New Long Island facility set to clean water of ‘forever chemicals’ may raise residents’ bills
HICKSVILLE, N.Y. (PIX11) — It’s an issue that affects an estimated 1 million people on Long Island. Now, the first steps are being made to fix the problem, thanks to a grant from the $1.2 trillion Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.
Even though that overall funding package is massive, the set of grants to help build a new groundwater filtration facility is still not enough to pay for the entire facility’s costs. Without either an additional grant, or a civil case verdict resulting in a large financial payment, some of the cost for getting safe drinking water will be borne by water district customers.
On Monday, a variety of local public figures, including U.S. Rep. Tom Suozzi, Oyster Bay Supervisor Joseph Saladino, EPA Regional Administrator Lisa Garcia and others, were at the groundbreaking for a state-of-the-art water filtration facility.
It came on the same day that the local government announced that it had found another half-dozen barrels of secretly buried waste since last Friday. Toxicity tests of the newly-discovered barrels are underway now, bringing the total number of such containers found near Bethpage this year to 21.
What are ‘forever chemicals’ and should we be concerned about them?
The presence of the underground vaults of toxic waste is among the reasons that Long Island’s water table has some of the country’s highest levels of what are called per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances – or PFAS. They’re also called forever chemicals.
The chemicals, from shut-down industrial sites, have seeped into the water table of western Long Island, making tap water for the 1 million-plus residents in the area possibly unsafe to drink in large quantities, according to the EPA.
On Monday, though, Garcia, the EPA regional administrator, was praising the potential effect of the new facility.
“The first in New York State that can filter PFAS,” she said.
Map: Does your drinking water contain ‘forever chemicals’?
Minutes later, she and about a half-dozen other officials grabbed golden shovels and formally broke ground.
The new facility will use a UV light reactor and 60 tons of activated carbon to clean groundwater beyond federal standards. It’s funded by two grants totaling $5 million from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law signed into law in 2021.
However, the facility will need an additional $4 million to be completed.
What that means was explained in simple but unpleasant terms by Paul Granger, the superintendent of the Hicksville Water District.
“You could see rates go up from 25-50 percent,” he said during a question-and-answer period at Monday’s ceremony, “and that’s a lot, unfortunately.”
He said that the rate hikes could be that high if polluters aren’t held accountable.
The operator of the Bethpage site on which many of the toxic barrels have been found is the Northrop Grumman Corporation. It has pointed out that it’s cooperating with authorities to find buried barrels, and has said, through a spokesperson that it remains “committed to protecting the health and well-being of the community.”
That community, the Town of Oyster Bay, has been in a legal battle with Northrop Grumman regarding the toxic waste for two decades, and counting.
It’s why the local member of Congress, Suozzi, said that it was important to go ahead and start construction on the water treatment facility.
“We’re going to put the money up now,” he said, “and you can keep fighting about the lawsuit while this is going on at the same time.”
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