The Suffolk County Water Authority and Riverhead Town seem ready for a fight over Riverhead’s assertion that the water company will need town permits to place an 8.5-mile stretch of water main through town roads en route to Southold, and Southold is ready to back up its neighboring town.
Pictured Above: A 2023 ceremonial groundbreaking for the North Fork Pipeline, organized by the Water Authority prior to the environmental review or permitting for the project, has been the subject of much derision on the North Fork in the ensuing years.
Amid warnings this summer about the dire state of its ability to pump and store water from the North Fork’s limited underground aquifer, the Water Authority began environmental review of the North Fork Pipeline, which it has been keen to build for decades.
The agency plans to run a 24-inch diameter water main capable of delivering 6,000 gallons per minute from a well field atop the groundwater divide near Suffolk County Community College’s Riverhead campus, up Route 105 to Northville Turnpike and then to Sound Avenue, where it will continue to the Southold Town.
Both Riverhead and Southold towns had asked the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation to be the ‘lead agency’ coordinating review under the State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA), but the DEC had instead granted that authority to the Water Authority in the fall of 2024, essentially allowing it to perform regulatory review of its own project.
While the DEC decision granting the Water Authority lead agency status listed Riverhead Town as an “involved agency,” because much of the work would be done in Riverhead Town, the Water Authority instead classified Riverhead as an ‘interested agency,’ which would have less oversight over the project.
This rankled the Riverhead Town Board, which held a public hearing Tuesday, Aug. 19 on a “Monroe Balancing Test,” a nine-point state legal framework for whether local municipalities have control over regional projects.
What is Monroe?
The test is named for a court case in which Monroe County, in upstate New York, wanted to expand its Greater Rochester International Airport, which was within the City of Rochester’s boundaries. The city sued, claiming the project was subject to city zoning laws, but the county prevailed in its view that, as a government function, its expansion of the airport was immune from local zoning.
But a framework established by this case involves the weighing of nine factors that determine which agency has greater authority in intergovernmental land use disputes in New York State.
Riverhead Environmental Consultant Jeffrey Seeman said at the hearing that the town has not yet seen engineering plans for the construction, making it “very difficult for our team to assess where the impact will be and where it will physically be placed.
He added that his team had “received no responses to our comments to date from the Water Authority,” and that, while the agency’s representatives hadn’t responded to questions at the scoping sessions, they weren’t required by law to not respond to questions.
“The Water Authority is its own lead agency, and there is no other avenue accessible to us to enforce what we would like to see to avoid the impacts,” he said of the Monroe Balancing Test. “We would be willing to work more cohesively with the Water Authority, but the intergovernmental collaboration — I found that somewhat lackluster. There’s nothing that prohibits them from responding to comments at the scoping session.”
At the hearing, Water Authority attorney Brody Smith, of the firm Bond Schoenen and King, laid out the agency’s case for why it believes it will prevail in the Monroe Balancing Test. He was the only Water Authority representative on-hand.
He pointed out that, in the past, Riverhead Town had not required the Water Authority to obtain permits for its work, including a pipeline on Herricks Lane in Jamesport and a 2023 project in Manorville, in which the Water Authority installed more than 20,000 feet of water main to service residents whose wells were contaminated with PFAS.
“The town did not require Planning Board or local approvals,” he said. “That has been the standard operating procedure for as long as anyone can remember.”
“All of those projects you mentioned provided a public benefit to the Town of Riverhead,” countered Riverhead Town Supervisor Tim Hubbard.
Mr. Smith said the Water Authority is “clearly the appropriate entity” to take on the project, and that it serves a public purpose, adding that a second phase would hook up Orient residents whose private wells are contaminated with PFAS, providing “as many as 3,000 residents with clean potable water.” He added that Riverhead regulation could “severely delay” the project, which is a “regional problem that requires a regional solution.”
“Does this serve a public purpose? Of course it does,” he said.
“Not in the Town of Riverhead,” said Mr. Hubbard.
“You’re selling water to the Town of Southold at the expense of the taxpayers of the Town of Riverhead,” added Councilman Ken Rothwell.
Water Authority Chairman Jeff Szabo had said at a scoping session earlier this summer that funding is not yet in place for the Orient leg of the pipeline, which “may never happen.”
Tourism on Sound
“A lot of farmers are going to suffer and a lot of businesses are going to suffer” during construction of the pipeline, said Councilman Bob Kern. “We’re talking a couple hundred million dollars… Are you going to give 100 to 200 million dollars to this town to distribute to all the people who are going to lose tourism dollars? It’s going to have a devastating effect on tourism. People are going to say ‘don’t go there.'”
Councilman Ken Rothwell added that the town had just paved Sound Avenue last year, and he’s unimpressed with the “patch job” the Water Authority did after installing the Manorville main.
“If that’s the way you intend to leave Sound Avenue, that’s a major problem,” he said.
Mr. Smith said that “mitigation measures should be considered,” but “the idea that it is impossible to construct a water main without destroying the tourism — I just reject that out of hand.”
Growth Inducing Impacts
Toqui Terchun of Calverton asked why, if the water main was designed to augment existing peak demand, it is capable of supplying significantly more water than currently used by Southold customers.
“Southold consumes about 2 million gallons per day, and this new supply pipeline could provide 8.6 million gallons per day,” she said. “It should leave a very gaping hole that hasn’t been answered. Who is this water going to?”
“It has growth inducing impacts — the development of more housing and more commercial uses,” she added. “It needs to be re-evaluated. If it’s not spoken about, it’s not evaluated.”
SEQRA Calls for Alternatives
Members of the Town Board, the public, and Mr. Seeman also urged Mr. Smith to ask his clients to consider alternative routes, including down Route 25, along Long Island Rail Road and electric transmission line rights of way, or across the Peconic Bay from Sag Harbor, through Shelter Island.
While Mr. Smith said those comments would be taken into account in the SEQRA scoping process, the Water Authority had closed the scoping comments on Aug. 4, despite Riverhead’s objection that the Monroe Balancing Test hearing should have taken place before SEQRA began.
Board members did not receive a clear answer from Mr. Smith as to whether these comments would be included despite the public comment period being closed.
Mr. Smith did say the SEQRA process will require the Water Authority to consider alternatives.
Mr. Seeman added that the Water Authority had initially said it wanted to be the agency to conduct the Monroe Balancing Test, but he “contacted the Department of State and they said ‘absolutely not. The host community does that.’”
What About Southold?
While Southold Town Supervisor Al Krupski and Southold Councilman Greg Doroski had spoken in favor of Riverhead conducting the Monroe Balancing Test at an Aug. 13 forum conducted by Riverhead Town, both were attending their own Town Board meeting Aug. 19.
The Water Authority has said the the pipeline is needed due to peak summer demand, when much of the water on the North Fork is used for irrigation. Riverhead Councilman Ken Rothwell said that he believes Southold “has to step up their conservation programs.”
Southold Town established new irrigation restrictions only this July, which are still being rolled out.
“Riverhead has never gone into emergency mode, but the Suffolk County Water Authority has,” he added. “We have been leaders on conservation. I think Southold needs to do that as well.”
Mr. Smith seemed unaware that the Water Authority has said much of its water was being used for irrigation.
“The Suffolk County Water Authority has stated themselves that over 70 percent of water being used is for lawn irrigation,” Mr. Hubbard chastised the attorney. “If you’re not taking measures to conserve that, you need to work with Southampton, where you see mansions just dousing water all over the place and wasting it like crazy. If there’s no effort at water conservation, the easy answer is not to run a transmission line through the Town of Riverhead. The answer is to work with these people on conservation before you disturb this entire town with a transmission line.”
Members of the Southold Town Board discussed Riverhead’s hearing at their work session earlier in the afternoon of Aug. 19.
“If they develop that well field, you know they’re going to want to supply the South Fork and eastern Brookhaven from there,” said Southold Town Supervisor Al Krupski, adding that he believes the Water Authority won’t be able to build the pipeline without Riverhead’s approval.
Councilwoman Jill Doherty added that Southold Town’s zoning update, now underway, could do more to consider water conservation.
“The overall concern is it seems like it’s the Suffolk County Water Authority’s intent to lay this pipe and they are just going through this formality of public engagement,” said Mr. Doroski. “There are no benefits to Riverhead. The plan they gave to Riverhead does not even show what side of the road its going to be on. It’s just a line down Sound Avenue.”
He added that, if the pipeline traverses Southold Town Trustee jurisdiction in Southold Town (as it would during the Phase 2 Orient extension), “they sure as hell have to get a wetland permit, but they don’t want to acknowledge this.”
“The Suffolk County Water Authority has this view of manifest destiny, where they are just taking over,” he said. “They do have a ton of authority, but they also need to engage with the interested parties and the affected parties. Right now it’s pretty clear that they’re not.”
“The positive thing is that we’re in general agreement to work together as towns,” he added of Southold and Riverhead. “The Water Authority needs to engage us as a group…. This plan goes back to 2003 and they haven’t done a damn thing to engage in public engagement. There’s been no analysis of options, until all of a sudden it’s an emergency. They’ve had 25 years to do this.”
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It’s frightening to see this inept Southold Town Board abandon the town’s residents on such a critical issue as water supply. Krupski and Doroski take the cake for their negligent comments denying the pending water supply crisis. Their ridiculous odd/even sprinkler rules are a ruse, useless without enforcement. They prefer to wait till the water runs dry, housing values collapse, and on those who can afford it survive with large water tank deliveries. Shame on the entire board for ignoring this critical issue.