New effort to protect Long Island's groundwater from overpumping, saltwater intrusion

Following a landmark study that found Long Island's aquifer system is under stress from overpumping and saltwater intrusion, environmentalists and water providers have launched a five-year effort to reduce water use and protect the aquifer.

The project, called 2050 LI Groundwater Rebalance, is the creation of the nonprofit Port Washington-based community group Residents Forward and a collaboration between water suppliers, groundwater resource management experts, and local environment activists.

Kicking off the effort Wednesday night, eight high school students from Port Washington laid out the problem: when too much water is pumped from the underground aquifer, it pulls saltwater from offshore to fill the void.

Saltwater intrusion is already a problem in some areas close to the coasts, according to a 2024 study by the U.S. Geological Survey and the state Department of Environmental Conservation, and the intrusion is more severe than experts expected. Unless that progression is halted, wells will be spoiled by becoming too salty and will have to be abandoned.

"We cannot and must not hand this issue off to the next generation," Izzy Falco, a junior at the Paul D. Schreiber High School, said.

Long Islanders use on average 140 gallons of water a day, per person, 70% more than the national average, Mindy Germain, the water commissioner of Port Washington and a mentor for the students, noted at the forum Wednesday.

Water consumption doubles or in some areas nearly triples in summer, when residents are watering their lawns. The problem is exacerbated by sea level rise, which allows seawater to creep inland, and by the heating climate, which increases demand for water and hastens evaporation.

Solutions to overpumping were laid out by the Schreiber students.

The asphalt and concrete that paves roads, parking lots and sidewalks can be replaced with permeable concrete and pavers, to allow stormwater to filter back into the ground and recharge our aquifer, Eve Feldman explained. 

Deep-rooted native grasses like tall fescue, which rarely require watering, can replace standard, finicky lawn grasses, Ezra Furstenberg said.

Water suppliers have established rules for lawn watering, including odd and even day schedules and requirements to use "smart" sprinklers that allow watering only when the soil is actually dry.

"It’s been a patchwork approach," Michelle Schimel, a former Assembly member from Port Washington who arranged the funding for the USGS survey, said in an interview. But "we’re one island," she said. "And we need to scale up." Schimel also served as an adviser to the students.

Scaling up, though, will require more than individual efforts to conserve, the students emphasized. "We want large infrastructure projects for stormwater recapture, and aquifer recharge," Germain said Wednesday.

Large-scale water-recycling projects can curb groundwater use of large consumers, like golf courses; the Indian Island golf course in Riverhead has been using treated wastewater from a nearby treatment facility for a decade.

The Long Island Commission for Aquifer Protection has a program called Our Water, Our Lives, "to develop that unified message Islandwide," Paul Granger, superintendent of the Hicksville Water District, said. "But the budget is small ... and really needs to be expanded."

"Most people are reasonable," Granger said, and when you educate them, they address their habits." Mandates may be necessary at some point, but "enforcement without education — it doesn't really get you good results."

On some water concerns, environmentalists and water suppliers find themselves in conflict — if, for example, environmentalists favor regulations that suppliers view as too expensive. On this question their interests appear aligned: water suppliers don’t want their drinking wells contaminated with saltwater.

Granger said water conservation also saves money for the districts and for ratepayers. Less pumping "reduces the stress on our mechanical equipment, not only the aquifer," he said.