Riverhead residents, officials pose their pipeline concerns

Suffolk County Water Authority officials held a scoping meeting with community members at Riverhead Free Library Tuesday to hear their questions and concerns about the proposed $35 million 12-mile North Fork pipeline project.

The purpose of the scoping session was not for officials to respond, they said, but to use the comments as directives to be included in the environmental impact statement. Riverhead Town officials recently approved a resolution to hire environmental consultant Jeffrey Seeman, who will advocate on behalf of the town to have it listed as an “involved agency” rather than an “interested” one in the SEQRA review process of the project.

Mr. Seeman attended the scoping session and said the SCWA has been invited to Town Hall to present its plans to pursue the Monroe Balancing Test — a nine-part process used to assess the nature of a proposed project, its impact on the local community and how the public would benefit. All of these components factor into determining whether or not the project should be exempted from land use regulations and local zoning rules. The consultant added that a public hearing will take place on this matter at Riverhead Town Hall at a later date.

If SCWA is required to go through Riverhead’s process, the county agency may need approvals for easements along the town’s roadways and undergo site plan review by the Riverhead Planning Board, which would encompass not only the transmission line outlined in the project, but also the booster station.

“Riverhead’s primary concern is that, to date, we haven’t seen any preliminary engineering plans, and while we have commented on the scope, and we were hoping to limit those comments for you in order to keep it as narrow as possible, it’s difficult for the town to really assess what potential impacts there might be that they would like to have addressed,” Mr. Seeman said at the session.

The pipeline would augment existing water supplies in the Flanders area to meet demand in Southold, ensure water quality and availability, increase system reliability and recharge the aquifer with fresh water, according to SCWA documents. 

The proposed pipeline project will span 11.94 miles and disturb 6.51 miles with trenching, directional drill test pits and a booster station site. A majority of the water main installations will be located within street rights-of-way along the identified routes, consisting primarily of county roads. 

In the first phase of the project, the main from Riverside and Flanders in Southampton to the Riverhead-Southold town line in Jamesport and Laurel would be 8.15 miles. It would draw water from existing wells in Flanders. A 24-inch diameter transmission water main would begin at the intersection of Flanders Road and Cross River Drive, continue north along Cross River Drive under the Peconic River and north along Cross River Drive to its intersection with Northville Turnpike. 

From there, the pipeline would extend northeast along Northville Turnpike to the intersection of Northville Turnpike and Sound Avenue, then east along Sound Avenue to Pier Avenue at a proposed booster station north of the Pier Avenue and Sound Avenue intersection. 

The 405-square-foot booster station would be built on a 1.5-acre property owned by SCWA. Two 16-inch mains will be installed to and from the booster station to service the pipeline. The SCWA property is 200 feet north of the Pier Avenue and Sound Avenue intersection on the west side of Pier Avenue in Jamesport. The booster station would be set roughly 97 feet back from the street and about 40 feet from the closest adjacent property line. 

From the booster station, the Riverside to Laurel main would continue east along Sound Avenue for 1.39 miles to the Jamesport Wellfield and Pump Station at the Town of Riverhead and Town of Southold municipal boundary between Jamesport and Laurel. 

No customer service connections will be made within the Riverhead Water District service area. 

Part of the project would involve installing a water main with directional drilling beneath the Peconic River and estuary near Cross River Drive bridge between Flanders and Riverhead. The drilling, per the full environmental assessment form submitted by SCWA, “is not expected to affect aquatic plants.”

Mr. Seeman said without a preliminary engineering plan, particularly around the historic buildings and number of utilities around the Sound Avenue corridor, there is a concern about how property owners and the town would be impacted by construction in that narrow shoulder.

If SCWA is not granted the zoning exemption, the town would like to address these concerns in their review process early in order to make sure the agency does not fall behind on its EIS review schedule.

“This is just my observation, I think the benefits to Southold are fairly obvious — you talked about saltwater intrusion and the reduction in wells that are possible — but we have yet to see any significant benefit to Riverhead,” Mr. Seeman said. “My concern here is that at the end of the SEQRA process you’ll have to prepare a findings statement, and that findings statement will have to balance what the environmental impacts are going to have to be on a regional basis, against the benefits, which appear to be primarily for Southold.”

Many Riverhead residents who attended the scoping session urged SCWA officials to consider conducting a traffic and noise study of the residential areas that are going to be directly impacted by this project.

Barbara Blass of Jamesport expressed her concern about the Monroe Balancing Test consideration and said Riverhead Town’s “discretionary authority” in the project has already been removed due to it not being listed as an involved agency.

“If you were some other entity, there would be a whole list of permits that you would be required to and review process, but by the very nature that in this document that we are commenting on now, we are an interested agency,” Ms. Blass said. “I hope it’s something more than an FYI on a sticky note that says we’re about to begin. I think it’s inappropriate for us to be operating right now [as an interested agency] until the Monroe Test has been conducted.”

The environmental impact statement will be created based on the comments submitted during the scoping period and can take as long as the SCWA decides it needs to take. Between now and the final environmental impact statement, the project could be changed slightly throughout the process, but the public will have the opportunity to review a draft before it is finalized. 

The next scoping session will be held Thursday, June 12, at 6 p.m. at the Southold Recreation Center, 970 Peconic Lane. Comments on the North Fork Pipeline draft environmental review can also be submitted online at scwa.com/nfp-comment/. The comment deadline is Wednesday, June 25.