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HomeMy WebLinkAbout09/04/2025 Town of Southold Water Advisory Committee— Meeting Minutes September 4, 2025 Attendees: Caroline,Joe Finora, Kate, Maggie, Anne Smith, Anne Murray, Brian Mealy virtually Agenda: Next steps for Zoning Update Admin: no seats open for new members Orient Water Committee 9-12 October 25t" Fred Stum and other speakers including Joe Finora This Satruday at Peconic Landing Community Center, presentation on IA systems Cutochogue will hold Climate Change forum in a few weeks. 1. Found water map at Town archive. Suggestion we need a repository for our Committee. We have a lot of relevant documents and they shouldn't be out of sight. E.g. 2007 Board approval could not be found. Per Kariane, there is a folder and we can add scanned documents and links. Kariane would send to Stacy in the records department who would scan it into laser fiche. Kariane will keep a more informal folder on her computer. 2. Shelter Island irrigation ban impact, about 20 years ago, shared by Joe Finora: 90% of population served by wells. Extensive PFAS testing. Mostly baseline levels at or below 10ppt regs. Pockets that exceed it. Not on scale in Orient. No hot spots or historic industrial use. From consumer products like Teflon pans. But it is pervasive. Town of Shelter Island (about 70 customers) does have one system and Dering Harbor also owns one, operated by SCWA. At the time of the ban, permanent irrigation was not in widespread use. Act was largely preventative instead of trying to reverse course. So impossible to say if there's been an improvement in volume. But quantitatively, there were a number of irrigation systems maybe 100-150 pre-existing. Those were grandfathered in, and could continue in perpetuity but need to renew annually. Permit required a plan of your irrigation system, kinds of equipment, flow rates for the well, chloride test (due to upconing effect/saltwater intrusion—where drawing from well draws up salt water). Upconing could be a design or installation problem, not just water level problem. If Cl reached 200ppm permit would be suspended. Not an irrigation ban, it's a ban on permanent automatic irrigation. Hand watering is permitted and one sprinkler type device is allowed. Carveouts for agriculture, nurseries, golf courses tees and greens, and new plantings, e.g. driplines for new hedges. Has done well in preventing widescale installation and the grandfathered spots have been cut in half. But loophole allows off-island water to be used for your irrigation. Can install if it's fed by a cistern. Pool filling, irrigation, water service to a dock. Scale has tilted and now community says too many trucks and Southold Town complaining. Shelter Island community aware of issue, don't like the trucks and culturally very connected to water use. Don't oppose the irrigation law, it's part of the community character. Brown lawns are part of the vista. Would need to modify the Irrigation Code. They have reinstated the Irrigation Committee a few times, but never crossed the finish line. Not an active committee. Water Advisory Committee has been the lead on updating the potential code change. Very active committee. Where could Southold WAC be helpful?Joe would connect the two for a conversation. 3. Zoning Update Caroline, Maggie, Anne Murray met with Heather Lanza in Planning for 2 hours and split up research. Recommendation to Town: apply aquifer protection measure to the entirety of Southold Town, not just separate areas. Existing protections for: Deep recharge areas, and special areas at risk, aquifer overlays, groundwater protections. Suffolk County subwatershed waste water plan: delineates areas in Southold and all of Suffolk County where county wants to prioritize switching to IA waste water treatment systems. Heather interested in something that affects the entire town, vs. us trying to delineate areas at risk, because the latter would be harder to zone and enforce. East Hampton, Shelter Island and Southampton all have greater protections. They did watershed planning projects in the 1990s and created reports to support the planning for updated zoning. LWRP mentioned report that town adopted a water map in 2000. Some map exists of a town agreement to extend water supply into certain areas and not others. June 2000. July 2006 Water Supply Plan Map. Areas outside of the water supply extension planning, may be areas of special consideration and may need special designation. Water Protection Zone Map: Could consider large areas to north shore as Source Area. Need to share this map with Heather in case she's unaware. WPZ is from 2000 report. If you combine WPZ map and 2000 map it's almost the entire North Fork. Next Steps: Committee members read 2000 report. Follow-up meeting with Heather to brief her on maps and documents and the tools the other towns are using. We want to get into specifics of things that she knows generally to be helpful to her. And get more guidance from her. Invite Al and Anne to that meeting. Get Heather's guidance on best approach to this huge area of work. If not addressed now, needs to be addressed rapidly, if separately. Careful about things that might be updates that could need to be changed (undone) later if we delay. Per Anne S this sector was put on hold to get the larger Zoning Update moving, but now WAC could recommend this be brought back in. Tweak within larger document. Heather is empowered to make those tweaks and can share with Town Board. But Town Board is already reviewing changes from thousands of Public Hearing comments. WAC input needs to be concurrent. In parallel we could send letter to Board. Joe notes: consider what's managed at the State level, protection efforts baked into other governing agencies. Many of the needed protections are happening but not at the local level, e.g. well separate distances. And we can enhance those protections where needed. E.g. depths to groundwater. Water withdrawal is regulated at the state level. Difficult to modify those. Recharge, rainwater capture, permeable surfaces, stormwater management, tree codes, landscape restrictions related to recharge and rainwater capture are not regulated at any other level of government. (NYC reservoir protection a great model considered successful.) First step: we could focus on recharge provisions, identify great example in adjacent area. Planning code doesn't have a lot of renovations, re setbacks, and not much on water protection. Reviewed, public hearing, and vote by January 111 October meeting: Agenda to talk about education/web site. How can WAC help with next steps re Orient issues and what they need from the town. Orient said they can't advocate for themselves any further with NYSDEC and need town to intervene. WAC can be vehicle for this.