At a town hall-style meeting last week about drinking water contamination resulting from a 2023 fire at a battery energy storage facility in East Hampton, there were numbers, maps, and local politicians seeking credit for the facility’s closure.
And there was an acknowledgement that Suffolk County’s investigation into the source of the tainted water, and its understanding of “the plume,” is mostly complete.
The facility at 3 Cove Hollow Road is co-owned by NextEra and National Grid.
The meeting was led by Suffolk County Executive Ed Romaine, who proved to be a forceful master of ceremonies. At times he quipped with the speakers from the audience. Once, he pointed at and raised his stentorian voice at a surprised New York State Department of Environmental Conservation representative. He even shut down a question by a member of the press. He lent a theatrical flair to the proceedings.
“We’re at the end of the beginning,” said Andy Rapiejko, an associate hydrogeologist for the county who was responsible for leading the groundwater investigation, paraphrasing Winston Churchill’s famous quote from World War II.
Mr. Rapiejko gave a thorough and engaging presentation detailing how the Suffolk County hydrologists used a series of test wells to determine where the contaminated plume was, its source, and its size.
Further, there was an understanding that the next step to be taken was by the D.E.C., which will be tasked with working with the power companies to remediate the damage their facility caused.
During the May 2023 fire, Novec 1230, a chemical used in the facility’s waterless fire suppression system, mixed with water from the automatic sprinkler system, and eventually reached the groundwater supply. In a report on the contamination issued last month, the D.E.C. explained that alone, Novec 1230 does not pose any forever chemical risk, but when it mixes with water “it has the potential to break down to [ultra short chain] PFAS.”
On Oct. 14, Anthony Bollasina, a professional geologist with the D.E.C., tried to assure the crowd of perhaps 40 (mostly members of village, county, or state government) that from the time of the initial release in May 2023 of water mixed with Novec 1230, the water had moved “maybe a foot per day, maybe two feet per day.”
He said there was “no scenario” in which residents had been exposed for years and that it had taken time for the contaminated water to reach the Suffolk County Water Authority well field.
The well field looks to be about half a mile from the facility, 2,600 feet. The forever chemical PFPrA was first detected last winter, about 1,000 days after the fire occurred. So that would equal 2.6 feet a day if all the water had collected directly at the facility before seeping into the ground and beginning its journey south.
That scenario seems a bit unlikely, however, given that two million gallons of water could not be contained at the site and must have run down the road in some instances before entering the soil.
Gerry Turza, the fire and emergency medical services administrator for East Hampton Village, explained how the fire was put out. The Novec 1230 “extinguishing agent” was activated first and “no one entered the building.”
“I was standing there while the site rep was speaking with the fire chief,” he said.
Despite the release of Novec, “the temperature in the building was still rising.” That triggered the building’s automatic sprinkler system. It flowed for 30 hours while the temperature inside was monitored.
During the town’s review of the facility and another just like it in Montauk, a “negative declaration” was issued per the New York State Environmental Review Act, meaning that a detailed environmental review was not required. No catch basins were required to collect the potential release of millions of gallons of water.
Mr. Turza said that at one point during the fire the NextEra site representative told him to prepare to evacuate residents within a mile of the building.
“There had been several inches of water,” he said. When he met with Gov. Kathy Hochul’s working group months after the fire, he asked, “Over a million gallons of water? Where did it go?”
NextEra, he said — not the fire department — had control over shutting the water suppression system on and off.
So, questions remain about when residents were first exposed.
The county, Suffolk County Water Authority, and the state all seem to agree that coincidentally, the water authority was first able to test for PFPrA just as the leading edge of the plume reached what the water authority calls the Bridgehampton Road well field, meaning residents were barely impacted before the wells were taken offline.
But residents still don’t know why, if the fire suppression system used by NextEra was supposed to be waterless, it was ever mixed with water. Mr. Bollasina said this was “seemingly an anomalous situation.”
“The whole point of this system is it’s not supposed to be used with water,” he said.
“But they used two million gallons of water on this fire,” said Mr. Romaine, sort of throwing fuel on the fire again.
“Exactly, and mixed with 5,000 pounds of Novec 1230, [it] created a high load of concentrated PFPrA,” said Mr. Bollasina.
Along with the “ultra short chain” forever chemical PFPrA, PFOS, a more problematic longer-chain forever chemical, has also been found. Both chemicals have appeared in far higher concentrations than allowed for drinking water.
So, what is the human cost of drinking water laced with short and long-chain forever chemicals? No one really knows. The longer the chain, it seems, the more persistent and difficult the chemicals are for the body to expel.
When Mr. Romaine tried to end the meeting and have representatives from the New York State Department of Health answer individual questions “in the back,” Coleen Kalbacher wouldn’t have it.
“Is there someone from public health that can answer from the floor, please?”
“Okay,” he allowed.
She explained that she lives in the house nearest the test well with the highest concentrations. For months, she said, she had asked the town board to push for biomonitoring of impacted residents. “Repeatedly, that’s been turned down.”
Four members of her immediate family were experiencing health issues, one with severe thyroid levels problems. “PFPrA is known as a thyroid disrupter,” Ms. Kalbacher said. A 2002 study showing the compound’s impact on rats studied the impact on the rat’s liver, not its thyroid, she explained.
Meanwhile, neighbors are also having health issues. “Given that, you have to look at a shared environmental source,” she argued, but felt, thus far, she had been getting the runaround.
No one seems “to want to collect data on the health impact of the mess they’ve created,” said Ms. Kalbacher. “I’d like to know why? You’re tracking water, you’re tracking the chemicals, but you’re not tracking the impact of the water and the chemicals on the residents.”
Kevin Malone, the director of the division of environmental health assessment within the New York State Department of Health, told her there were “no plans” to do an area-wide health study. The state feels the county and water authority detected the contamination quickly and that the exposure to the bad water was limited. “Your situation is clinical. I can’t speak to it right now,” he said, but offered to take her information.
Richard Newton, a resident with a private well who lives in the vicinity of the battery storage facility, wondered if the town would help pay for a switch to public water. He also questioned whether it was smart for the county to “cut a deal” with the battery storage facilities to shut down instead of litigate. “As taxpayers, we have a right to litigate,” he said.
At Tuesday’s East Hampton Town Board meeting, Town Supervisor Kathee Burke-Gonzalez, who was also at the meeting hosted by Suffolk County, said the important takeaway was that, “according to the county, private well testing to date has not identified contamination exceeding the state drinking water standards or the state screening level for PFPrA.”
