$3.3 Million Grant Aids In Westhampton Beach Sewer Project

Westhampton Beach Village officials were treated to some welcome end of the year news last month when they were notified that the village had been awarded a whopping $3.3 million grant from the state Department of Environmental Conservation to help fund the village’s ongoing sewer project.

Tack that onto a $250,000 Suffolk County grant, and the village has in hand close to the $4.8 million cost of the portion of the project that entails upgrading the county’s sewer treatment plant at Francis S. Gabreski Airport. Before receiving the grant, officials had planned to bond out the cost, meaning it would have fallen to taxpayers.

“The trustees and I were elated to receive the news of these most recent grants,” Westhampton Beach Village Mayor Maria Moore said. “After so many years of planning, engineering and now construction, it is rewarding to know that our project has the confidence and support of the state, the county and the town. This is an excellent example of how government can work together to make positive strides in serving our communities.”

At the same time, the village has been moving forward with the installation of more than 2 miles of sewer lines along its Main Street business district, as well as businesses and a set of condominium complexes south of Main Street — and along a route to the county plant at the airport.

That portion of the project broke ground — literally — in April, and is expected to be completed by this summer. The cost of that work is nearly $13 million, the lion’s share of which will be covered by state grants. That cost also includes nearly $1.2 million to upgrade three municipal parking lots, Moore explained this week, noting that since the lots had to be broken up anyway to lay sewer lines, it marked a good opportunity for the upgrades.

“Because the three parking lots will be disturbed by the installation of the sewer pipes,” she said, “the board determined it to be a good opportunity to upgrade the lots with new drainage, lighting and landscaping.”

The work is being completed by Novelli Contracting Corp., which was awarded the bulk of the work at $12.3 million, and Hinck Electrical Contractor Inc., which was awarded a $656,745 bid.

The mayor noted that “the village has been diligent in pursuing grant opportunities,” and has been “fortunate to receive grants” to help fund the project. The village was awarded a $5 million DEC grant, a $1.78 million state Environmental Facilities Corp grant and $4 million in Southampton Town Community Preservation Fund money to help fund the installation of the sewer lines.

According to Trustee Brian Tymann, because of the grants, the impact on local taxpayers will be almost nil.

“In the beginning of the process we ran a calculation that explained what the property tax increase would be if we got no grants, which was in the ballpark of much less than $100 per year for a $500,000 house, which was palatable,” he said. “Covering nearly all of the costs with grants lowers that number to nearly nothing.”

CPF came into play because the project, while providing a direct economic benefit to the village in terms or greater housing and business opportunities in the business district, is also expected to provide a direct environmental benefit to the Monibogue Canal and Monibogue Bay, according to an environmental report conducted by Dr. Christopher Gobler of Stony Brook University in 2017. The expected environmental benefits also helped secure the state and county grants.

“This is an important project for the village, both for the environment and for downtown revitalization,” Moore said. “It will eliminate approximately 5,000 pounds of nitrogen annually, reducing the waste to Moniebogue Bay by 24 percent. And it will allow for a lessening of restrictions in the downtown.”

Making the upgrades to the county treatment plant — doubling its capacity by 50 percent to 150,000 gallons of affluent daily — was part of the approval process from the county for the village to connect to the plant. Doing so was a huge savings to the village, which was then spared the cost of building and maintaining its own sewage treatment plant. The plans for the upgrades have been completed, and are currently being reviewed by the county, Moore said, and the village hopes to go out to bid for the improvements within the next couple months.

Plans for the current sewer district upgrade date back to 2015, although sewers have been hotly discussed for decades in the village. Proponents recognized that sewers would allow the county to permit more bar and restaurant uses, as well as above-store residential units, while opponents always pointed to the multi-million cost of building and maintaining a sewage treatment plant. The current project underway appeared to be meeting of the two minds — providing an upgraded sewer district while eliminating the prospect of building a plant by connecting to the existing county facility at the airport.

Progress on the sewer district has been a real team effort including all levels of government, from the local to the county to state representatives, Tymann said.

“We got this done because we worked as a team, overcoming challenges, persisting, thinking ahead, planning, being creative and never stopping,” he said. “Six years of an enormous amount of work. We have this running joke, argument, where we tell the mayor that it wouldn’t have come to fruition if it weren’t for her hard work. Then she credits us and says she couldn’t have done it without us. Then we argue and tell her she did all the heavy lifting. And it goes back and forth. But in the end, I guess that’s what makes an effective team — none of us could do it alone.”

The project seems to be paying off already, according to Moore.

“Private investment in our village has already increased, with new restaurants and businesses recognizing the value of this infrastructure project,” she said. “Beyond the dollar for dollar reduction to the cost of the project, our increased tax base will result in a multiplying benefit for our taxpayers.”