On January 30, Suffolk County Water Authority workers hooked the first of about 500 homes in North Shirley to public water under a U.S. Department of Energy program. A second home in the neighborhood was connected to public water the following day.
The program is a precautionary measure to protect neighborhood residents from the possibility that their wells might draw groundwater containing contamination linked to Brookhaven National Laboratory.
The Department of Energy announced the hookup program at a public meeting on January 16, after Lab environmental/groundwater studies revealed that contamination from two closed landfills and the waste management facility had entered Long Island's sole source aquifer and traveled beyond the Lab boundary.
Some 500 homes will be tested by the Suffolk County Department of Health Services as part of this hookup program. Testing should be completed by early March. Neighborhood-wide hookups, to be conducted by a Suffolk County Water Authority contractor, are scheduled to start in April and be completed by the end of September.
To date, more than 315 residential wells in N. Shirley have been sampled by the county. Six residential wells have been identified with contamination levels at or above New York State drinking water standards. As results of the six contaminated wells were received, BNL immediately provided bottled drinking water to the households.
Four of the six homes have water mains on their streets, and three of them have been connected. One is in the process of being hooked up. The other two homes do not have water mains on their street and are being provided with bottled water and carbon filters as an interim measure.
Five of the wells had an unacceptable level of 1,1,1 trichloroethane (TCA), a common industrial solvent. Health Services has stated that this contamination originated in an industrial park just north of the neighborhood. The sixth residential well showed an unacceptable level of trichorofluoromethane, a type of Freon, which is not a contaminant from BNL.
The DOE is processing a grant with the Water Authority for water main installation and home service connections.