by Beth Young
After more than 20 years of searching for a site to build a sewage treatment plant, Southampton Village representatives told a crowd at Village Hall April 18 that its current plan is the final chance to find a place to treat the waste generated by the village’s business district.
Pictured Above: The Southampton Village Dog Park, which would be moved to make way for the leaching field for the sewage treatment plant.
The plan calls for building a sewage treatment plant behind the village’s ambulance barn on Windmill Lane, with its leaching field to be placed under the adjacent Southampton Village Dog Park.
Because the dog park is on parkland, the village will need state authorization for “alienation of parkland,” and has to provide another piece of property for use as a park. A nearby property owner — Joe Louchheim, the former publisher of the Southampton Press — has offered to sell the property on which the newspaper office is still located. The office would be torn down and the property converted to a dog park.
The benefits, village officials said, are many. Researchers from Stony Brook University have found that nitrogen from septic systems in the business district is 25 percent of the cause of persistent toxic algae blooms in Lake Agawam, once a crown jewel in the center of the village.
A sewage treatment plant would also allow owners of downtown buildings to again have apartments above stores there, along with the potential for more restaurants — both features are keys to revitalizing downtowns.
Paul Travis, who chairs the village’s Sewer Task Force, gave an overview of the 20-year search for a site.
“There is not a piece of vacant land in the village or proximate to the village that we have not studied,” he said, adding that the task force has looked at 36 other sites, but most were not large enough, faced opposition from neighbors, or were too close to Suffolk County Water Authority supply wells.
He said the village has also had discussions about tying in to a sewage treatment plant at Stony Brook Southampton Hospital or building one at Stony Brook Southampton College, but both the college and the hospital are still working out their longterm facilities plans.
“Currently, there is no other site, no other place we have found, in all this work, to locate this plant,” he said.
The plant would be an indoor sequencing batch reactor, utilizing a gravity-based network of sewer pipes that flow to one central pumping station and into the plant, said Engineer Adriana Restrepo, Vice President of wastewater at D&B Engineers & Architects, which is working with the village on the plan. Once treated, effluent would be discharged to the ground through the leaching field.
She said the plant has already been improved by the Suffolk County Health Department and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, which will monitor the effluent that is discharged from the plant.
The $65 million plant could handle up to 200,000 gallons of flow per day — about a third more than capacity of Stony Brook Southampton Hospital’s plant, which officials said has a capacity of 120,000 gallons per day.
Village Deputy Mayor Len Zinnanti said fifty percent of the cost of the sewer has been funded through grants, while about $30 million would be bonded.
“Users of the sewer system will pay a fee based on their usage, and that will pay for the maintenance and upkeep of the plant,” he said.
Mayor Bill Manger said the plant, as designed, would “not allow for overdevelopment” because development is already limited by the village’s zoning. He said it would serve just the central business district.
“Once hooked up, we would be able to reopen apartments on the second floor, which would provide housing in the village at a much reduced price,” he said. “That would be very nice to have. When I was a kid, we could have apartments on the second floor on Main Street, but the Suffolk County Health Department says we can’t have that now. It would be great if police officers, teachers and volunteer firemen could be able to live in the heart of the village, and that would get rid of cars coming into the village every day.”
Village Trustee Rob Coburn said Sag Harbor, which has a sewage treatment plant, currently has 40 or 50 apartments above shops.
He added that the lack of a sewer is “effectively limiting entrepreneurship in the village. That is a tax we are all paying. It makes our village less vibrant, and interesting, and there’s a health cost we may never be able to quantify. There’s a growing body of evidence that excess nitrogen has a direct negative impact on public health. If you believe science at all, we are all paying a cost right now.”
Some neighbors of the proposed plant questioned the potential for forever chemicals like PFAS to be leached into the ground, and whether there would be odors or other potential health risks from the sewage treatment plant nearby.
Ms. Restrepo said the plant could monitor for compounds like PFAS, and if found they could be removed with activated carbon filtration. She added that the plant, as designed, kills all pathogens, and the water is disinfected and further filtered, with more than 90 percent of the nitrogen removed.
Supporters of the dog park have recently sued the village in an attempt to stop the plan, and many at the village’s April 18 session expressed concerns that the dog park would be moved to a smaller property.
Kim Goodwin said she’s concerned there won’t be enough parking at the new site, and asked the village to show her a drawing of how it will be laid out.
Mr. Manger said the village is beginning to work on the design.
“The town is willing to spend over $3 million solely for a dog park. I think this is pretty amazing, and I’m grateful to the town for making money from the CPF available,” he said.
Mr. Travis said the project is “really in the very beginning of the environmental review process,” and estimated that process would take three to six months, after which the designers would have to figure out how to install the system “in a way that doesn’t shut down the business district” during the construction.
“I’m going to take a stab in the dark and say it goes in the ground in two years and takes two years to build,” he said. “In four to five years, hopefully there will be an operating wastewater treatment plant in the village.”
Suffolk County Legislator Ann Welker outlined the new funding sources available for upgrades for sewage treatment countywide in brief remarks to the crowd.
“Suffolk County is the largest unsewered county in the country,” she said. “When I first heard that, I couldn’t believe it.”
“We have never been closer to securing a future for wastewater treatment, with the alignment of funding and immense advancements in technology, combined with public interest and attention to the,” she added.
Deputy Suffolk County Executive Jennifer Juengst echoed Ms. Welker’s optimism.
“You were fortunate to be included in the county’s sub watersheds plan, which included 30 sewer projects, including yours, to be automatically included for funding,” she said. “Other villages that come after you will have to fight and claw for funding.”
Former Mayor Mark Epley, who was mayor through many years of controversy as other sites were considered and dropped, pleaded passionately in favor of the project.
“If you have a business district that dies, the value of your property drops,” he said. “I’ve got 13 grandchildren, and all 13 live in this village. I want to see as many as possible stay here and raise their kids here, go to school here and become Mariners…. If you live in this village and the village goes dark, you lose…. This is only going to make it better for all. This is the time. The stars are really aligning, financially and politically.”
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