A Suffolk County Supreme Court judge has thrown out Riverhead Town’s 2024 lawsuit against Southampton Town over the creation of a sewer district in the hamlet of Riverside, just across the Peconic River from downtown Riverhead.
Pictured Above: The site of the proposed sewage treatment plant. Here’s the QR link from the sign.
Riverhead Town filed the suit on Aug. 21 of 2024 alleging the “potentially significant adverse environmental impacts on the Town of Riverhead and the Riverhead Central School District arising from the future development of up to 2,300 residential units within the Riverside area,” as Southampton was finalizing plans for the construction of a sewage treatment plant in Riverside. Southampton had formally established the sewer district and filed the resolution with the County Clerk on June 7, 2024.
Riverhead claimed in its suit that creation of the sewer district was a violation of the 2021 Green Amendment to the New York State Constitution, which pledges that “each person shall have a right to clean air and water, and a healthful environment.”
The Riverside Sewer District has been seen in Southampton as a critical necessity to the enactment of its Riverside Revitalization Action Plan, adopted in 2014 with the support of the Riverside community. Among its first actions, Southampton Town had planned to hook up several nearby mobile home parks to the sewage treatment plant, keeping the effluent from those parks from entering the nearby river.
In his Oct. 7, 2025 decision, Hon. Paul M. Hensley said Riverhead’s assertion that the project violates the Green Amendment “is dismissed as it fails to state a cause of action,” adding that the Town of Southampton “sought to create a Riverside Sewer District to positively impact the environment and reduce nitrogen within a wetland restoration area.”
“The Green Amendment to the New York State Constitution provides that each person shall have a right to clean air and water, and a healthy environment,” he said. “The Riverside Sewer District, and the new Sewer Treatment plant, by all accounts, increase a healthy environment and have a positive impact.”
He added that “on December 12, 2023, Dawn Thomas, petitioners Administrator of Department of Economic Development, Planning and Building, offered that Southampton’s efforts to crate a sewage treatment plant to protect the Peconic Estuary are to be lauded. Jeffrey Seeman, an environmental consultant to petitioners, and petitioners’ Supervisor, Tim Hubbard, were “in full support of Southampton building a new sewage treatment plant.” If anything, petitioners requested that the new Riverside Sewer District expand and include the Suffolk County Jail and the County Center currently serviced by the Riverhead Sewer Treatment Plant.”
Justice Hensley also said the petitioners lack standing, their complaint is “time-barred” and they “failed to name a necessary party.”
Justice Hensley said that Riverhead’s primary objection to Southampton’s Environmental Impact Statement, prepared in accordance with the State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA) was that the County Center was not included in the Riverside Sewer District, but Southampton Town Law required any interested party aggrieved by the SEQRA determination to challenge it at the County Clerk’s office within 30 days and through the courts within 60 days of June 7, 2024.
He added that Suffolk County, which owns the County Center, must also be named as a party, as Riverhead does not have standing to request relief without their input.
Southampton Town has also since significantly scaled back its Riverside Redevelopment Action Plan, approved in 2014, which would have allowed for the building of up to 2,300 housing units.
The latest proposal, unveiled in April of 2025, would allow just 967 housing units to be built, along with 72,000 square feet of commercial space.
The initial plan was based on an assumption that the town would be able to build a sewage treatment plant that treated up to 800,000 gallons of septic flow, filtering the effluent through a constructed wetlands adjacent to the Peconic River.
The town wasn’t able to get approvals for the constructed wetland. The treatment plant, as now proposed, would treat up to 290,000 gallons of effluent, discharging it directly to groundwater afterward.
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