agency responsible for determining whether the proposal passes public health and state environmental quality muster. Instead, the Suffolk County Department of Health Services and the NYS Department of Environmental Conservation handle those decisions.
During the design phase, the Town will have to obtain county approval and a DEC discharge permit, a process governed by the State Environmental Quality Review Act. The Town Board has hired a consulting firm, P.W. Grosser, to assist in the SEQR process.
The county has earmarked a $250,000 grant to fund construction if the project is approved. The Town is applying to the state for additional grant funding for construction. The total project cost is estimated at $3 million.
Group for the East End
At Tuesday’s hearing, Group for the East End President Bob Deluca encouraged the Town Board to say how the proposed wastewater facility comports with Town Code governing WQI funding.
“I want to thank the board for its continued efforts to work on water quality; obviously, it’s something many of us have been working on for a long time,” he said.
DeLuca noted that Shelter Island has a “two-part” test for WQI spending. The first is whether a project meets water quality improvement goals — “of course, I think this is one,” he said.
Water basics: Groundwater refers to underground drinking water sources; on Shelter Island, we have a sole-source aquifer. Surface water refers to the surrounding saltwater bodies. People draw potable water from our sole-source aquifer. As a result of natural processes, groundwater also flows from the aquifer into adjacent surface waters.
The second part describes 12 characteristics of a WQI-eligible project (see items A through L under Community Preservation Fund, Article III, Section 50-33 of the Town Code). DeLuca encouraged the Town Board to ensure that:
- all water resources, including surface waters, are “adequately protected by the design”
- the proposal prioritizes and maximizes “the amount of pollution removed for the dollars that you spend”
- the primary purpose is not “the accommodation of new growth”
- the plan comports with regional water quality improvement plans, such as the Suffolk County Subwatershed Wastewater Plan (SWP) and the Peconic Estuary Partnership’s Comprehensive Conservation and Management Plan (CCMP)
Adopted in 2021, SWP built on an earlier study that concluded the degradation of the region’s water quality was due mainly to legacy septic systems. SWP encourages the expansion of active wastewater treatment infrastructure, such as using Innovative Advanced Onsite Wastewater Treatment Systems (I/A systems). It also promotes the development of small wastewater treatment facilities like the one proposed by the Town.
The Suffolk County website is offline due to a ransomware attack. But you can see a presentation on the SWP on the SeaGrant website. And, you can see the Peconic Estuary Partnership’s CCMP here.
Peconic Baykeeper
“Shelter Island has an undeniable water quality issue,” Peconic Baykeeper Executive Director Peter Topping said at Tuesday’s hearing. “We’re really happy to see work being done to this effect.”
However, Topping said he also has concerns about Gardiners Creek. He called creeks “the canaries in the coal mine” when it comes to nitrogen loading that can lead to brown tides and other algal blooms.
“When they get too much nitrogen or nutrients, they’re the first to go.”
Topping asked the board to reconsider using I/A systems for the eight municipal buildings or moving the treatment facility elsewhere. And he echoed DeLuca’s concern about possible future contributors increasing the system load.
“I would also hate to see this be used as an excuse to foster more development,” he said.
FoCH weighs in
FoCH President Bill Derrough said his organization engaged Stony Brook’s Dr. Gobler to “provide his perspective.”
Derrough opined that Town Board should not proceed with WQI funding until it addressed Gobler’s “issues and observations.”
Supervisor Gerry Siller said he’d invite Gobler to speak directly with the Town Board at a work session, freeing him from the three-minute limit on public comments.
“He can make his presentation then and take all the time that’s needed,” Siller said.
Mitigating nitrogen
Gobler spoke only briefly via Zoom at Tuesday’s meeting, but he also submitted a written report.
“The most important thing for Shelter Island is mitigating nitrogen, and I really do applaud the board for taking many, many actions toward that front,” he said.
“If you look at the trends in nitrogen in groundwater, everything possible needs to be done to mitigate that,” he said.
However, Gobler said, “for the same amount of money, more nitrogen can be removed by considering alternative plans. I’m eager to discuss those alternative actions with you.”
In his written report, Gobler suggests using I/A systems to address nitrate while reducing expenses, rehashing arguments the Town Board examined before it adopted the current proposal.
But to improve the efficacy of I/A systems, he promotes the use of new technology, such as the recently piloted Nitrogen Removing Biofilters developed at his Center for Clean Water Technology and currently pending Suffolk County approval. Such systems can denitrify wastewater and also remove contaminants of emerging concern.
[Editor’s note: After publication, in the above paragraph, we added the second sentence to clarify the nature of the enhanced capacity of the CCWT system.]
Groundwater to surface water
As for Gardiners Creek, Gobler said it is a “restricted water body” with its opening onto Dering Harbor artificially narrowed to about 20 feet to accommodate Second Bridge. As a result, the creek is “highly sensitive to nitrogen loading.”
The proposed treatment facility calls for a significant reduction in nitrate level per liter released into the ground compared to the aging septic systems now at the eight municipal buildings.
However, Gobler noted the facilities in the Town Center sit atop a convergence of many subwatersheds. As a result, any effluent dispersed from individual septic systems might eventually flow to various saltwater bodies. Collecting the wastewater at 16 Manwaring Road would concentrate the release of the treated effluent into a subwatershed that flows only to Gardiners Creek.
Gobler said “potential dangers” may result from the proposed facility’s treatment components, questioning whether Lombardo’s recommended Nitrex filter and a proposed post-treatment disinfecting protocol will suffice to protect the waterway.
“Sometimes when you’re treating to remove contaminants, you can create secondary byproducts and in doing so can actually create a problem that could be worse than the one that you’re actually potentially treating for.”
Lombardo, the Town’s consulting engineer, has said at previous meetings that he’s agnostic about the particular materials to be used in the proposed system, so long as they meet the project standards. Siller said he’d arrange for Lombardo to take part in any Town Board conversation with Gobler.
Collecting urine
Gobler also endorses “urine diversion and collection” and said in his written report it “could be a highly practical solution for this region.”
The idea is to reduce nitrogen in wastewater by separating urine from feces at the source. Gobler points out that some NYS parks on Long Island use urine diversion toilets at comfort stations.
An internet search shows the state installed these systems (reportedly at the cost of $9 million) in response to a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency complaint that New York had violated the Clean Water Act by maintaining large capacity cesspools at seven parks long after they’d been banned.
Urine diversion systems require plumbing alterations. In addition to upfront costs, users face ongoing maintenance to ensure urine byproducts don’t clog up collection pipes. Onsite tanks hold the collected urine until pumping for disposal at a wastewater treatment facility or further use.
Gobler suggests a truck could pick up stored urine from the Town Center sites and take it to the wastewater treatment facility in Riverhead for disposal. An underlying assumption is that the Riverhead facility’s DEC permit allows for additional capacity.
As for urine recycling options, Gobler says his Center for Clean Water Technology at Stony Brook is “using diverted urine for the creation of fertilizer.”
There are numerous challenges to converting urine to fertilizer. A report developed for CCWT in 2016 by the environmental consulting firm Hazen and Sawyer said collected urine requires long storage periods to manage pathogens before use in fertilizer.
“The conservative storage times required to target multiple pathogens over a range of storage conditions necessitate large urine storage tanks, which occupy more land area and present a higher potential for human and environmental concerns should tanks malfunction, e.g., liquid and odor leaks.”
A urine diversion system further relies on “user behavior.”
“Communication with the public regarding the installation of urine separating fixtures is critical for encouraging use and ensuring proper protocols to maximize urine collection and minimize contamination,” the report said. “Urine source separation has long been recognized as a significant change to conventional processes and, as such, has demanded early inclusion of sociological expertise to facilitate public acceptance.”
An idea that’s gaining traction
While there is no example of a U.S. municipality that uses urine diversion and collection in this way, it’s an idea that is gaining traction.
The University of Michigan recently conducted a study on “peecycling” based on mathematical models that found benefits may be possible with urine diversion on a city scale.
Here’s a 2020 joint study by the University of Florida and Arizona State University that explores some of the complexities of outfitting an institutional building for source separation.
Nature.org has a February 2022 article about the concept and how, around the world, communities are investigating urine diversion and collection.
A Vermont nonprofit, the RichEarth Institute, developed this handbook on organizing local urine diversion and collection systems.
Among the potential benefits, RichEarth says, is enabling increased density for further development.
After all, density restrictions — especially in places reliant on traditional septic systems — are based on how much pee a parcel of land can reasonably absorb. Remove the pee, and you may free up development capacity.
