The Suffolk County Water Authority is proposing the construction of a seven-and-a-half-mile water main on the North Fork that would carry water from Flanders and Riverhead up into Southold. Officials say the project would bring water from an area with a larger supply to the North Fork, where limited groundwater and heavy summer demand have strained the existing system.
Southold remains under a Stage One water alert after heavy summer demand pushed storage tanks on the North Fork to low levels. The Water Authority said there’s enough water for everyday use, but storage tanks that provide emergency reserves are running low. Joe Pokorny, the water authority's Deputy CEO of Operations, spoke to an audience of 50 elected officials and community members at the Southold Town Recreation Center on August 20.
“The thing that keeps me up at night is that when that tank level is down low, not only does that mean low water pressure, but that means there's less water available for emergencies,” Pokorny said. “So if you had a very serious fire, you could be in a situation where you don't have enough water to fight the fire”
Pokorny said the 300,000-gallon Moore's Lane water tower in Greenport can drop to just a few feet of water during peak demand.
Greenport Mayor Kevin Stuessi said the community can’t afford to wait.
“When I see that tower and know that there are times when there's only five feet or two feet worth of water in it, that is an emergency we cannot afford to delay,” Stuessi said.
The Water Authority said the problem isn't a lack of groundwater across Suffolk County; it's where that water is available. On the North Fork, most Water Authority wells draw from the thin Upper Glacial aquifer. Jeff Szabo is the CEO of the Suffolk County Water Authority.
“Throughout Suffolk County, there are different amounts of water in different sections of the island, including on the North Fork, where there's very little,” Szabo said.
The authority operates 60 wells across 18 well fields on the North Fork, supplying about 9,500 customers. But groundwater also faces saltwater intrusion and chemical contamination, including pesticides and PFAS. And instead of drilling more wells there, the authority wants to move water from where there's more of it.
“Instead of looking for small wells in Southold property and then developing a new well field to pull water from where there isn't much, we will move water from where we have it under existing DEC permits. We will move from where we have it to where we need it,” Szabo said. “We're taking the water from Flanders. We're crossing 104, 105. We're going up through State Road and not Sound Avenue, and we're putting in a small booster station which will move water into Southold.”
The proposed North Fork Water Main Project has changed after years of public input. The revised route avoids Sound Avenue, which residents criticized as too narrow and historic for major construction. It's also about a mile shorter than the original proposal, moving the anticipated completion date from 2030 to 2028.
But some officials question whether bringing in more water addresses another part of the problem: demand. Summer irrigation drives up demand. The Water Authority has adopted tiered pricing, an odd-even day lawn-watering policy, and rebates for water-saving equipment.
Suffolk County Legislator Greg Doroski said pricing could go further.
“If you look at a place like Santa Fe, their base rate compared to their conservation rate, the highest rate is three times the amount, and they actually saw a 20% decrease in water demand there with a 10% increase in population,” Doroski said.
The Water Authority said conservation is necessary, but conservation alone hasn't been enough to prevent storage levels from dropping this summer. Southold resident Margaret Rose de Cruz said residents should rethink lawns.
“I am so anti-lawn at this point. And if people could not do lawns and do native plantings, you know, we would recharge the aquifers much better, and I know we’re not recharging because people are just using them like crazy,” de Cruz said.
The Water Authority's environmental review also considers a possible second phase that could extend the public water line farther east into Orient. But the authority said it is not currently planning to build that extension. Joe Pokorny is the Deputy CEO of Operations at the Suffolk County Water Authority.
We're including both phase one and phase two, again, in the spirit of being open and transparent and letting people know. And again, we don't have plans, right, to do it. We're just including it in the environmental review,” Pokorny said.
Pokorny said the county Health Department asked the authority to study a possible extension into Orient after PFAS were found in some private wells. But some Southold officials worry that an extension into Orient could encourage development and increase demand.
Phase 1 of the North Fork Water Main project could be completed in 2028. The Suffolk County Water Authority is accepting written comments through Sept. 25.
