Suffolk County Water Authority CEO Discusses Water Conservation, Treatment

As the months of peak water use arrive, Suffolk County Water Authority CEO Jeffrey Szabo is encouraging East End residents and businesses to practice conservation to avoid shortages and save on infrastructure needs.

During an interview at the Express News Group office last week, Szabo emphasized the importance of smart water use and noted the risks and costs when water demand exceeds the supply that the water authority’s wells provide. He also spoke about what’s being done to treat water affected by contaminants and how those costs are paid for.

He said the water authority believes that most people, at their core, want to do the right thing. “They care about the environment. They care about the aquifer,” he said. But, he added, there needs to be ongoing dialogue and education because behaviors won’t change overnight.

To that end, the water authority budgeted $250,000 this year, for the first time, to hire a public relations firm to market to the public about smart water use and conservation, Szabo said.

When parts of Long Island come close to a water shortage, the problem isn’t a lack of water.

“We have a supply here. It’s not like the West,” Szabo said. “It’s not like California, Arizona, New Mexico, you name it.”

Water doesn’t come from a lake or reservoir on Long Island, he noted, but from “below our feet.” Long Island has an aquifer — fresh water in the sand and gravel deep underground.

“If it stopped raining, we’d have enough water to last thousands of years, we always say, but we need to be smart about it,” Szabo said.

The real challenge in meeting peak water demand is having a sufficient number of wells to draw water from the aquifer. More wells and water towers can be built to increase the available supply, but that comes at great expense.

“It costs us a lot of money — and by ‘us’ I mean the customers — to invest in the infrastructure,” Szabo said, noting that a new well costs $1.5 million to $2 million, before adding any necessary treatment.

Most of the growth in water use in Suffolk County has been from Brookhaven east, he said, and most of the money the water authority spends is to ensure there is service for June, July, August and September.

“We don’t need all these 600 wells,” he said. “We take wells out of service during the winter months and when use is sort of flat.”

But the system must be built out for peak hours during the summertime, when lawns are irrigated frequently — when demand is at its highest.

The Suffolk County Water Authority has instituted a mandatory odd/even watering policy, though it does not have enforcement powers to ensure compliance. Still, Szabo said it is important that people take it seriously.

Residents with a house number that is even should only irrigate their lawns on even-numbered days, and residents with an odd house number should only water on odd-numbered days. The ordinance also applied to businesses.

The water authority wrote a draft resolution and sent it to all municipalities on the East End asking them to work with their police departments or code enforcement agencies to enforce the ordinance.

“None of the municipalities have taken us up on it yet,” Szabo said.

The water authority also encourages homeowners to refrain from watering their lawns between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. — when the sun will evaporate much of the water. “You’re not getting the bang for your buck,” he said.

The water authority asks users to change their irrigation timers to run between 9 p.m. and midnight to avoid peak hours. Szabo said most people water between midnight and 6 a.m., and during that time the water authority’s 70-plus water towers deplete, sometimes getting to a dangerously low level.

“Last year, Southampton was a big, big problem,” Szabo said, explaining that Southampton Village was at critical levels in the morning.

When a water tower drains from 50 or more feet of water down to three or four feet, and then there is a house fire, firefighters won’t have the water pressure they need, he explained.

A water emergency was declared last summer in the towns of Southampton, East Hampton, Southold and Shelter Island. Residents were told to stop using irrigation systems between midnight and 7 a.m. and to stop all nonessential water use. By September 2, the emergency declaration was expanded to include all Suffolk County Water Authority customers, and it was not rescinded until the end of that month.

To encourage customers to use less water, three years ago the water authority established a second price tier. The regular rate for 2023 is $2.329 per 1,000 gallons. The second tier, or “conservation rate,” is $3.359 per 1,000 gallons, or 44 percent higher. Customers go up a tier when their water use exceeds a certain threshold, which is different depending on the size of their water meter.

Szabo indicated the water authority is now considering a third tier that may change the habits of the biggest water users.

Contaminants of emerging concern are chemicals that are recently or soon to be regulated, and there have been three that have been at the forefront in Suffolk County: PFOA, PFOS and 1,4-dioxane.

PFOA and PFOS are fluorinated organic compounds that are types of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, known as PFAS, also called “forever chemicals” because they persist in the environment and in the body. They have been found in fabric coatings, cleaning products, firefighting foams, and stain-resistant carpeting. On Long Island, the chemicals have been detected in groundwater where firefighting foam was used frequently for training.

To treat water for PFOA and PFOS, the water authority uses granular activated carbon, or GAC — like a Brita filter but on a much grander scale.

“Carbon is resilient,” Szabo said. “It is able to remove many of the compounds that we treat for. It’s been proven extremely effective, including for things like PFOS and PFOA, which are things that the state and the federal government are looking to continue to regulate at lower and lower standards.”

The majority of 600 active wells don’t need carbon, Szabo said. However, more wells may require GAC as more contamination is detected and as regulations tighten.

While the state tolerance level for PFOS and PFOA is 10 parts per trillion, the EPA is proposing a cap of 4 parts per trillion. To get down to 4 parts per trillion, the water authority could need to add GAC to 80 more wells, and some wells that already have GAC may go through carbon faster.

“It’s not like it’s a one-shot where you put a GAC filter on and you never touch it again,” Szabo said. “… You have to change out the carbon.”

A byproduct of manufacturing detergents and cleaning products, 1,4-dioxane has been a problem on western Long Island rather than the East End, though it has been detected at Camp Hero in Montauk. It can’t be treated with GAC.

“There really was no effective treatment method for dioxane,” Szabo said.

The water authority had to create one. It developed what’s called an “advanced oxidation process,” or AOP. The New York State Department of Health approved the first AOP treatment system in 2018 in Central Islip.

“On the PFAS side, we’ve met the requirement,” Szabo said of water quality regulations. “On the dioxane side, we’re getting there.”

In 2020, the water authority added a $20 quarterly charge to each ratepayer’s bill for water quality and treatment. “We needed to institute the charge — and it’s dedicated specifically in the budget for emerging compounds,” Szabo said.

It was shared evenly across the board, regardless of whether the ratepayer is in an area known to be affected by contaminants. “Your community might be next,” Szabo noted, adding that contaminants move and levels fluctuate.

The water authority could be coming into a significant amount of money soon from chemical manufacturers being held responsible for water contamination nationally, but that doesn’t necessarily mean the water quality charge will be repealed.

Chemours, DuPont and Corteva recently agreed to pay $1.19 billion, and even more recently 3M Co. settled claims for $10.3 billion.

Szabo said the water authority board has considered what to do with the water quality charge in the case of a settlement or court victory: get rid of it, give it back, reduce it or increase it.

“My fear, my concern, is that the state continues to regulate other compounds,” he said.

There are PFAS chemicals in addition to PFOA and PFOS that could be the next to be regulated.

More regulation could mean that the settlement money and even the $80/year per customer charge may not be enough to finance further additional treatment.