$2.5 million Kings Park water main replacement project nearing completion

A 7,000-foot, $2.5 million water main replacement in downtown Kings Park is nearing completion, Suffolk County Water Authority officials said.

The project will directly benefit about 100 customers off Main Street from Park Avenue to Indian Head Road and down Indian Head Road to Cortez Lane. Two water authority pumping stations are nearby, so “we’re improving the entire distribution system” for the hamlet, said Brendan Warner, the agency's director of construction maintenance.

Major excavation is finished and the authority will switch customers over to the new pipes in coming weeks. “We continue to strive towards our long-term goal of upgrading water infrastructure throughout the entirety of our service territory,” Jeffrey Szabo, the authority’s CEO, said in a news release announcing the work.

In early July, workers started laying 12-inch ductile iron pipes to replace 6-inch cast iron pipes, some of which had been laid in the 1950s. The new pipes are more durable and less likely to fracture, Warner said. The wider diameter will improve water flow and fire protection in the hamlet.

Water authority officials timed their work to coincide with a sewer construction project underway to minimize cost and disruption to area businesses. “We had one opportunity to get in there,” Warner said. The sewer work is scheduled to bring sewer hookups online by late 2025. 

Tony Tanzi, president of Kings Park Chamber of Commerce, said the new water mains were needed to serve what business leaders and Town of Smithtown officials say will be a wave of new development as those sewers come online. 

“I applaud them for having the foresight to say, ‘Let’s get in there and do this.’ ” 

Tanzi said he and his neighbors were “excited to get going,” so much so that “a lot of people had thought the water mains were actually the sewers going in.”