By: Progress for Westhampton Beach
It’s a big issue. Residents are already burdened with high property taxes, and can not be called upon to fund massive public works, but that does not mean we stop looking for solutions and fail to seek funding. The trustees just authorized the Mayor to employ a a grant writer; that is a good start.
We need to go after and be ready for funding that is becoming available: federal, state, and local. If the preliminary work is not done grant opportunities will pass us by like we’re standing still.
The problem of nitrogen loading our waterways and drinking water should not be ignored. Without a solution the restrictions on our Main Street businesses will strangle this part of our tax base.
We must accept the problem as our own, and begin sorting through the possible solutions. There will be many people who can add to the pool of information as we wrestle with this problem. See Suffolk County’s Comprehensive Water Resource Management Plan; and Stony Brook University’s LICCRA and Suffolk Closeup by Karl Grossman, Are Sewers the Way to Go? Southampton Press, Western Edition, May 1, 2014 page A9.
It will probably require the combination of many solutions with all of us working together at the Village, Town, County, State and Federal levels to address the problem we have had for years.
The current estimation of sewage production in the Main Street business district is approximately 30,000 gallons per day. We all know where sea level is, just look at the Moniebogue Canal, and you know the 30,000 gallons gets mixed right into our bay. This is not about adding housing density, it is about addressing an existing problem that can not simply be flushed away. This requires a narrowly targeted solution to this problem.
We need to be our own best advocate. We must be fully informed, and be an active partner in finding the solutions that will work for Westhampton Beach.
