It’s barely noticeable unless you know what to look for. A steady flow of water gushing day and night in the center of town, just off the sidewalk, before the thick of tall grass and sand that slopes down to the harbor. Gravity pulls the cool water from the ground and a man-made hose makes it a readily available, cold drink for all who pass, a welcome one for boaters and the hikers passing through from the park across the street. That is, it was, until the day the water stopped, the hose was gone, and the sidewalk was dry for the first time in 45 years.
“It used to hang right here,” says Mike Owen, of Dix Hills, on his first trip to the area this season, walking barefoot over rocks looking for the familiar hose. “It used to pour out water constantly—ice cold, crystal clean water.”
Owen has been coming here for six years. He would fill up a few bottles before going kayaking on the harbor—chlorine-free, untreated water. But as the warm weather rolls in, he and others who have been drinking the water, some for their entire lives, are slowly realizing it’s no longer here. At least, not for them.
“I come here one day and there’s no more water,” says Tom Garguilo of Cold Spring Hills, who has been drinking the water for 15 years. “I don’t know why they’re making all this noise all of a sudden after so many years that it’s been here.”
It’s a question that has been posed many times, ever since the Suffolk County Department of Health Services (SCDOHS) ordered the Town of Huntington to shut down the spring in May. And while disputes over the water supply are commonplace in countries where fresh drinking water is scarce and people fight—or kill—for control of sources or walk miles to get clean drinking water, this is Cold Spring Harbor. The fight over a public spring in a place where water runs in a seemingly endless supply from the taps and a typical dilemma is whether to buy Poland Spring or Evian may seem ridiculous in comparison. But to those who see the closing of the spring by their government as an unfair attempt to exert control over a basic resource, there is little difference. Because while the water no longer reaches the sidewalk, the members-only boating club next door still has a direct line to the spring to wash their boats and to drink if they choose.
“For years that water has been splashing onto that sidewalk for all citizens,” says Phil Asaph of Huntington, who has also been visiting the spring for 15 years. “Now only one group of people is allowed to have access to this water—that’s crazy.”
It started with a letter from the SCDOHS dated May 10 ordering the town to permanently shut down the spring, stating that “such water sources are unacceptable, as they are untreated, unprotected and unregulated.” The town then rerouted the water from the sidewalk. One angry resident cut the new hose to restore the flow. It was replaced by a thicker hose that could not be cut, shortly after.
“Springs are not approved sources of drinking water,” says Grace McGovern of the SCDOHS. “They are shallow and they are close to the surface.”
According to Suffolk County Sanitary Code, “natural springs will not be approved as a source of public or private drinking water supply,” the SCDOHS wrote.
Shallow water sources are prone to greater contamination than those from aquifers hundreds of feet below the ground.
The health department claims 1,2 dichloropropane, a colorless industrial chemical, was found in the spring water in 2003 at concentrations that exceeded the federal and state standards.
Protestors cite a private test taken by National Testing Laboratories in March 2010 that shows levels of the substance as well within the limits. The same amount of 1,2 dichloropropane has been found in wells supplying more than two dozen towns in Suffolk County, according to the 2010 Suffolk County Water Authority Water Quality Report. But at a rally on Sunday in Billy Joel Park, protestors say the closure has little to do with water quality.
“My understanding is that it got published on the Internet that there was this great water supply and then people started showing up,” says Joe Oliva, of Huntington, who is leading the protest.
“Then the county got involved.” The spring at Cold Spring Harbor is listed on findaspring.com, a national website for nature enthusiasts.
“A lot of people stop here and fill up bottles,” says Owen. “There used to be traffic jams here. People were pulling up with vans, taking up parking.”
The hose for the spring ran from the Cold Spring Harbor Seafarers Club, which consists of a dock and parking lot. Today, parking is unusually tight, leaving many protestors to believe higher-ups at the club are trying to squash the rally, since protestors also believe it was they who started the ball rolling with the health department.
“See all these trucks here?” says John Lovell of Syosset, who has been visiting the spring every summer since he could remember, pointing to the lot. “I don’t know what’s up with that. I’ve never seen, especially on a Sunday morning, this place filled up with cars. There’s always space to come and park there and get water.”
Asaph, too, believes the club had something to do with the spring’s closure.
“I think that they don’t like people stopping where they park their cars to get onto their boats,” he says. “And since the boaters are the only ones allowed to have the water I would think that they would have to know someone in town hall. Whether it’s visible or not, the reason the water was cut off is because someone wanted it cut off and exerted whatever pressure they exerted to make it happen. That’s really the bottom line.”
Calls made by the Press to Commodore Herbert Hahn, head of the Cold Spring Harbor Seafarers Club, were not returned.
Oliva and hundreds of others are now petitioning the town to restore the spring and provide periodic testing of the water that would grant it approval by the health department. So far they have 357 names, which Oliva presented Huntington Town Supervisor Frank Petrone at a town board meeting Tuesday, amid deafening applause and “Turn on the water” chants.
“We demand the town turn on the water for the public,” said Oliva in front of a crowd of hundreds. “It’s like someone has reached into their souls, ripped something out of their lives. They can’t trust their government and that’s not right.”
Petrone says the town was only following orders from the county.
“We’ve set up a meeting with the county,” Petrone said. “The county has regulatory authority, so we are going to try and sort it out with them.”
Protestors are anxiously awaiting this meeting, set to happen in two weeks, especially since the SCDOHS, who says the boating club had nothing to do with the decision to shut the well down, has been pointing its finger at the town.
“The health department regulates approved sources of drinking water, so when it comes to our attention that somebody’s using an unapproved source that’s not protected, it’s not approved,” says McGovern. “It’s up to the town whether they want to approve it or not. But closing the spring has nothing to do with anything but public health.”
But those who believe there are no public health concerns with the drinking water hope that the town and county will reach a compromise—ideally that they agree to test the water, monitor the water and, most importantly, turn the water back on.
“It’s a tragedy,” says Asaph, pointing to two kids with skateboards walking across the street. “It’s a tragedy for those two guys right there. It’s a tragedy for us and anybody else who wanted to come here. It’s just a tragedy.”