Don’t Drink the Water
 Janis Hewitt
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(6/19/2008) Wen Gamba, the owner of Hither House on Lincoln Road in Montauk, didn’t think much of it when her daughter mentioned that their water tasted funny one day last month. The water at the commercial complex with four cottages and nine rental units had just had one of its quarterly tests in March by Eco Test Labs and had met all safety standards.
But in May, when she received the results of a mandatory yearly analysis from the New York State Department of Health notifying her that the drinking water from the well contained methyl tertiary butyl ether, known as MTBE, a gasoline additive, she was shocked, she said.
“We wouldn’t have known, and kept on drinking it,” she said last week surrounded by jugs of I.G.A.-brand spring water that she has been supplying her guests with.
The initial state inspection of the well water met acceptable sanitary standards. The analysis of the drinking water, however, exceeded, by 16 parts per billion, the maximum contamination level of 10 parts per billion established by the State Department of Health.
There are about five other houses surrounding Hither House that have also been contaminated, but citing privacy issues, officials will not release the names of the homeowners. Ms. Gamba thinks the gasoline is leaching from the East Hampton Town-owned Montauk Transfer Station. “We’re so close to the dump,” she noted.
“I don’t think it’s fair. The town should be cooperating with us. Nobody’s doing anything,” she said, adding that she’s been told the families will have to fork over the money for a public water hookup or install pricey copper filters on the existing wells.
The Suffolk County Water Authority can easily hook the residences up to public water from a main on the Montauk State Parkway, said Patrick South, a water authority spokesperson. It would take a couple of months and about 1,000 feet of pipe. It will also be costly, he said, noting that the water authority would charge a surcharge of about $4,897 and almost $40,000 per homeowner to extend the line. In the past, he said, the Town of East Hampton has advanced the funding for the homeowners.
Bill Fonda, spokesperson for the State Department of Environmental Conservation, said that before the D.E.C. investigates the source of the contamination, it must first do several analyses to find out how severe the problem is. “The source could have been a gas can going over,” he said.
Once the samples are collected and analyzed, the D.E.C. will act “fairly quickly,” Mr. Fonda said. Typically, the D.E.C. will supply water to private homeowners, but not to a commercial establishment. “A commercial structure is capable of securing their own resources,” he said.
Ms. Gamba said that she has already paid a lot of money to maintain her well properly and have it serviced. She thinks the town should take more responsibility, especially if the source of contamination is coming from the transfer station.