Hook Pond Watershed Improvement Plan Progresses

An environmental engineering firm tasked with developing a water-quality management plan for the Hook Pond watershed area should be selected by next month. 

Becky Molinaro, the East Hampton Village administrator, delivered an update on the Hook Pond Water Quality Improvement Project to the village board at a brief work session last Thursday. The initiative is a collaboration with the town, the East Hampton Town Trustees, and community organizations.

The village, which appropriated $35,000 in its 2014-15 budget for the project, issued a request for qualifications in October. Ms. Molinaro told the board five replies were received. A selection committee including trustees, pond-front homeowners, representatives of the Nature Conservancy and the Group for the East End, and officials from the town’s natural resources department chose two of them as finalists. They are Nelson, Pope, and Voorhis, LLC, based in Melville, and Lombardo Associates of Newton, Mass. The latter firm recently drafted a comprehensive wastewater management plan for the town.

A third firm may also be named a finalist, Diane McNally, clerk of the trustees, said Tuesday.

Interviews with officials of those firms will be scheduled “within a week or two, hopefully,” Ms. Molinaro said, so that the committee can discuss and make a recommendation. “Hopefully, the village will decide by January,” she said.

Tests performed since 1981 have detected a range of conditions in the watershed area, which includes the central commercial district, the North Main Street commercial area, residential areas, and the Maidstone Club. In general, the village’s request for qualifications stated, nitrogen concentrations in Hook Pond exceed the United States Environmental Protection Agency’s eco-regional criteria, meaning that the pond contains an excessive richness of nutrients. Animals, primarily waterfowl, are cited as a significant source of nitrogen in the pond, though septic systems are also blamed for water-quality degradation. Excessive nitrogen depletes oxygen in the water, which can kill marine life.

The chosen engineering firm’s tasks will include the compilation and analysis of existing water quality and flow data to diagnose and identify data gaps; identification and analysis of the sources of problems; development, implementation, and analysis of a water-quality sampling plan, and a final report including an updated diagnosis of problems and recommendations for actions to protect and improve the pond’s water quality. Future funding mechanisms must also be identified, and the firm will have to conduct two community outreach meetings after the plan is developed to obtain feedback and refine its recommendations.

At its Nov. 21 meeting, the board approved a proposal from the FPM Group, an engineering and environmental science firm, to sample groundwater at the Emergency Services Building. That testing was performed on Dec. 3, a result of the discovery of pentachlorophenol, a wood preservative, in water from a basement sump in the building. Results of the testing are expected in a few weeks.

The utility poles that PSEG Long Island erected this year as part of an upgrade to its transmission infrastructure are treated with the preservative, commonly known as penta, which is classified as a probable human carcinogen by the E.P.A. The Emergency Services Building, on Cedar Street, is along the transmission route.