Village Sewer Project Moving Along in Westhampton Beach

The long-aborning multi-million dollar sewer project in the Village of Westhampton Beach took a step forward on August 19.

The Village Board voted to issue a notice to bidders hoping to undertake construction of the project, and voted to accept the proposal for engineering services from H2M architects + engineers for design and construction administration throughout the project. H2M will be paid up to $1.275 million. Mayor Maria Moore noted that the fee would cover day-to-day oversight over the course of the 18-month project, which she predicted would break ground at the end of the year.

H2M has completed designs and the Suffolk County Department of Public Works has signed off on them. The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and the Environmental Facilities Corporation, entities which have awarded grants, will also have to sign off on the plans. The mayor said the H2M engineer indicated that once the DPW approves a plan, the DEC and EFC will sign off also.

Village Attorney Steve Angel has been working on getting necessary easements from property owners.

“He’s fielding questions now,” the mayor said during the work session update.

“We’re getting close to pulling the trigger on this, which is good,” Village Board member Ralph Urban observed.

According to the village’s 2017 sewer feasibility study, the pending Phase 1 of the project encompasses 156 tax lots on 31 acres downtown. It runs along Main Street from Mill Road to the east just past the Sunset Avenue intersection with Main Street by several lots on the northern side. It captures a handful of lots that don’t front on Main Street, as well as the condominiums located to the south of Main Street.

Estimates for the cost of construction at the time of the study in 2017, ranged from $16 million to $17 million, and the village has applied for, and was awarded just under $8 million in grants. It lists funding secured from the DEC — $ 5 million — through its Water Quality Improvement Project program, as well as $1.78 million secured from the Environmental Facilities Corporation on the village website. The village has also been awarded $1.1 million for engineering design from the Town of Southampton, plus another $30,000 from the EFC, bringing the total so far to $7.9 million.

Town officials are also applying to Southampton Town for $4 million in water quality monies through the Community Preservation Fund.

“Our fingers are crossed for that,” the mayor said.

The town can use up to 20 percent of the CPF money it collects every year for water quality projects. Since its inception in 1999, the Community Preservation Fund has generated over $1.5 billion for the five East End towns. The CPF has generated $93 million in the last 12 months. In 2020, as of July, Southampton Town had added $36.47 million to its CPF coffers, up almost 40 percent over last year. The town collects the money, and apportions it to villages within its borders.

“It’s all coming along,” Ms. Moore summarized. “So far, we’ve gotten fortunate with the grant money.”

If this year’s grant comes through, the village will have amassed close to $12 million in outside funding for the project.

“We did approve a bond, hopefully we won’t have to spend all of it,” the mayor noted. Earlier this year, the Village Board approved a bond in the amount of $6.87 million.

A study conducted for the project in 2017 by H2M provided cost estimates for residents. Seventy percent of the cost of the project will be assessed to those with properties within the district, with those with property outside the sewer district assessed for 30 percent of the cost.

The 2017 model considered costs, should the village receive $4.2 million in grants to defray the overall cost; the village is in line for more than double, if not triple that amount now. The early estimate was for a taxpayer whose home is assessed at $700,000 to be assessed approximately $22 in annual sewer district taxes.

“This number will be reduced now that the grant awards exceed $4.2 million,” Mayor Moore emphasized.

More specific information will be available once the bids are received and the last of the grant decisions are made, she said.

The project includes over 2.6 miles of piping that will run to the treatment plant at Francis S. Gabreski Airport in Westhampton.

Suffolk County, which owns the airport, has agreed to reserve space for up to 60,000 gallons of effluent each day at the plant for the village; in exchange, village officials must agree to pay for an expansion that would allow the plant to increase its capacity by 50 percent, to 150,000 gallons daily.

The cost of those upgrades is also included in the first phase of work. The proposed cost of the sewer collection system, including the engineering, construction and soft costs, is $12.6 million, and the proposed cost of the necessary upgrades to the county’s Gabreski facility is $4.4 million, for a total of $17 million.

In 2017, the Suffolk County Sewer Agency gave formal approval for the village to connect to the sanitary sewerage facilities at Gabreski, with an estimated flow of 60,000 gallons per day, which takes into account an additional 10,000 GPD beyond the current 50,000 GPD.

A comprehensive plan drafted in 2017 looked at a four-phase project that could take place depending on the village’s ability to fund them. Subsequent phases, according to a project overview prepared by Cameron Engineering, consulting for H2M, and posted on the village website, will require either an additional expansion of the county’s wastewater treatment facility located at Gabreski Airport, or the construction of a new plant.

The goal of the project is to mitigate the effect of excess nitrogen loading on area water bodies, particularly the Moniebogue Bay watershed, which is located entirely within the village. Effluent from cesspools and septic tanks is the greatest single source of nitrogen inputs, and linked to harmful algal blooms that degrade local surface waters. A report conducted by Dr. Christopher Gobler, a professor in the School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences at Stony Brook University, concluded that Phase 1 of the proposed sewer project would redirect 5,000 pounds of nitrogen away from Monibogue Bay each year, which would reduce its total nitrogen levels by 24 percent.

Phase 1 of the project focuses on the area in the village where population is the most dense. It’s also the area with the highest recorded concentrations of nitrogen in the groundwater.

In addition to the environmental benefit of the project, sewering could allow for more restaurants along Main Street, and opportunities for more second floor apartment housing.

Village officials first considered a Main Street sewer project in 2005, but shelved the idea in the face of public outcry over the cost. In 2015, the idea surfaced again.