Recognizing that more people have been living in the town since last March, and that many people spend more time at home, representatives of East Hampton Town's water quality technical advisory committee recommended to the board an expansion of the town's water protection districts, areas of the town that have the greatest potential impact on priority water bodies based on groundwater travel time and density of use.
The water protection district — multiple, discrete locations — was developed in 2017, when the town's septic rebate program was established. A 2019 report on that program estimated that around 12,500 of 19,400 developed parcels in the town were using an antiquated or failed sanitary system. This contributes to excessive nitrogen leaching into water bodies, promoting harmful algal blooms, declining seagrass — which provides critical habitat for juvenile marine life -- and closures to shellfishing and bathing.
Eligible property owners in a water protection district, where the need to replace old sanitary systems is most urgent, may receive an incentive for costs associated with replacing an existing system with a low-nitrogen one, a rebate of up to $20,000. Suffolk County and New York State also offer rebates. Approximately 7,000 of the town's roughly 19,400 septic systems are located in water protection districts.
Priority areas identified in the town's comprehensive wastewater management plan include the south Three Mile Harbor watershed, downtown Montauk, Ditch Plain and the West Lake dock area in Montauk, the East Hampton Village commercial district, and high-density neighborhoods in Springs, which have small lot sizes and a higher density of septic systems.
Suffolk's Subwatersheds Wastewater Plan, designed to encourage municipalities to develop watershed-based plans for improving water quality and approved last year by the State Department of Environmental Conservation, was a catalyst in the committee's recommendation to expand the town's water protection districts, said Chris Clapp of the committee. The plan created detailed groundwater travel time maps.
"We now have a new set of modeling data that's based on real data and really accurate modeling that's been very well peer reviewed and vetted," he said. "So we're proposing harmonizing the town's maps with the county's so people aren't looking at two different things."
"We also wanted to expand the area by which we are capturing people in those priorities to give them access to the full $20,000 rebate from the town," Mr. Clapp said. To that end, the committee proposed the expansion of the water protection district from areas of zero-to-two-year groundwater travel time to zero-to-10-year groundwater travel time. The Clearwater Beach area of Springs, Mr. Clapp said, should also be added to the town's water protection district.
"The reality is, all of our land is a watershed in one form or another," he said. "Why exclude people when we could include more people?"
As had been discussed in the previous presentation to the board, by officials of LTV, "some things are not going to go back to the way they were," Mr. Clapp said. "The new normal: more people at home."
