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Shelter Island Reporter Letters to the Editor, Oct. 28, 2022

Wastewater project and the Manor

To the Editor:

Sylvester Manor commends the Town’s ongoing efforts to improve water quality in the Center and their search for solutions to improve wastewater systems for municipal buildings and the school, and the Island as a whole.

Shelter Island is unique among our neighboring communities in that the majority of households depend on private well service from a sole source aquifer.

Protection of the quality and quantity of this aquifer is of the utmost importance in maintaining a vibrant community on Shelter Island.

At recent public meetings, the Town Board has been discussing a proposed municipal wastewater treatment system to be sited on Manwaring Road across from the Sylvester Manor Windmill Field.

At a Town Board work session on Oct. 11, the Town’s consulting engineer mistakenly claimed that Sylvester Manor has fully endorsed this project. This is not accurate. While we remain supportive of the Town’s efforts to find solutions, including the possibility of a wastewater treatment system that serves municipal buildings, we are not in a position to endorse the currently proposed project or site at this time.

Rather, we remain committed to studying this proposed project further and following the science, wherever it leads.

We are working closely with our own consulting engineer to assess the proposed project and its potential impacts on this proposed site’s neighbors, and we support a full environmental review as required under the law.

We look forward to working collaboratively with the Town, experts in the field and environmental advocates to improve the Center’s water quality while at the same time addressing impacts that this project might have on our work to preserve and protect Sylvester Manor and share this 236-acre historic property with the whole community.

STEPHEN A.W. SEARL, Executive Director, Sylvester Manor

A thought and a suggestion

To the Editor:

Instead of contentious NIMBY wrangling over where to put a wastewater facility and debates about competing engineering proposals, why not really get creative?

We should consider involving the EPA, their engineers and grant money along with affiliated State and County entities in funding a system that recycles wastewater into usable, even for drinking, water that will indefinitely protect and preserve our shrinking aquifer.

The science, technology and practicality of this approach are well proven (see last week’s New York Times) and Shelter Island, being a closed system, is the perfect place to support a demonstration project.

This would have so many benefits, including relieving those residents near the Sound and Bay who due to the loss of reservoir water currently get only saline in their taps.

I do not want to underestimate the difficulties that such an undertaking could present, but we all should agree that since Shelter Island is a unique, exceptional and remarkable place, we could likely pull this off.

JAMES WEBSTER, MD, Shelter Island