Water district customers to get quality update this spring

By ANA BoRRUTo aborruto@liherald.com

How safe is your drinking water? Those who depend on the Franklin Square Water District will find out when officials send out a report this coming May.

The district is still compiling and analyzing data collected in the past year, which it will then send out to 20,000 people living in parts of Stewart Manor, Elmont and Franklin Square. Customers there depend on 41 miles of water main, five supply wells and two elevated storage tanks.

And it’s expected to be a good report, water district superintendent John Hughes said. The dis- trict has implemented several preventive measures and new technologies to combat emerging contaminants — most notably dioxane, a well as perfluorooctanoic acid and perfluorooctane sulfonate — collectively known as PFAS.

“It goes down the sewer drains and all of the housing drains, and then it just eventually makes its way into the groundwater,” Hughes said. “The older generations — our parents — what they dumped down into the ground, oils and different pesticides, unfortunately now that’s what we’re pulling up out of the ground. And we have to combat that with filtration.”

The district detected a slight trace of dioxane in one of its Theodora Street Plant wells in 2021, Hughes said. However, the detection did not go over the maximum contaminant limit — or MCL — set forth by the state health department. This is the highest level of a chemical allowed in the drinking water.

Once the district reported a detection, the state granted funding to correct it through filtration, Hughes said. The $4.12 million New York State Water Infrastructure Act Grant allowed for a new wellhead treatment system to be built at Theodora Street.

The district also asked the state for a deferral during construction that would allow it to continue to supplying drinking water. The state approved it since the dioxane contamination was still within limits deemed safe for use.

But that didn’t mean the state treated the issue as out of sight, out of mind, Hughes said. Instead, the deferral held off any enforcement actions from Albany, so long as the water district meets the established deadlines. The dioxane deferral ended Dec. 31, with the district never going over any of the safety limits.

“If we did go above the level, we would have had to notify the public that we are above the limit, we know about it, but

Continued on page 24

The newly elecTed 20232024 board members of the Community League of Garden City South were joined by local government officials at a swearing in ceremony held on Feb. 1.

Established in 1929, he organization is the first incorporated civic on Long Island.