Suffolk Water Authority rejects water line to Orient

After a yearlong battle, the Suffolk Water Authority has given up plans to extend public water from East Marion to Orient and instead will seek to redirect $1.9 million in federal stimulus funds to bring public water to 200 Calverton homeowners.

The decision came Tuesday night after the authority board in a 3-2 vote rejected going to court to overturn Southold town trustees' refusal to grant a permit for the 3-mile water line.

The authority had proposed to extend the line so it could service the 24 homes in the Browns Hills development in Orient, which has an antiquated water system that is costly for the authority to maintain. But local residents opposed the water line extension, fearing that it would spur new home development along the route, now largely rural.

"The best way to go would have been to bring them public water," said James Gaughran, authority chairman. "But there comes a point when you have to deal with reality to keep the stimulus money on Long Island and bring clean water to people who really need it." He said he feared a lawsuit would drag on so long the authority would lose the federal money.

Venetia Hands, a Browns Hills resident and leading critic of the project, said "we are absolutely delighted and cautious" given the yearlong battle.

The water authority will now ask the state health department and the Environmental Facilities Corp. to permit the authority to reallocate the stimulus money to Peconic Lakes Estates in Calverton.

Browns Hills residents also face a Sept. 24 public hearing on a proposal to hike the $495 annual water rate to $1,500, which authority officials say is still less than the $5,000 per customer it cost the agency to maintain the system which requires special filters in kitchen sinks.

Hands called the proposal "punitive" and said the authority should give each resident their own private well or absorb the added cost of their service among 355,000 customers.