The Riverhead Town Board will hold a public hearing this Tuesday, Oct. 1 at its 2 p.m. meeting on a proposal to use Community Preservation Fund money for construction of public water mains to hook up residents whose wells have toxic chemicals in them, and for pollution prevention projects.
The state law governing Community Preservation Funds in the five East End towns, which were initially designed in 1999 to be used for land preservation, was expanded in 2015 to allow 20 percent of the money generated by a 2 percent real estate transfer tax to be used for water quality projects.
Southampton, East Hampton and Shelter Island towns are currently using CPF money for water quality projects, but Southold Town has not yet decided to do so.
The Riverhead Town Board established an advisory board in September to oversee CPF water quality projects, as required by the state law.
The Oct. 1 public hearing is on amending the town’s Community Preservation Fund Project Plan to include a “Project Plan for Water Quality Improvement and Pollution Prevention Projects.”
The proposed purposes of the amendment will be for “the construction of public water mains and connections to provide drinking water to inhabitants whose drinking water supply has been contaminated by toxic chemicals.”
The projects must also receive at least 50 percent of its funding from other sources, and CPF funding for costs associated with the project cannot exceed 50 percent.
Riverhead Town, which bonded $72 against anticipated CPF revenues for numerous land preservation projects in the early days of the CPF program, is still paying a significant portion of its annual CPF revenue to repay that bond indebtedness, and the proposed local law would require that the cost of the project not exceed the annual revenue into the program minus the bond indebtedness and a reserve of 10 percent.
The amendment would also allow CPF money to be used for municipal facilities for “the reduction, avoidance, or elimination of the use of toxic or hazardous substances or the generation of such substances or pollutants.”
Here’s the public hearing notice.
The hearing will be held in the Town Board meeting room at Riverhead Town Hall, 4 West Second Street, Riverhead.
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