Legislators, activists demand water study’s release

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The SENWA effectively stopped operation in 1997 and sat dormant until 2010, when it was revived as the WASENC, with a new board appointed by the Town of Hempstead and Town of Oyster Bay. The WASENC’s directors say they are working to carry out the job the State Legislature assigned the authority in 1991 of determining whether a public takeover of the water utility company that services southeast Nassau makes economic sense.

Since 2010, the WASENC’s board of directors has met just a handful of times on an ad hoc schedule. The WASENC has received $90,000 in funding from the Towns of Hempstead and Oyster Bay, and so far the authority retained legal counsel and George E. Sansoucy, P.E., LLC, a New Hampshire-based company, to study the feasibility of a public acquisition of NYAW.

John Molloy, a Town of Hempstead WASENC appointee, resigned in September 2011. His seat remains unfilled. In July 2012, WASENC board members said they expected the feasibility study to be complete by the end of 2012 or beginning of 2013. In April 2013, they said they expected it to be complete by the end of the summer or early fall that year. The Town of Hempstead hired John Mastromarino, a certified public accountant, former town comptroller and Nassau deputy comptroller, in January this year to review Sansoucy’s study.

Feasibility study

The WASENC hired Sansoucy to undertake the feasibility study in July 2012. Reinhardt confirmed that the study was finished in a November 2013 email to the Herald. The WASENC’s website states that Sansoucy “provided the authority with a draft preliminary report of its findings.” Reinhardt’s email stated that the WASENC would announce its next public meeting within days, but the authority never did so. The WASENC last held a public meeting in April 2013, at which it announced no new progress.

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