Water Advisory Committee: Test your water
If there is a single message the Water Advisory Committee (WAC) wants Islanders to follow it’s to test their water.
The WAC has secured money, largely from the Water Quality Improvement Advisory Board, to test for nitrates, saltwater intrusion and plans are in the works for testing in the Center triangle for emerging contaminants.
A major concern of members of the WAC are those who have refused the offer to have their water tested despite reimbursement of the fee charged by the Suffolk County Department of Health Services Water Division. But WAC members sat they won’t give up easily. Town Engineer Joe Finora, who has been setting up the testing, has continued to move on to get participants in the areas where the Town needs more data.
As with all Town-sponsored testing, property owners receive full information about what the tests reveal, but the Town only receives broad information, not by specific addresses, but a general area where nitrates were found. What committee members know is that nitrates don’t travel by themselves, and where concentrations of nitrates were high, they can expect to find PFAS, the so-called “forever contaminants,” that come from many man-made products that have proven to be dangerous to the health of those drinking water carrying those contaminants.
To augment the effort to learn more about contaminants, the WAC is organizing a “Know Your Water Weekend” program, likely to take place in July or early August to reach out to people throughout the Island to share information about the importance of having their water tested.
Another program on which the committee is focused is a followup to a United States Geological Survey (USGS) baseline study of water quality. The aim is to test water in the same areas where it was tested almost 10 years ago to determine if its quality had deteriorated or improved through the decade.
The United States Geological Survey (USGS), which does the monthly well tests to determine water quantity, is offering the Town participation in the 10-year baseline study. Initially, members were concerned about the cost they thought had escalated, and began negotiating to see if the Town could rollback some aspects to save money. Negotiations with the USGS revealed the cost of the study 10 years ago had been miscalculated, that while the cost of participating in the followup study is somewhat higher, it’s not to the extent the WAC had calculated.
Mr. Finora is negotiating with the USGS to determine if some aspects of the new testing might be dropped without sacrificing vital information.
