Navy pays up

In the same spot he stood eight months ago, calling on the U.S. Navy to pay for the construction of a water treatment plant in northern Seaford, Sen. Charles Schumer announced victory last Friday morning.

Schumer said that the Navy has paid the first installment of money it owed the South Farmingdale Water District for the construction of a treatment plant off Route 107 in Seaford. The plant will treat water at Well No. 3 and remove contaminants from the toxic Navy Grumman plume. The $3.3 million payment will help prevent rate increases for customers in the water district.

Construction of the plant began in 2012, and began operating a year later. Although the plume has yet to reach the plant, “It’s knocking on our doorstep,” said John Hirt, one of three water district commissioners.

The toxic plume is the result of work done for decades at the Naval Weapons Industrial Reserve Plant in Bethpage, operated by the U.S. Navy on Grumman property. The contaminants were discovered in the 1980s. The plume has continued to spread, and has reached as far south as the Southern State Parkway in some spots.

The South Farmingdale Water District’s Plant No. 3 is directly in the path of the plume. Last year, Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed legislation ordering containment and an eventual cleanup of the toxins, but no timetable has been set for that work.

Until then, residents will be assured of clean drinking water as a result of treatment plants that have been built in Seaford and other surrounding communities. Several water districts are affected by the plume, including South Farmingdale and its nearly 45,000 customers.

The plume has reached, or is nearing, at least 20 wells that serve roughly 250,000 residents. “A fifth of Nassau County is affected by this,” Schumer said on May 1, when he presented a $3.3 million check to South Farmingdale Water District commissioners. They then toasted with glasses of clean drinking water.