Riverhead business district to get new streetlights, sidewalks

The Riverhead business district will get new streetlights next spring, paid for through a $30,000 Suffolk County downtown revitalization grant. The work will be done at the same time the sidewalks -- some cracked and buckled -- are replaced in a separate $1.5 million state highway improvement project.

The street-lighting grant allows the town to replace its 20-year-old fixtures with new LED fixtures that will look similar but increase lighting by about 50 percent while cutting in half the annual $40,000 electric bill.

The grant money is going to the downtown Riverhead Business Improvement District.

Riverhead Supervisor Sean Walter said the town has been undertaking a lighting-replacement program of its own, and is concentrating on existing mercury-vapor lights first, because electric bills can be cut by up to 75 percent by replacing them with LEDs. He said the town spent about $50,000 this year and about $100,000 last year on replacements.