By Hank Russell
The Riverhead Town Board recently commenced legal action against the Town of Southampton challenging, among other things, what the town board called an inadequate environmental review of the creation of Southampton’s Riverside Sewer District and Riverside Sewer Project pursuant to the State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA) and violations of the New York State Constitution’s Green Amendment.
Riverhead’s complaint, which is scheduled to be filed in Suffolk County Supreme Court, claims the Town of Southampton failed to analyze the potentially significant adverse environmental impacts on the Town of Riverhead and the Riverhead Central School District arising from the future development of up to 2,300 residential units within the Riverside Area, entirely located in the Riverhead Central School District and the Riverhead Free Library District and substantially within the Riverhead Fire and Ambulance District.
In addition, the Town of Southampton failed to include the Suffolk County Center and Riverside Jail in its sewer district and connect those properties, located in Southampton Town, to its planned sewage treatment plant. Currently, the County facility is served by the Town of Riverhead via a “temporary” contract from the 1960s, according to the complaint.
“The Town of Riverhead, despite attempts to work with the Town of Southampton to make sure that the Riverside revitalization and sewage treatment plan was the best it could be and to protect the hard work it has done to effectuate meaningful revitalization in downtown Riverhead, [we were] forced to bring this action,” said Riverhead Town Supervisor Timothy Hubbard in a statement.
Hubbard said Southampton’s revitalization plan for Riverside is now 10 years old, “which does not take into account any of the dramatic demographic changes the area has experienced” over that time period and, as a result, “must be rewritten.”
In addition, Southampton decided to leave the county center and the jail out of the new sewer district, even though they are located within Southampton, according to Hubbard. “[This] prevents Riverhead from expanding its own sewer district service area to include West Main Street, which would prevent nitrogen from private septic systems from flowing into the river,” he said.
He also called the proposed location of the sewage treatment plant near Phillips Avenue Elementary School – without connecting the school to the sewer system — “the ultimate slap in the face to the families and teachers there. You simply don’t put a sewage treatment plant next to a school.”
With the addition of the 2,300 housing units slated to be hooked up to the newly proposed sewer district in Riverside, Hubbard said this would “unfairly [impose] tremendous pressure on Riverhead resources. … Our town cannot allow Southampton Town to exacerbate the incredible pressures felt by the Town and the Riverhead Central School District as a result of the tremendous influx of new residents over the past decade.”
In an interview with Long Island Life & Politics, Southampton Town Attorney James Burke said that Southampton is trying to provide “economic development to Riverside” the same way Riverhead did for its downtown. While he was “a little disappointed” to learn about Riverhead’s legal action against the town, Burke had nothing but good things to say about what the Hubbard administration has done with the downtown area.
“The Town of Riverhead has done a good job of what they happened to be doing at Main Street,” Burke said. “We’re just trying to do the same thing.”
Burke said Southampton is looking to avoid litigation and
“It was our hope that Southampton would work with us to ensure that the revitalization of Riverside was informed by the new reality in which we live and would yield the best possible results for Riverhead and Riverside,” Hubbard said. “Southampton refused and as a result, we were left with no choice but to challenge their actions and determinations in a judicial setting.”