At the start of a Tuesday press conference overlooking Georgica Pond about groundwater tainted with forever chemicals, perhaps from the East Hampton Energy Storage Center a mile north on Cove Hollow Road, Suffolk County Executive Ed Romaine referenced a fact sheet released Friday by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation.
In it, the D.E.C. said the origin of the contamination that caused two Suffolk County Water Authority wells to be taken offline, was unclear.
“I read that and thought about starting off with ‘Sweet Caroline,’ ” the Neil Diamond song. “How does that song start?” Mr. Romaine asked.
“Where it begins?” someone answered from the press crowd.
Mr. Romaine chuckled and then changed character altogether.
“Well, we do know it!” he said, raising his voice. “We know it, and the water authority knows it, and this contamination began with battery storage here in East Hampton.”
“We’re very concerned about that,” he said, calmer, before calling for the facility to suspend operations.
Dr. Gregson Pigott, the Suffolk County health commissioner, added that “the agent of concern is a short-chained PFAS compound, perfluoropropionic acid [PFPrA]” and said the county is offering free well testing to detect the compound. “It’s still very murky in terms of human health effects,” he said.
Mr. Romaine went on to discuss the recent litigation pressed by the Suffolk County Water Authority against NextEra Energy, which operates the battery facility, and added that the county supports the litigation. Joking again, he pointed to Christopher Clayton, the Suffolk County attorney, in the crowd and said his presence alone “could tell you where this is heading.”
Conspicuously absent from the speakers around the podium was Town Supervisor Kathee Burke-Gonzalez, who, according to Patrick Derenze, the town’s public information officer, was not invited to the event.
She offered another theory about the source of contamination at a town board meeting at the end of June: a 2005 plane crash at Mill Hill Lane and Meadow Way, about a mile east of the contaminated wells. That fire was extinguished using aqueous film-forming foam, the same foam that led to the East Hampton Town Airport’s designation as a Superfund site.
When asked if the facility should be shut, in a statement, the town hedged.
“The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation is actively investigating the contamination and has not yet identified its source,” Mr. Derenze wrote in a text. “Once the investigation is complete and all the facts are known, we will determine the most appropriate course of action.”
However, at Tuesday’s event, a Suffolk County official, speaking off the record, said the groundwater moves south in the crash area and thus “wasn’t even on the radar” of the county. “It’s a side gradient there,” they said, and considered it highly unlikely that it would travel west to contaminate the Bridgehampton Road Wellfield. (The wellfield is located north and east of the intersection of Cove Hollow and Buckskill Roads; there is no Bridgehampton Road.)
Indeed, as of late June, apparently the D.E.C. was unaware of a second potential contamination source as well.
The Suffolk County official added that the county hadn’t drilled wells near the crash site and doubted it ever would.
Directly downstream of the Cove Hollow battery storage facility, however, it has drilled plenty.
“We’ve sunk nine wells and we’re going to be sinking more,” said the county executive, as he detailed their investigative efforts. “These findings are off the charts!”
Adding a touch of sarcasm, he said that the PFPrA in a well located just off Cove Hollow Road, six-tenths of a mile due south of the battery storage facility, came in at 1,170,000 parts per trillion. The state standards allow for 3,000 parts per trillion. “Slightly over!” he said.
Those numbers were measured at 35 to 40 feet below ground. Other nearby wells had equally alarming numbers. Most of the worst contamination was located anywhere between 35 and 60 feet below ground.
“This was disturbing. And based on this, we’re expanding our investigation,” Mr. Romaine said. The county will test groundwater, but also surface water at Georgica Pond, Hook Pond, and Lily Pond.
“Why?” he asked rhetorically. “Because when you put 2.2 million gallons of water [in the ground] in a short period of time, it goes into the groundwater.”
The county executive repeatedly hit on the D.E.C. for not investigating quickly or thoroughly enough after the 2023 fire that resulted in millions of gallons of runoff when the fire suppression system activated to extinguish the blaze.
“I feel bad that the governor was misled back in December of 2023 when she put out a statement that battery energy storage was not harmful,” he said. “That statement was based on information she received from the D.E.C. This is not her coming to this conclusion. We think that information was wrong. We think they delayed the cleanup; we think it delayed the response.”
He urged the D.E.C. to “start thinking about how you clean this up because you’re talking about people’s drinking water.”
Andy Rapiejko, an associate hydrogeologist for the county, responsible for drilling many of the test wells, spoke next. In January, the water authority notified the county that it was able to test for PFPrA. He explained why the chemical is concerning.
“It’s problematic because the regular PFAS [forever chemicals] that we’ve been testing for the last 10 years are pretty easily removed with carbon. This particular PFAS, carbon doesn’t work well with it. So, there was concern with the water authority because there wasn’t a good way to treat it.” The water authority was forced to switch off its wells and asked the county to investigate.
The county installed four “profile wells” between the battery storage facility and the water authority wellfield and was “quite surprised” with the levels of PFPrA detected.
“We have six additional profile wells, which we’re currently sampling even as we speak,” Mr. Rapiejko said.
When asked how he was confident the chemicals originated from the NextEra storage facility, he explained the way contamination moves in groundwater.
“The higher it is in the water table, the closer you are to the source,” he said. “If it’s really deep you know you’re far away from the source, and it’s been in there a long time. As it flows down, it also sinks. So, the fact that this one million in this well is about 35 to 40 feet down from the surface, that would indicate a few years of flow.”
The press conference came after both the county executive and East Hampton Village Mayor Jerry Larsen sent letters last week to John Ketchum and Zoe Yujnovich, the chief executives of NextEra Energy and National Grid, respectively, urging them to suspend operations at the East Hampton facility until the investigation is complete.
The companies have refused.
In his letter, the mayor called for the installation of groundwater protection systems.
“At a minimum, those systems should include a proven containment and collection system capable of capturing contaminated fire suppression water, runoff, and other releases before they enter the groundwater system during any future fire or catastrophic fire,” he wrote.
He also questioned whether an evacuation plan, which called for a radius of a mile around the facility, encompassing portions of Montauk Highway and three schools, was actionable.
The Star has drawn attention to a similar facility owned by NextEra in Montauk, disconcertingly close to both Fort Pond Bay and Fort Pond.
When asked, the county executive said that would have to be addressed by the town, which approved the plans.
As with the Cove Hollow facility, the East Hampton Town Planning Board issued a “negative declaration” when both were reviewed, meaning the board felt they had enough environmental information to make a more stringent environmental review unnecessary.
When asked if more review should have been conducted, Mr. Derenze answered with a statement.
“A review of the Planning Department and planning board files shows that a detailed review of the proposed BESS was conducted,” he wrote. “The town remains concerned that information disclosing the true risk associated with these facilities was not provided to previous decision makers regarding the safety of the BESS. The town continues to investigate this issue and will explore mechanisms to ensure the safety of the facilities with the site owners and developer.”
“I think as this unfolds, public opinion is going to be critical,” said Mr. Romaine. “This facility really impacted us well beyond what it should have. There is no question in my mind, there is no question in the water authority’s mind, that the source of this contamination is the battery energy storage plant. I’m hoping that D.E.C. will wake up, realize that, and realize ‘Whoops! We goofed this.’ ”
