Southold agrees to help water authority seek funding for $27M pipeline project

The Suffolk County Water Authority and Southold Town officials have agreed to work together so the agency can pursue grant funding for an 8-mile, $27 million water pipeline touted as a good sustainability project.

The town board voted 5-0 at its Tuesday meeting to execute an intermunicipal agreement with the Oakdale-based agency regarding the North Fork Transmission Main project, and to participate and assist in the grant application process. The project seeks to connect an existing water main in Flanders to a main that’s in Laurel.

Southold Supervisor Scott Russell said the project would be an "all-win, no lose" situation.

"It’s going to help bring a source of water in that will actually help recharge the aquifer, it will reduce draw on the aquifer which depletes it, and underlying that, there’s no cost to the town," Russell said.

Suffolk County Water Authority chief executive Jeff Szabo told Newsday on Wednesday that there had been issues through the years — including saltwater intrusion, water availability, nitrates and the fragile nature of the local water aquifer — with a series of small drinking wells scattered around town that the agency uses to serve some of its roughly 9,500 customers in Southold.

The pipeline, Szabo said, would give the agency the ability to move high-quality water from the west to the North Fork community, "which would be beneficial to the residents of Southold and to the aquifer itself."

He said the project would also allow the agency to decommission at least two to three Southold well fields, each with multiple wells. Additionally, the agency would eventually be able to scale back water it pulls from existing wells, allowing for aquifer restoration and preservation.

The agency will apply for a grant up to $11 million — which would fund about 40 percent of the project’s costs — from The New York State Water Infrastructure Improvement Act through the state’s Environmental Facilities Corporation. The application deadline is Monday, and awards should be announced in the spring.

The agency plans to pay for the project through a combination of grants and money set aside in its capital budget, and will explore other potential grant sources, including the newly passed federal infrastructure bill, Szabo said.

The water authority is working on obtaining permits from the Department of Environmental Conservation and securing easements for the pipeline, of which construction is estimated to take six to nine months and could be completed by Spring 2023, said officials with the Suffolk County Water Authority.