Call for $100 Million Septic Upgrade Fund

Town supervisors and village mayors from across the East End are proposing a regional initiative to address the increased pollution of surface and groundwater by the nitrogen released from cesspools and septic systems in the form of a $100 million state fund that could provide rebates to homeowners for the installation of advanced-technology wastewater systems.

In a letter to state legislators, the East End Supervisors and Mayors Association laid out the proposal, which could provide rebates of up to $5,000 per residence and/or no-interest loans to help property owners cover the cost of installing enhanced septic treatment systems that better reduce nitrogen.

Water quality and wastewater disposal issues have risen to the fore in East End localities of late. East Hampton Town is developing a comprehensive wastewater management plan with the help of a consultant. In Southampton, Supervisor Anna Throne-Holst and her staff worked to catalyze a partnership between the town, Stony Brook University, the county, and the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation to develop a technology hub at Stony Brook Southampton focused on developing better septic treatment technology, and studies are being undertaken to pinpoint nitrogen pollution sources and develop strategies to address them.

In a pilot program, the county has been testing numerous next-generation alternative technology systems, and is expected in the coming months to add some of them to the Health Department’s list of systems approved for use in Suffolk, according to Kevin McDonald of the Nature Conservancy, who participated in discussions leading to the rebate proposal.

The advanced wastewater systems will remove far more nitrogen from wastewater than conventional septic systems and cesspools, but their price tags are $15,000 and more — “not an expense most homeowners can be expected to bear without assistance,” the supervisors and mayors’ proposal says.

The need to reduce nitrogen pollution has been addressed in both the county’s comprehensive water resources management plan and the governor’s coastal resilience and water quality task force report, the letter points out.

The proposal says that a state report has called Long Island’s nitrogen problem a “near crisis” that has resulted in repeated toxic algal blooms over the last decade.

In the short term, the local officials requested a total of $5 million in the 2015-16 state budget for the creation of a Long Island nitrogen management and mitigation plan, and for the development of “science-based nitrogen standards.”

The goals of the $100 million rebate program would stem from those standards and benchmarks. The program could be funded, Mr. McDonald suggested, using some of New York State’s share of a court-ordered $125 billion “national mortgage settlement” — money to be paid by banks found to have been acting improperly regarding mortgage servicing and foreclosures.

Individual towns would oversee their own programs, through which rebates would be offered to homeowners as an incentive to install nitrogen-reducing septic systems, which the proposal calls “the most significant action that can be taken to reverse alarming and increasing impairments to groundwater, ponds, bays, tidal wetlands, finfish habitats, and shellfish beds.”

The program could mirror successful programs that provided rebates for the replacement of underground fuel tanks that posed an environmental hazard.

The East End officials’ group says that an initial allotment of $100 million for the program would allow for upgrades to almost a quarter of the existing cesspools and septic systems. Each town would specify its own priority areas and eligibility requirements. 

With few sewer systems, the East End has approximately 81,000 separate, onsite wastewater systems in the ground, the officials wrote, “leaching untreated nitrogen directly into groundwater, which then transports the nitrogen into surface waters.”

“When new technology exists that will treat the nitrogen in our wastewater — a relatively simple solution to a worsening problem that could spell the ruin of our local economies and quality of life — investment in a rebate program is smart policy,” the supervisors and mayors wrote. “The longer we wait, the more expensive remediation will prove to be, if it can be accomplished at all.”