In Chinatown, the classic 1974 noir about a water grab in Los Angeles, Jack Nicholson’s character learns the hard way that water infrastructure can be as much about power as plumbing. On Wednesday night at Riverhead Town Hall, that lesson felt uncomfortably close to home.
For nearly two hours, a spectrum of Riverhead officials — joined in the audience by counterparts from Southold and Suffolk County legislators — challenged the Suffolk County Water Authority’s plan to run an 8.5 mile, 24-inch water transmission main from Flanders, through Riverhead, to supply Southold.
Republicans, Democrats, civic group leaders and Riverhead homeowners at the meeting all expressed frustration with the SCWA’s process and said they need more information about the authority’s plans.
It’s a project about which Riverhead’s leaders say they’ve been given such scant details they can’t properly evaluate its implications — and one they believe offers no benefit to Riverhead while imposing potentially significant disruption, environmental risks and potential legal overreach.
“This is eight and a half miles of open trenching through our town for zero benefit,” said Dawn Thomas, Riverhead’s Director of Economic Development, Planning and Building. “The water does not come to us.”
At the heart of the brewing North Fork water wars is a statistic that maddens everyone involved, including water authority officials: nearly 70% of the drinking water pumped by the SCWA from the Pine Barrens aquifer is used for lawn irrigation.
‘Our last line of defense’
The pipeline’s route — revised from an earlier version that would have taken a more controversial path — would begin in Flanders, in the Central Pine Barrens of Southampton Town, pass under the Peconic Bay, travel up County Road 105, continue along Northville Turnpike, then head east on Sound Avenue to connect with Southold’s water system. A potential second phase, yet to be designed, would extend from East Marion to Orient.
SCWA officials say the project will deliver clean drinking water to parts of Southold where private wells are failing, especially in areas with agricultural and residential development. The authority has told residents it will not tap Riverhead’s own water supply, but rather plans to draw as much as 6,000 gallons per minute from high-capacity wells in the Pine Barrens and send it east.
Riverhead Water District Superintendent Frank Mancini, who spent a decade at the SCWA, said at the meeting that he doubts that volume is readily available — and questions the wisdom of relying on the Pine Barrens without first addressing Eastern Long Island’s rampant irrigation water use.
“Seventy percent of the water we produce as drinking water suppliers is used for irrigating our lawns,” Mancini said. “We probably need to rein that in before we commit to water withdrawal from the Central Pine Barrens. This is our last line of defense.”
Mancini told the audience the concept of a North Fork pipeline has been in SCWA’s strategic plans since at least 2003, when the authority tried to take over Riverhead’s water district as it expanded into the North Fork.
That deal fell through, but “was the birth of an adversarial relationship” with the Town of Riverhead, he said. “We don’t have any particular problem with the water authority, but we find ourselves stuck in between the North Fork, where they have a supply issue, and the rest of their system. They’ve called it ‘manifest destiny’ — taking over our water system, including Riverhead. So we don’t want that.”
While a large majority of speakers at SCWA public forums held this summer on the North Fork took issue with new pipelines to or through Southold — many fearing it will trigger a wave of new development and damage fragile local ecosystems — there are others who are desperate for clean water.
At a SCWA session in June, some Orient homeowners with wells badly-contaminated by “forever chemicals” urged the authority to move forward with a potential plan for a second pipeline from East Marion into Orient.
Orient resident Peter Schembri said his well is contaminated with perfluorooctyl bromide (PFOB).
“You can’t cook the chemical out of the water. I can’t drink the water. I can’t boil the water. I can’t shower with the water, they’re telling me,” he said, referring to county health officials. “So what are we supposed to do?”
There were no SCWA officials at Wednesday night’s Riverhead forum. After the meeting, the North Fork Sun sent the water authority an emailed request for comment — summarizing the issues raised and providing a written transcript of the meeting. On Thursday morning, an SCWA spokesperson declined to comment on the meeting, but promised that SCWA officials would be on hand in Riverhead next Tuesday, Aug. 19, for a 6 p.m. town meeting on the pipeline project.
‘A major deficiency’
Much of Wednesday’s forum focused on who gets to decide how — and whether — the project proceeds. SCWA is the “lead agency” in the state environmental review process, meaning it controls the preparation of the environmental impact statement and decides which public comments merit a response.
Riverhead officials contend they should be considered an “involved agency” because the pipeline would cross town-owned land, trigger local wetlands and site plan reviews and require easements and road-opening permits. Instead, SCWA has classified the town as merely an “interested party,” with a far more limited role.
“That’s a major deficiency,” said Riverhead Town Attorney Erik Howard. “So much of the project is going to affect the Town of Riverhead specifically — and the project isn’t designed to help Riverhead at all, so our focus has to be on protecting legitimate local interests.”
To assert that authority, the town will hold its own Monroe balancing test hearing next Tuesday.
The Monroe test — a nine-factor legal standard from a 1988 Court of Appeals case — weighs whether one government entity’s project should be immune from another’s zoning and land use rules. Factors include the project’s purpose, potential local impacts, alternative sites or methods and whether the host community has had meaningful input.
Howard called it a conflict of interest for SCWA to conduct its own Monroe test, “because why would you ever tell yourself that you can’t do something you want to do?”
A ‘line on a map’
Riverhead’s planning staff and consultants say they’ve received almost no technical detail on the pipeline. The only map provided shows a broad route, without specifics on which side of Sound Avenue the pipe would run, how deep it would be buried or where construction staging would occur.
“There’s virtually no information other than this line on a map,” said Riverhead environmental consultant Jeffrey Seeman. “We can’t even tell you whether you’re on the east or the west side of the street for this project, or the north or the south. That makes it very difficult to determine what the impacts might be.”
Without that information, Seeman said, it’s impossible to know whether mature roadside trees along Sound Ave. will be removed, whether the project will require crossing private property or how it might conflict with existing utilities, drainage structures or future infrastructure plans.
“It appears that they are trying to build the plane while they’re flying it, and that’s never a good option,” the consultant said.
Seeman went on to say that Riverhead is “not going to get on board until we have some of these issues resolved and … the major one is the submission of design plans.”
Several residents raised concerns about the possibility of SCWA seeking easements on private land — and what would happen if property owners refused.
“If they dig our property up, what happens?” asked one Sound Avenue homeowner.
Howard explained that SCWA would have to negotiate with property owners. “They would have to touch base with you and explain what they’re looking to do,” he said.
If necessary, though, the authority could use eminent domain to condemn easements.
Others questioned how the project would affect traffic on Sound Avenue, already a heavily traveled two-lane road connecting farms, vineyards and hamlets across the North Fork. State Assemblywoman Jodi Giglio, who has opposed earlier routes for the pipeline, warned that staging and road restoration could cause months of disruption.
“It will really disrupt traffic and the lives of people that live and travel in the Town of Riverhead,” said Giglio. “Our roads are never getting any relief during the year. Now we have people racing to and from the ferry, and I see a lot of road rage … where people want tractors to move out of the way, and people to move out of the way, and they’re just passing through. So there are some serious concerns.”
‘Whose water is this?’
While Southold would be the beneficiary of the new water supply, its officials, too, are deeply skeptical about SCWA’s process and resource management.
Southold Town Board member Greg Doroski urged Riverhead and Southold to work together to present a united front, noting that both towns have questioned whether SCWA’s Flanders wells can meet projected demand.
“As Mr. Mancini points out, the water authority has this idea of manifest destiny and there’s a fundamental question for us all to ask: whose water is this?” Doroski said.
Southold Town Supervisor Al Krupski emphasized that moving water across watershed and aquifer boundaries without fully integrating U.S. Geological Survey data is “not resource management.” He pointed out that Southold has already enacted lawn-irrigation restrictions in an effort to stretch existing supplies.
“There’s a finite amount” of water, Krupski said. “If there’s a big wildfire in the Pine Barrens, it’s going to take quite a bit of water to fight that effectively.
He said the Southold Town Board’s unanimous stance on the project is that “we’re looking for some public benefit, because that’s what it really comes down to.
“There’s a lot of money that’s going to be spent here. It’s going to have a lot of long-lasting impacts and I appreciate that Riverhead is looking into retaining and maintaining zoning and land use authority. That’s really important.”
Audience members pressed officials to explain SCWA’s governance and oversight. Mancini noted that SCWA is a state public authority, with a board appointed — in part — by county legislators, but not directly answerable to voters. Board members serve at the pleasure of their appointing authorities and are not part of the civil service system.
“That’s the difference between a public authority that’s not civil service-based and the Riverhead Water District, which is totally civil service,” Mancini said. “You get to elect my board. The water authority — you loosely connect to their board by electing your county legislators.”
Suffolk County Legislator Catherine Stark, sitting up front in the audience, clarified that the legislature appoints the five-member board.
Mancini also noted that the SCWA’s next board meeting is Aug. 21 from 3:00 – 5:00 p.m.
“You could go talk to their board like you often come to talk to ours,” he told one Riverhead resident, though there is no location listed and it appears the meeting is Zoom-only.
‘Are you kidding me?’
Former Riverhead Town Councilwoman Barbara Blass warned that even if Riverhead is not paying for the pipeline’s construction, the town is already incurring costs — in staff time, consultants and legal work — to participate in the review process.
“We’re going to end up in the red,” Blass said. She suggested exploring whether the town could seek reimbursement, as it did in past utility projects, for the cost of evaluating impacts and issuing permits.
Blass also questioned whether SCWA has met its obligation under the Monroe test to consider intergovernmental cooperation, describing the authority’s decision not to answer questions at this summer’s public forums.
“Are you kidding me?” she said, to audience applause.
“We were told in Riverhead’s forum, ‘We’re only accepting comments, we’re not entering into a dialogue. We’re not answering any questions or concerns of yours, and as [Riverhead is only] an ‘interested party’, they wouldn’t even have to.”
Locally, the next step in this process is Tuesday’s Monroe balancing test hearing, where the Riverhead Town Board will weigh the nine factors and decide how much — if any — immunity from local rules SCWA should receive.
SCWA’s draft environmental impact statement is expected in late fall or early winter, after which the public will have another chance to comment. In the meantime, both Riverhead and Southold officials say they will continue to coordinate their questions, press for detailed design plans and push for conservation measures before approving major new water withdrawals from the Pine Barrens.
For now, the only consensus seems to be that the pipeline, in its current form, is a tough sell.
“There are alleged benefits to our community,” Doroski told Riverhead officials. “There doesn’t seem to be any to Riverhead.”