Suffolk County Water Authority suing East Hampton BESS operator

The NYS Department of Transportation will begin $146 million in bridge and road repairs across Long Island this summer, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced yesterday, promising that upgrades would not affect peak summer beach travel.“Investing in Long Island’s bridges and highways means investing in safety, economic opportunity and improving the stability of vital roadways while building a dependable transportation system that Long Islanders need,” Hochul said in a statement.Janon Fishe reports in NEWSDAY that punishing commercial truck traffic makes up a tenth of the 190,000 vehicles that use the Long Island Expressway, tearing up the roadway, transportation officials said.That is why most of the $146 million highway fund will go toward repaving 193 lane miles of the Long Island Expressway and 140 lane miles of Sunrise Highway, the governor said.The governor promised that traffic disruption due to construction will not happen during rush hours and it will be coordinated with other traffic projects going on at the same time.Suffolk County will get $3.6 million to seal pavement cracks and work on the wooden noise barriers will continue, according to the governor.Heckscher State Parkway in Suffolk County has already started a $15 million project to repair concrete pavement in the Town of Islip. The governor said it would be finished by the end of next year.State Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation Commissioner Kathy Moser said in a statement that Hecksher State Park is "one of Long Island’s most treasured outdoor destinations, welcoming more than 1.3 million visitors each year," adding that the construction will "provide better access for the many visitors who enjoy this iconic state park.”***The Suffolk County Water Authority filed a federal lawsuit against the operator of an East Hampton Battery Energy Storage System (BESS) operator late last week after the discovery of high levels of perfluorinated compounds in nearby public drinking water wells following a 2023 fire at the BESS facility.East Hampton Town is now calling for a task force to protect the community’s drinking water.Beth Young reports in EAST END BEACON that two of the Water Authority’s affected wells, which are south of the BESS facility, exceeded New York State’s maximum contaminant level for PFAS, and SCWA has taken the affected wells out of service as a result of the detections, according to the Town of East Hampton, which released a statement about the incident this past Friday.The 5 MW BESS system, called the East Hampton Energy Storage Center, is at an electric substation on Cove Hollow Road. It is a joint venture of NextEra Energy Resources and National Grid that came online in 2018. In addition to the operators of the Energy Storage Center, the Water Authority’s lawsuit also names battery manufacturers LG Chem and LG Energy Solutions as defendants.A fire broke out at the BESS system on May 31 of 2023. Officials said at the time it was contained as designed, with a built in fire suppression system.The lawsuit, filed in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York, alleges that the casings of the batteries “opened and released their contents” during the fire, and water from the fire suppression efforts ran off the property and into an undeveloped area to the south of the property. The wells are about 2,500 feet south of the BESS facility.On Friday, June 5, East Hampton Town Supervisor Kathee Burke-Gonzalez issued a statement calling on New York State, Suffolk County, and Suffolk County Water Authority leaders “to form a coordinated joint task force to protect the community’s drinking water and groundwater.”In a letter to New York Governor Kathy Hochul, Suffolk County Executive Edward P. Romaine, and the Suffolk County Water Authority, Ms. Burke-Gonzalez “asked the offices to establish a joint task force to ensure that residents’ drinking water and the underlying groundwater are protected, including testing nearby private wells and pooling state and county resources so that the burden does not fall on ratepayers or individual homeowners.”***The Riverhead Town Board is slated to hold a public hearing on the proposed site plan for the new five-story hotel adjacent to the town’s Town Square project at a special meeting this coming Wednesday, June 10 at 6 p.m.Beth Young reports in EAST END BEACON that the five-story “Peconic Hotel,” slated to be a part of the Hilton Tapestry Collection is currently proposed as a five-story, 69,738-square-foot building containing a 94-room hotel, retail spaces, a restaurant, café and nine parking stalls on the lowest level, according to the public hearing notice.The project is being proposed by J. Petrocelli Contracting, named last year the Town of Riverhead’s Master Developer of the Town Square project.The hotel will be on property transferred last year from the town to J. Petrocelli as part of the Town Square deal. It was initially slated to include 76 hotel rooms, 12 penthouse condos on the fifth floor, three retail shops and a restaurant facing onto the Town Square, and parking spaces for the condos under the building.The condos have now been replaced with 14 hotel suites.***Now that New York has joined the nationwide rush to redraw congressional lines mid-decade, Democrats in the State Legislature are determined not to repeat the failures of the past.Steve Hughes reports in NEWSDAY that in 2021, voters across the state soundly rejected a Democratic-backed plan that would have allowed them to gerrymander the state’s congressional districts.Although a vote on the Democrats' current push to redraw the lines is still 17 months away, both Republicans and Democrats are preparing for a long battle to convince voters they are in the right. Redistricting changes in New York State can't be implemented until the 2028 congressional elections.New York State Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins (D-Yonkers) said Democrats would have a different approach than in 2021, when the party was outspent by Republicans in engaging voters."I think the lessons learned are simply that you can't assume people know what it is you're doing, and you can't assume that if you do nothing, things will happen the way you want them," she said during a recent news conference.A proposal that passed the State Legislature in the final days of the legislative session allows state Democrats to approve new maps with a simple majority vote and removes a ban on maps drawn to benefit a political party. It also says that if the maps are successfully challenged in court, they go back to the legislature for changes.Democrats hope that eventual new district lines could help them pick up as many as four seats, including ones on Long Island and in the Hudson Valley. Democrats currently hold 19 of New York's 26 seats.New York’s redistricting push differs from other states. States like Alabama and Louisiana have moved quickly, redrawing maps that erase districts where the majority of voters are minorities.But New York’s process is more deliberate. First, state legislators must pass for a second time a proposal overhauling the state’s redistricting process during next year’s legislative session to put it on the November 2027 ballot.Then the real battle will begin.***He has Knicks fans believing they can go all the way — to heaven.Alex Mitchell reports in THE NY POST that a Long Island bishop who used to play college hoops is using his beloved Knicks and their “biblical” like 13-game postseason winning streak to get New Yorkers closer to God.“Like Peter, James, and John were called from fishing nets, I was called from basketball nets,” Bishop John Barres of the Diocese of Rockville Centre told The Post near the altar of St. Agnes Cathedral. The leader of approximately 1.2 million baptized Catholics throughout Nassau and Suffolk said, “New York Knicks, 2026, we’re so grateful to you…For the wonderful way you’ve turned Madison Square Garden again to just a magical place, and brought so many New Yorkers together.” The former point guard for Princeton University’s JV team in the late 1970s had his spiritual outlook shaped by both playing hoops and following his favorite basketball team — especially their “unselfishness.”“They formed me in so many ways,” Barres said of watching the 1970 and 1973 NBA champs as a boy.Barres is exemplifying the 2026 New York Knickerbockers long-awaited title run by teaching Long Island’s 1,000 newly confirmed Catholics and others to “step up” into their roles as “humble, compassionate” lights of Christ.. “I use the example of Jalen Brunson stepping up with his three pointers — his management of the floor, the wonderful way he passes, the wonderful way he drives to the