Suffolk County Water Authority's top 20 users pumped 1 billion gallons from the aquifer

Four years ago, the Suffolk County Water Authority contacted several homeowners associations and condominium complexes to help them identify ways they could conserve water.

Homeowners associations are classified as commercial customers, since the individual residences are not metered separately. And last year, HOAs and other residential complexes accounted for 13 of the water authority's top 20 commercial consumers.

"We had very good initial conversations. There was definitely some interest," Jeff Szabo, the authority’s CEO, told Newsday. But the efforts collapsed. "I wish we’d had more participation," Szabo said.

In all, the authority's top 20 commercial consumers drew more than a billion gallons of water from public wells last year: 570 million for HOAs and 491 million for the rest, including natural gas and waste-to-energy power plants, a hospital and a food manufacturing company. 

Long Island gets all its water — for drinking, bathing, washing cars, irrigating lawns, and for industrial and commercial purposes — from the aquifer system that lies under layers of sand, gravel, clay and silt. The aquifer from which these hundreds of millions of gallons of fresh water is pumped is "under stress," according to a 2024 study by the U.S. Geological Survey. Overpumping in some wells close to the coasts has allowed saltwater to seep inland into the groundwater — a phenomenon known as saltwater intrusion.

The median SCWA residential customer uses 125,882 gallons a year, most of it in summer when lawns are being irrigated. In July, as much of Long Island was in moderate drought and the East End was in severe drought, the authority instructed its customers to stop watering their lawns immediately. Without significant conservation measures, there was an immediate danger that low pressure would inhibit fire departments' ability to pump water. Pumping water to keep lawns green has already lowered the water table, dried up local streams, and draws not just salt water but plumes of contamination toward drinking water wells.

For the large commercial consumers, finding nonessential uses that can be immediately cut is more tricky.

Four of the top commercial consumers were natural gas or waste-to-energy power plants: National Grid’s plant in Northport, Reworld’s waste-to-energy plants in Babylon and East Northport, and Pinelawn Power in West Babylon. The biggest by far was National Grid’s Northport plant, the largest power plant on Long Island, which consumed 303 million gallons last year.

The other top users were Reworld’s Babylon waste-to-energy plant (45.7 million gallons), followed by L&S Packing, a food importing and manufacturing firm in Farmingdale that makes Gold’s horseradish, Paesana pasta sauces and other foods (41.9 million), Pinelawn Power (36.3 million), Good Samaritan University Hospital in West Islip (32.3 million) and Reworld Huntington in East Northport (31.8 million).

Triple water usage

Like most gas-powered plants, the Northport plant, which started generating energy in 1967, burns gas to produce steam, which drives turbines and generates electricity. The system requires large amounts of fresh water to generate that steam, while it uses saltwater from Long Island Sound and South Shore estuaries to cool the equipment.

Ten years ago, the Northport plant drew 95 million gallons from public wells, Newsday reported at the time; now they take three times as much. Will Brunelle, a spokesperson for National Grid Ventures, which owns Long Island’s plants, said their water use can increase depending on "total power generated, service hours" and whether the plants are burning oil or natural gas.

Brunelle said National Grid’s plants use a "closed loop" system, which converts the steam used to run turbines back to water and reuses it.

Good Samaritan University Hospital's water use goes toward "patient care, infection prevention, sanitation and sterilization, food service and heating and cooling," a hospital spokesperson wrote to Newsday.

He said recently installed "low-flow fixtures and more efficient cooling and sterilization equipment" have helped to reduce water use by 50%.

Reworld's facilities "require water for essential operating and cooling processes," market area director James Regan wrote to Newsday. The plants "reuse all process wastewater" and also use "third-party treated wastewater" to reduce the need for groundwater.

Pinelawn Power and L&S Packing did not respond to Newsday’s requests for comment.

Hotter weather, more energy use, more water use

The SCWA’s figures don't provide a full picture of the water that's being drawn from the aquifer. Some businesses and institutions, including farms and golf courses, also draw water from their own wells, Szabo said. "There are a lot of private wells that we may or may not know about. They don't register with the water authority."

Some of Long Island's largest water users are facilities that burn fossil fuels, which water management expert Sarah Meyland said triggers a cycle of more energy use and more water use, especially as the planet warms.

"Water supply and the power supply are linked," Meyland, a former professor at the New York Institute of Technology, told Newsday. Generating energy uses water, and pumping and purifying water uses energy.

There are ways to cut power plants’ water use. A few facilities, such as Reworld's, use treated wastewater. Some use dry cooling (with air instead of water), though studies show those systems lower the plants' overall efficiency and therefore increase emissions. Some newer plants, such as the Caithness plant in Yaphank, use a combined cycle system, which significantly reduces water use, Newsday recently reported.

But some experts suggest that investing in new water-saving systems for aging fossil fuel plants at this juncture could be a poor choice — economically as well as ecologically. John Rogers, associate director of energy analytics at the Union of Concerned Scientists, offered the Brayton Point coal plant in Somerset, Massachusetts, as a cautionary tale. In 2013, the plant completed a pair of 500-foot cooling towers to reduce water draws and discharges into the nearby bay, at a cost of about $600 million. Four years later the plant shut down because it wasn’t economically viable, and the towers were destroyed.

"That was not a great investment on their part," Rogers said, noting that wind and solar power require no water.

In the meantime, Szabo of the Suffolk County Water Authority is hoping to restart discussions with some of its heaviest commercial water users, possibly next year. "it's something we're looking to reignite again," he said. "We're looking for interest from the private sector to partner with us to reduce overall consumption."