Riverhead Town needs to more consistently require developers to shoulder the burden of long-term water district infrastructure improvement costs, officials said at the town’s second water forum meeting last week.
Increased demands on the district from new development and irrigation systems have pushed district capacity to the brink at peak usage periods in hot weather. Deferred maintenance in the past has further taxed the district’s limited resources.
Town officials say they are working to address these issues now by developing a long-term water infrastructure plan even as they tackle current maintenance and expansion projects.
The Riverhead Water District is planning to build a 2.5 million gallon water storage tank and facility in Wading River to meet increased demand due to new development in the western sections of town.
The water district is currently negotiating with the highway department to house the facility on the municipal property on East Winds Drive. Town officials designated $2 million of the town’s 3.6 million federal coronavirus relief funds towards the project in October.
“The improvement for the town water district’s infrastructure is to address the capacity, to simply provide backup capacity in the event of a mechanical failure or loss of a well, but also to address demands during peak demands and developmental periods,” Councilman Ken Rothwell said at Wednesday’s water forum in Town Hall.
“The goal then would be to also ask future development, future projects, that are coming to Riverhead to contribute to this water storage facility as well and by asking them to participate in this, to give us the balance of what is necessary to complete this water storage tank,” Rothwell added.
Rothwell, Water District Superintendent Frank Mancini and other town officials asked residents during the water forum to advocate for developer contributions to the cost of the facility during public meetings.
“When the water district superintendent and I appeared before the planning board, they gave us an opportunity to speak about water,” Deputy Town Attorney Anne Marie Prudenti said. “And when we spoke about water, we were crystal clear that projects that require water supply, water storage, heavy infrastructure that the development project would be required to pay, and we’ve maintained that position. But it’s not popular and we get a lot of pushback,” she said.
“We need every penny to effectuate the improvements that are needed to give you clean drinking water. We should not be paying. The water district should not be paying. For a development project, whether it’s industrial, a new apartment building, that’s not where the money should be going, the developer should pay for that,” Prudenti said.
“We’d like to drive this point home, because you may be at town board meetings, you may be at planning board meetings, and then this issue may come up, we want your support on it, we need your support on it,” Prudenti said. “Because it’s very tough for two people in our position to be battling, whether it’s a special permit before a town board, or a site plan before the planning board, to be the ones to carry the ball and lobby this position.”
“If you’re building a development, you build the pipe out to our specifications, you pay for it and then you hand it over to the Riverhead Water District and we own it from that point on and we maintain it and operate it,” Mancini said. “Storage and supply works very similar for large projects.”
Mancini said a root cause in the water district’s capacity has been a lack of long-term planning. The water district and its consultant H2M are currently developing a master water plan that will guide the district’s long-term growth and identify potential water tank and well sites. Mancini said the plan is expected to be complete in a few months.
“That’s going to help us develop a system and kind of avoid some of the problems we’ve had in the past,” Mancini said regarding the plan. “We’re going to not only be hooking up the last remaining residents of Riverhead, but also the town desires in development, whether it be commercial buildings or multi-story buildings downtown. We need to ensure that we’re not going to build that infrastructure to support those projects off the backs of our ratepayers.”
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