By Peter Boody
The East Hampton Town Board heard praise last week for its proposal to make payments up front for private septic system upgrades instead of granting rebates after the fact. The board did not, however, vote on the plan — so it remains in the tweaking phase.
With nitrogen pollution from conventional and old, often failing septic systems reaching East End bays and ponds through groundwater flows, town and village boards around the Peconic Bay Estuary have been adopting legislation to require and encourage “innovative-alternative,” or I/A, septic systems that actively reduce the nitrogen content of their septic effluent.
The board did, however, adopt two related proposals at its brief meeting on Thursday, December 5. One makes an increase that the board approved last month in the maximum rebate for I/A installations — from $16,000 to $20,000 — retroactive, so it will apply for people who installed them before the raises were approved. The other establishes a review procedure to award extra funds for installations on properties where physical circumstances make them more expensive.
At a public hearing on the advance-payment proposal, four speakers applauded the Town Board for considering the move, which also calls for streamlining the application and approval process. But one of them, citizen activist David Buda of the Town Board’s Springs Citizens Advisory Committee, also pointed out ambiguities in the language of the proposal that he said should be clarified, including its application to commercial projects, to construction on vacant land, and to new I/A systems that are required to be installed under the town code.
“Something may have gotten lost in the translation,” Mr. Buda said, asking why incentives originally meant to encourage voluntary installations should be offered to people or businesses that are required to install I/A systems anyway.
At the hearing, Sara Davison, executive director of the Georgica Pond Foundation, reported that five homeowners around Georgica Pond have replaced their conventional cesspools voluntarily with nitrogen-reducing I/A systems.
“You can’t just wave a magic wand and have a neighborhood converted” to I/A systems, Ms. Davison said, adding that it can only happen “property by property, home by home, and every home is a little different.”
“Thanks, Friends of Georgica Pond,” commented Supervisor Peter Van Scoyoc, for making the upgrades around the pond “so that water body will become cleaner and cleaner.”
“Anything we can do to simplify the paperwork and increase and incentivize the funding will help move the program faster,” Ms. Davison added.
Kevin McDonald, conservation project director of The Nature Conservancy on Long Island, noted that the rebate program has been in place since August 2017, and that there has been a learning process in its application. The results are reflected in the proposed legislation, he said, which “simplifies the process, expands the eligible categories, and makes it easier for the public” to participate — “and all that is good.”
Having recently installed an I/A system himself, he said people ask him “what’s it like.”
“I said, ‘Well, it’s not like music plays each time you flush, or at the end of every flush there’s a rocket going off.’ It’s supposed to be really boring and dull — and that’s exactly what it is.”
