New Oak Beach water system to cost homeowners $1,500 a year, town says

A Babylon Town project for a new public water system in Oak Beach is about a year behind schedule and now expected to kick off in 2019.

Town officials said the project to connect 59 of the 200 houses in the barrier beach community to a new tap water system is expected to be done next winter.

Houses on the island now get their water from a patchwork system of wells that have been giving homeowners problems, including causing three E. coli outbreaks in recent years.

The compromised water quality has led the Suffolk County Department of Health Services to prioritize the project, and requires the town, which owns the land, to fix it. Homeowners lease the land from the town.

Only about a quarter of the houses must connect to the new system because they’re among groups of five or more homes connected to a single well and thus regulated by the county.

While the timeline is lagging, the budget is also expanding from the original $3 million estimate, said Joe Guarino, principal environmental analyst for the town.

The project entails installing a new well, refurbishing an existing well and connecting both to a new water treatment plant to remove contaminants.

Refurbishing the well may take more work than expected, Guarino said, and there will be an additional $70,000 cost for an easement and survey officials hadn’t anticipated.

The project has been a long time coming.

“The department has been working towards resolving issues at this pre-existing, nonconforming legacy system for at least two decades,” health department spokeswoman Grace Kelly-McGovern said. “However, recent policy guidance from [the state health department] regarding chlorine disinfection requirements resulted in intensive SCDHS engagement with the town to develop a plan to upgrade the system on a priority basis.”

Still in the design phase and seeking approvals from county and state agencies, the town expects to begin the bidding process sometime next year.

While a $1.8 million state grant and $1.2 million no-interest loan will cover most of the costs, town officials estimate the 59 homeowners will pay $1,500 annually. They’ll also pay unspecified operation and maintenance costs.

The increased rate for homeowners, who pay less to the private contractors who maintain the wells, will leave some unhappy with the mandated new system, Guarino said.