Hempstead OKs Navy water treatment facility

The Navy won't need to go through local zoning approvals to build a treatment facility in Levittown to filter pollution that is threatening local drinking water, Hempstead Town officials said.

The town board of appeals decided after a hearing Wednesday to grant immunity to the Navy to construct a 30-foot-tall building that would hold water-filtering equipment at 670 Seamans Neck Rd. on land owned by Aqua New York Inc. But the board found that Aqua's plan for landscaping around the plant is not exempt from local zoning requirements, town officials said.

The decision "provides the immunity necessary for the Navy to build the equipment to purify the water, while giving some teeth to require Aqua to landscape the property in a manner that is desirable to neighbors in the area," town spokesman Michael Deery said Thursday.

Representatives for the Naval Facilities Engineering Command Mid-Atlantic had argued that the Navy, as a branch of the U.S. government, was exempt from local zoning requirements.

"Aqua is committed to working with the Navy to ensure the landscaping plan is followed and is fine with that as a condition of approval," said Aqua president Matthew Snyder, whose company supplies drinking water to parts of Hempstead and Oyster Bay towns. The company tests its water daily, he said.

Increasing pollution levels at the site require quick construction of a water treatment plant, Navy officials said, which the Navy will operate upon completion of construction. The former Grumman Aircraft Engineering Corp. assembled and tested aircraft there for the Navy from the 1930s to the 1990s, leaving an underground plume of industrial solvents, they said.

In 2007, levels of the solvent trichloroethene in the groundwater ranged from zero to 0.8 micrograms per liter. They have risen to as much as 3.3 micrograms per liter, still below the federal allowable level of 5.0 micrograms per liter, officials said.

The nearly $5-million pump-and-filter plant includes temporary filters to be in place by April. The nearly 3,000-square-foot permanent plant is expected to be complete by April 2013.