Ahead of Tuesday’s Democratic Primary for East Hampton Town supervisor, both campaigns came under fire for separate matters related to PFAS contamination.
PFAS, known as “forever chemicals,” do not break down and over time can collect in the body.
At the East Hampton Town Board meeting on Tuesday, Supervisor Kathee Burke-Gonzalez heard criticism and questions from Si Kinsella, a resident of Wainscott, who shared an email he sent the town board and over 1,000 residents in January 2024 in which he warned that a May 2023 fire at the East Hampton Energy Storage Facility near the intersection of Cove Hollow Road and Route 114 likely contaminated groundwater.
Mr. Kinsella’s comments come after recent allegations in a Suffolk County Water Authority lawsuit filed on May 29 in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York.
It has not been determined for sure that the forever chemicals found in the wells originated from the fire.
Meanwhile, a mailer sent out last week by Ms. Burke-Gonzalez’s challenger, Jerry Larsen’s, campaign — also related to PFAS contamination — was called “grossly inaccurate and defamatory” by James Rigano, an attorney who was featured in it, smiling in a red baseball cap, the style favored by President Trump, on which the words “We Sue Fire Departments” was written.
Mr. Rigano’s law firm, Rigano L.L.C., has been hired by the town to reclaim money spent to remediate drinking water wells in the Wainscott area after they were contaminated with forever chemicals linked to the use of firefighting foam at a Village Fire Department training facility near the airport.
During the public portion of Tuesday’s town board meeting, Mr. Kinsella coasted past the three-minute mark as he criticized the supervisor for her handling of concerns about PFAS contamination following the 2023 fire.
“During the recent town board meeting on June 2, you said, ‘I refuse to ask families to wait years for a court to decide who is to blame before their water is protected. Accountability matters, but a lawsuit does not test a private well or groundwater nor does it ensure enough water is available. That work has to start now,’ “ he said, quoting the supervisor.
“I know who is to blame,” he continued. “It’s you. I blame you for unnecessarily exposing residents to harmful PFAS contaminants by failing to test the groundwater two and a half years ago, in January 2024.”
“As you observed, ‘accountability matters,’ and I hold you accountable for failing to protect those families from ingesting toxic chemicals.”
The fire released “well over a ton of lithium iron salt” he added.
“You knew that to quell the fire, an emergency sprinkler system ran for 30 hours, releasing approximately 2.2 million gallons of water to extinguish it. So much water, in fact, that it flowed out of the building onto the adjacent road.” That statement was corroborated in a December 2023 New York State Department of Environmental Conservation report on the fire.
“If someone in a family who had been ingesting water from any of the 30 contaminated wells gets sick, perhaps gets cancer from ingesting the toxic PFAS chemicals, how would you explain to the family that you were the person responsible, who had the information at hand but refused to test groundwater two and a half years ago?” he asked.
“Thank you,” said the supervisor.
“That was a question,” Mr. Kinsella responded.
“Si, I’m not going to answer you right now,” said Ms. Burke-Gonzalez.
In an email after the meeting, Patrick Derenze, the town’s public information officer, offered a statement from the supervisor.
“When PFAS was detected in S.C.W.A. wells, we acted,” she wrote. “We created a task force with the state, county, the village, S.C.W.A., and the town so this response is coordinated and moving. The source still has to be confirmed, but the work cannot wait. We need the private wells tested, the data shared, monitoring wells installed, and a remediation plan in place. That is the work I am pushing for, and I will keep fighting until residents have answers and this is addressed.”
Mr. Derenze also said in a text that both Suffolk County and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation test groundwater. “We rely on the expertise of the D.E.C.,” he wrote.
Importantly, according to the 526-page December 2023 D.E.C. report on three energy storage facility fires that occurred in the summer of 2023, including the East Hampton fire, the D.E.C. did not conduct the soil testing itself.
Soil testing was outsourced to NextEra Energy, one of the partners in the facility with National Grid.
In a separate statement regarding the town’s review of the storage center’s construction, Mr. Derenze said the planning board and Planning Department reviewed its plans and that “containment was required associated with transformers on site to prevent spills from reaching groundwater.” When the board inquired about the need for containment, the developer’s consultant said, “the electrolyte within the battery is a non-aqueous organic solvent. Accordingly, there is no liquid within the battery cell that could spill.”
The 4,100-square-foot facility “draws power from the grid during off-peak hours and stores it in the lithium battery racks to later be released during high-demand hours, which is especially critical in the summer months,” the report explained.
Soil samples were collected, five from where firewater had collected, and two from an “unimpacted” area, and compared. The state tested for 26 metals, including lithium, but apparently did not test for PFAS contamination.
“Since no adverse impacts to soil from the discharge of firewater were identified, D.E.C. did not require groundwater sampling,” read the report. “Based on the results of this investigation, no further remedial actions are required by D.E.C. at this time.”
Back to the Larsen mailer, Mr. Rigano said in an email this week, “Larsen has never met me. I registered as a Republican 50 years ago at the urging of my father. The party was much different then. I have not voted Republican for over a decade and certainly am not MAGA.”
“The issue is not Mr. Rigano personally,” Mr. Larsen wrote in a text.
“The issue is that Supervisor Burke-Gonzalez accepted a $5,000 campaign contribution from an attorney who is currently being paid by taxpayers to represent the town in active litigation against the Village of East Hampton.”
“Whether that creates an actual conflict is for others to decide, but it certainly creates the appearance of an inappropriate relationship, and voters have a right to know about it,” he wrote.
“Town taxpayers have spent millions cleaning up the village’s mess — while the village has $100+ million in insurance to pay for the cleanup,” Mr. Rigano wrote. “On March 9, we offered to end this litigation entirely through the village’s insurance proceeds, at zero cost and zero risk to taxpayers.”
Indeed, a March 9 letter from Mr. Rigano’s son, Nicholas, a partner in his firm, to Edward Pinter, who has been hired by the village as outside counsel in the matter, offered a settlement proposal that “will eliminate all of defendants’ [the village] uninsured exposure without the defendants’ admitting to any liability.”
“The town is willing to accept a consent judgment that includes an express disclaimer stating that the defendants do not admit liability, wrongdoing, fault, or causation of any contamination,” wrote Nicholas Rigano.
“Mr. Larsen never responded,” James Rigano wrote in his email. “Not one word. He chose to litigate instead.”
“We were puzzled — until this flyer arrived,” he continued. “Now it’s clear. Mr. Larsen is engaging in his own political maneuvering while subjecting the village which he represents to unnecessary risk and inserting politics into a serious environmental problem.”
Lisa Perillo, the village attorney, said the March letter “Is the very last one in a long history. Basically, this letter was just like the one before, which we responded to. There’s no lawful way for our insurance company to pay his claim unless we admit liability. We’ve been consistently trying to settle. The town isn’t interested in settling. They’re interested in recovering money.”
“As for the lawsuit itself, I cannot comment on pending litigation,” the mayor said in his text. “What I can say is that the East Hampton Village Fire Department was not negligent. Many of the firefighters and volunteers were themselves exposed and could reasonably be viewed as victims.”
“The village will not admit responsibility for something it did not do, and it will continue to defend itself in court,” he continued. “In 2024, shortly after Supervisor Burke-Gonzalez took office, I raised these concerns directly with her. In my view, the focus should have been on addressing the manufacturer accountable for any contamination, rather than one municipality suing another or targeting the firefighters.”
Mr. Rigano and the town disagree with the mayor’s assessment.
“Please understand that the Village Fire Department caused significant contamination at the town airport and has insurance to cover the substantial remedial costs,” wrote Mr. Rigano.
“Despite contaminating Wainscott’s drinking water, Mr. Larsen’s village walked away. No cleanup. No accountability. Worse,” he alleged, “the village withheld information from the town and misled the D.E.C., causing years of delay in protecting the public’s drinking water.”
“Larsen knows we are seeking to have the village insurer pay so the taxpayers don’t have to,” he continued. “What the village attorney is really saying is that Larsen is standing with the village’s insurer instead of the town’s taxpayers. Quite an interesting position for a man running for town supervisor.”
