Downtown Montauk May Get Waste System
The installation of a centralized wastewater system to serve properties in downtown Montauk will be the subject of a discussion on Monday night at the Montauk Citizens Advisory Committee meeting. It will begin at 7 p.m. at the Montauk School.
For property owners who wish to discuss the details of their particular sites, engineers who have developed the proposal will be on hand at the school beginning at 5 p.m.
During the development of a townwide comprehensive wastewater management plan by consultants working closely with Kim Shaw, the town’s natural resources director, downtown Montauk was identified as an area that could benefit from a shared wastewater system. Numerous lots there have inadequate wastewater systems and lack the space needed to install better systems on site.
A waste system is considered to be malfunctioning if it requires a pump-out three or more times a year, according to Pio Lombardo, the principal of Lombardo Associates, the firm developing the wastewater plan.
The Montauk dock area and Ditch Plain were also identified as spots where state-of-the-art neighborhood wastewater treatment systems would be beneficial.
“Those properties can’t solve their problems with individual solutions,” Mr. Lombardo said at a meeting in Montauk earlier this year.
In the neighborhood systems, he said, pipes would collect and carry liquid waste from septic tanks at individual houses or businesses to a centralized underground treatment area.
Treated effluent could be used for irrigation.
The recommended underground system, Mr. Lombardo said, is air and watertight, eliminating odors. Besides eliminating nitrogen, it can also be configured to address “emerging contaminants” in the wastewater, such as the traces of pharmaceutical drugs increasingly being detected in groundwater.
Late last month, the town sent downtown property owners a letter about the community wastewater system proposal. An engineering assessment of each property was included, along with preliminary estimates of the annual cost to use the system based on various scenarios, such as whether grants can be obtained to cover portions of the project’s capital costs.
In an email this week, Mr. Lombardo stressed that the proposal and cost estimates are preliminary, and that, should a decision be made by the community to proceed with the downtown project, there would be “extensive public participation” as plans are developed to create a water quality improvement district. A planning study of the hamlet and its land use would be incorporated.
The development of East Hampton Town’s comprehensive wastewater management plan included an analysis of the conditions and wastewater management needs on each individual lot in the town and an overall analysis of conditions in the various watershed areas.
All of the data and reports prepared for the plan have been posted at a website, ehwaterrestore.com.