Islip shellfish hatchery expansion plan gets $6.5 million state boost

Islip’s shellfish hatchery expansion project will get an additional $6.5 million from the state, closing the funding gap after the initiative proved more expensive than expected, according to Islip Town Supervisor Angie Carpenter.

Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office first announced $10 million in funding for the project in summer 2024, Newsday reported. The goal at the time was to build a new and larger hatchery to replace the town’s existing facility in East Islip, which at the time state officials described as rapidly aging.

Islip officials hoped the new hatchery would spur a fivefold increase in the town’s annual shellfish output — from about 30 million oysters and clams to roughly 150 million — as well as jump-start the production of around 500 million oyster larvae each year.

But all of the companies that offered to build the new hatchery made bids that were "quite a bit over the $10 million grant we got,” Carpenter said. She said the extra funds from the state are enough to cover Islip’s shortfall, bringing total state funding for the project to $16.5 million.

“I got the call today telling me … that [Hochul] was announcing an additional $6.5 million for the expansion of our shellfish hatchery,” Carpenter said at a town board meeting Tuesday. “And that, coincidentally, is the exact amount of money we needed.”

An Islip Town spokeswoman did not immediately respond to Newsday’s questions about the size, cost or timeline of the proposed hatchery. 

Marty Bellew, the commissioner of Islip’s Department of Environmental Control in 2024, told Newsday then that he expected the project to cost between $10 million and $15 million. He predicted the facility would be between 16,000 and 18,000 square feet.

Hochul, in a news release announcing the new funding, said "increased construction costs" inflated the project's total cost to $16.5 million.

“The additional [funds] will help cover those costs and advance construction of the new facility,” her office wrote in the Tuesday announcement.

The release called the hatchery “a critical resource for Long Island’s aquaculture industry” and said it would support efforts to repopulate the shellfish population in the Great South Bay.

An Islip spokeswoman told Newsday in 2024 that the current hatchery generated as much as $300,000 annually for the town.

“The hatchery produces approximately 25% of all caged oysters harvested in New York State,” the governor’s office wrote Tuesday. “The new facility will expand production capacity to meet growing demand from local shellfish farmers.”

By Sam Kmack

sam.kmack@newsday.com

Sam Kmack covers the Town of Islip for Newsday. He is a graduate of the University of Southern California and previously worked as a city watchdog reporter in the Phoenix metro area, as well as an investigative journalist at the Arizona Center for Investigative Reporting.