Scully’s challenge: Will Suffolk County’s wastewater plan come to fruition?

Just ahead of this year’s countywide elections, wastewater infrastructure was back in the spotlight during a Thursday, Oct. 26, webinar hosted by the Long Island Regional Planning Council.

Deputy Suffolk County Executive for Administration Peter Scully updated the council on the county’s long-term wastewater infrastructure objective, indicating that it has made “significant progress” in recent years toward realizing its wastewater goals outlined in its 2020 Subwatersheds Wastewater Plan.

The plan delineates over 19 individual watershed areas countywide, Scully noted, establishing nitrogen reduction goals for each watershed zone. “It’s really, in a simpler sense, a roadmap to guide priorities in terms of replacing or eliminating 299,000 cesspools over the complete life of the program, either by connecting parcels to sewers or installing new clean water septic technologies,” Scully said. “We’re now at the point since the plan was completed in 2019 and approved by the Legislature in 2020 to move toward the implementation process.” 

Roadmap

To bring the goals of the clean water plan into reality, Scully said the county government must accomplish two separate tasks. First, it must produce an organizational structure, forming a countywide sewer district. The other is the creation of a recurring funding source to create a local match program for both sewer infrastructure and Innovative/Alternative (IA) septic systems.

“Having a local match to use when you’re seeking grant funding is incredibly important because the key to the success of this plan is to make it easy and affordable for property owners,” he said. “Sewer infrastructure is so very expensive that if the burden of financing sewer construction falls solely on property owners, it’s just not economically viable.”

Under the program’s life span, Scully said the county would connect roughly 35,000 parcels to sewers. In comparison, 264,000 parcels would have their cesspool or septic system replaced with IA systems. Scully attributed the discrepancy in funding between new sewers and IA infrastructure to the cost feasibility of IA infrastructure when assessed against sewers.

“In many places in the county, sewers are just not a cost-effective solution,” the deputy county executive stated.

On the whole, the program would provide $4.2 billion in county local matching funds, with an “equal amount for sewers and clean water septics,” he added, because “even though the number of parcels being connected to sewers is significantly lower, the cost per parcel for sewers is significantly higher.”

In places within Suffolk County where sewers are not economically viable, Scully said the plan seeks to phase out the use of existing and often outdated cesspools for new IA systems, calling this technology “a cost-effective and efficient alternative to sewers in areas where sewers are not cost-effective, and there are millions of them in the ground around the world,” he claimed.

Another central aspect of the wastewater plan, Scully suggested, is consolidating the county’s 27 separate sewer districts into one, creating a uniform billing structure countywide. Scully referred to the existing billing structure as “problematic” as it produces varying billing methodologies from district to district.

“We think by streamlining our sewer system and consolidating all the existing districts into the countywide district … we can reduce costs, streamline investments, stabilize rates and prevent large fee increases moving forward,” he said.

Wastewater debate

Earlier this year, the New York State Legislature included language in the state budget, the Suffolk County Water Quality Restoration Act, authorizing the county to advance a referendum to enable the voters to establish a dedicated fund for wastewater infrastructure. The measure authorized the inclusion of a 1/8-penny sales tax on the November ballot which would have generated an estimated $3.1 billion through 2060 for wastewater infrastructure. The county Legislature shot down the ballot measure in July. [See story, “Suffolk County Legislature recesses, blocks referendum on wastewater fund,” July 28, TBR News Media website.]

Outlining the next steps for the county’s wastewater future, Scully said the two bills that the Legislature did not advance would have to be considered by the Legislature. The first bill, if passed, would amend the Suffolk County charter to extend the county’s Drinking Water Protection Program — which is set to expire in 2030 — and create a 1/8-penny sales tax. The second bill would create a countywide wastewater management district.

With much work ahead, Scully said the future advancement of the plan remains unsettled: “The question becomes, will the plan be implemented?”