NEWS-REVIEW FILE PHOTO | A view of the EPCAL site from the sky.

A bill which passed both houses of the state legislature this past June, green-lighting a fast track plan for development proposals at Enterprise Park at Calverton, has been delivered to the desk of Gov. Andrew Cuomo and now awaits his signature.

According to Drew Biondo, spokesman for state Sen. Ken LaValle (R-Port Jefferson), Cuomo has 10 days from Friday to either approve or veto the legislation, which was sponsored by LaValle in the state senate and Assemblyman Fred Thiele in the lower house of the state legislature.

It received only one “no” vote in the state legislature, from Assemblyman Robert Sweeney (D-Lindenhurst), who is the chairman of the assembly’s environmental conservation committee. Still, Mr. LaValle and Riverhead Town officials said they didn’t feel the time lag between getting the bill approved in the legislature and getting it signed by the governor was indicative of a problem.

Rather, they said, the governor has hundreds of bills placed before him to act on, and this is a normal time frame for a bill. Officials said the governor was taking bills in batches of about 50 at a time.

A spokesperson for Governor Cuomo said the governor considers about 100 bills a week.

“Obviously, I would like it signed sooner than later but I don’t think there is a cause to be concerned at this point,” Riverhead Supervisor Sean Walter said in August. He could not immediately be reached for comment Tuesday.

When the bill was initially passed, Mr. Walter called the bill “the single biggest piece of economic development legislation for Long Island, probably ever,” adding that the language gives Riverhead an economic tool that no other area in the state has.

The bill establishes the EPCAL Reuse and Revitalization Area, a 2,124-acre area for which Riverhead Town will develop an overall generic environmental impact study (GEIS) outlining what can and can’t be built there.

The town is already in the process of doing that study, which will cost about $500,000 and is expected to take about a year to complete.

But once it is completed, any fully engineered development proposal for projects within the area covered by the study will be guaranteed approval within 90 days of the application’s filing.

If an application isn’t approved in that time frame, it will receive a default approval.

The bill can’t take effect until after the study is approved, Mr. Walter said, so the four-month wait for it to be signed by the governor will not impact the overall plan.

The town attempted to get the same bill passed in 2012, when it was approved in the state senate but never came up for a vote in the assembly.

PAUL SQUIRE PHOTO | (L-R) IDA executive director Tracy Stark-James takes notes as Skydive Long Island owner Ray Maynard and Barbara Schiano speak to the IDA board Monday night.

Plans to build a two-story tall indoor skydiving tunnel are a little bit closer to taking flight.

The proposal — a new building to house the unique attraction at Skydive Long Island in the Enterprise Park at Calverton — will be subject to a public hearing over requested tax incentives in December, after members of Riverhead’s Industrial Development Agency expressed support for the proposal, with one member of the board calling the plan a “home run.”

COURTESY PHOTO | People skydiving in a wind tunnel.

“That’s a really great project,” said IDA executive director Tracy Stark-James at the board’s meeting Monday night in Riverhead Town Hall. “It’s truly a regional draw.”

Skydive Long Island owner Ray Maynard and Barbara Schiano, his wife, told the board their planned attraction would not only allow skydivers to practice jumps in a safe environment, but would also draw tens of thousands more into town during the typical skydiving off-season to experience the indoor wind tunnel — without having to get in a plane.

“There are many people who just go to these indoor wind tunnels to experience freefall who never go skydiving,” Ms. Schiano said.

Skydive Long Island would build a four-story tall building to house the 18-feet high, 14.5-foot wide vertical wind tunnel, which would use giant fans to lift customers into the air.

“It’s going to bring a lot more people to the town,” Mr. Maynard said, adding that the nearest indoor skydiving attractions were in New Hampshire and North Carolina.

Mr. Maynard also said that, while tunnels are used by professional skydivers to train, the general public could buy time inside the tunnel with an instructor in 2-minute blocks. Up to six experienced skydivers could use the tunnel for practicing formation diving.

The project — estimated to cost between $4.5 million to $5 million — would also feature glass running windows along the side of the tunnel, allowing onlookers to see in. It would take up to a year to build the structure, Ms. Schiano said.

Skydive Long Island — which has been in operation out of Calverton since 2000 — is asking for three types of tax incentives: a sales tax exemption, a mortgage tax exemption and a deal on its real property taxes, Ms. Stark-James said.

The sales tax exemption would apply to all construction material purchases, from building supplies to lighting fixtures for the new building.

Skydive Long Island has already secured partial funding for the project through the U.S. Small Business Administraiton, which doesn’t require mortgage tax to be paid. The local mortgage recording tax exemption would apply to the remainder not covered under the SBA and would eliminate the usual 1.05 percent tax.

The final incentive is to reduce the real property tax assessment, Ms. Stark-James said. The IDA’s standard property tax abatement reduces the assessed value of the new additions to the property by 50 percent. The property would gain an additional 5 percent on its assessed value each year until it hit the full 100 percent of its value, Ms. Stark-James said.

For example, if a property were worth $50,000 and another $10,000 in assessed value were added, the property’s abated assessed value would be $55,000 in the first year of the abatement, increasing by 5 percent each year until it reached the full $60,000.

While the 50 percent initial abatement is the typical IDA offer, Ms. Stark-James said Skydive Long Island was planning to request more of an abatement from the IDA. While board members didn’t reveal whether they would support the incentives, all expressed admiration for Mr. Maynard, a longtime local business owner.

The proposed incentives will be open for public comment at the IDA’s next meeting in early December. In the meantime, Ms. Schiano said the company is working on getting the necessary zoning permits to build the new attraction.

“This is going to be another iconic attraction [for Riverhead],” she said. “There’s nothing like it in the area.”

psquire@timesreview.com

Part of the more than $11 million cleanup effort underway at the Enterprise Park at Calverton could take up to 30 years to complete, according to the Naval Facilities Engineering Command, which is charged with remediating pollution caused by the U.S. Navy when it leased the site to the Grumman Corporation more than 20 years ago.

The Navy still owns 208 acres at EPCAL that were not turned over to Riverhead Town in 1998 because of pollution caused by activities conducted at the site between 1950 and 1996.

The goal is to eventually turn that acreage over to Riverhead as well, but there is currently no timetable for doing so, according to environmental engineer Joseph McCloud, who is overseeing the NAVFAC cleanup.

The Navy did turn over 144 acres to the town in 2007 after it deemed that pollution on that land had been successfully cleaned up.

The 30-year estimate pertains to a former fire training area comprising 169 acres just west of McKay Lake, where officials say soil and groundwater have been compromised by petroleum, chlorinated solvents and other chemicals.

Dave Brayack of Tetra Tech, a national engineering firm the Navy hired to handle the toxic removal project, gave an update during a public meeting last Wednesday at the Henry Pfeifer Community Center.

“We expect it to be less than 30 years, but at this point in time, we can’t assume that,” Mr. Brayack said. “Once the groundwater hits drinking water standards, we’ll be done and, in fact, parts of it should be done sooner than others.”

He also estimated the total cost of remediation at $2 million. The 30-year estimate came from a recent feasibility study released last fall, according to Mr. McCloud.

Potential residual munitions and explosives also are present at that site and likely resulted from cannon testing on another part of the property, according to the Navy.

In addition, two groundwater plumes contaminated with volatile organic compounds appear to exist on this site, with the primary contaminants being trichloroethene (TCE) and xylene, according to the Navy.

Trichloroethene (TCE) is classified as a carcinogen by the federal Environmental Protection Agency. It was used as a solvent.

Xylene is found in paints, gasoline and aircraft fuels but is not considered a carcinogen, according to the EPA. However, inhaling emissions of xylene can lead to central nervous system effects including headaches, dizziness, and tremors, according to the EPA.

Officials noted that most of the homes nearby are connected to the town water district, so no one is drinking the water in this area, officials say.

After the meeting, Riverhead Councilwoman Jodi Giglio said, “I think it’s important to notify all of the homeowners in this area that may not be on public water to encourage them to get their wells tested.”

Kristi Francisco of Tetra Tech explained, “The plume goes under the pond, it is not in the pond,” referring to Swan Pond on the golf course across Grumman Boulevard.

Mr. McCloud said in an interview that the projected cleanup time frame for this area doesn’t necessarily mean it will take that long to turn the land over to Riverhead because much of the plume has drifted off from the EPCAL property.

NAVFAC’s proposed remedy for contamination in this area is to enact “land use controls” to restrict access to the groundwater and soil on site until the cleanup is done and to continue monitoring it, according to Ms. Francisco.

“There’s no real remedy here” said Adrienne Esposito of the Citizens Campaign for the Environment. “Land use controls, that’s not really an active remedy, and monitoring, that’s not a remedy.”

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The second area of residual contamination at the EPCAL property involves 30 acres at the southern border near Grumman Boulevard, just south of the eastern runway. Here, traces of tetrachloroethene (PCE) were detected in the groundwater. It was being treated through a process in which two extraction wells draw up water, remove volatile organic compounds by air stripping, and reinject the treated water into the ground.

According to the EPA, PCE is a man-made chemical used for dry cleaning clothes and degreasing metal. It has not been shown to cause cancer in humans, but exposure to very high concentrations has caused dizziness and other conditions.

The treated water in this area had been returned to drinking water standards and 99 percent of VOCs were being removed, but officials say the treated water hasn’t been injected as deeply as the groundwater, and was starting to pond on the surface — an indication that the infiltration pipes were clogged, officials said.

“We think there’s some iron oxides in there plugging up the media,” said Patrick Schauble of KOMAN Government Solutions, which is working with NAVFAC.

NAVFAC has estimated the cost of this cleanup at $4.66 million over 16 years.

Ms. Giglio, who was the only elected town official present at last week’s meeting, said she’s been working with Mr. McCloud to get the Navy to approve an easement in this area that would allow the town’s proposed bike path extension to cross over Navy land on Grumman Boulevard, in order to avoid the groundwater extraction building.

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The third area being cleaned is a nine-acre parcel within the privately owned industrial park at EPCAL that was formerly a fuel depot. Lead and methylnaphthalene have been detected on this land. The latter is used to make chemicals such as dyes, and resins, and is present in cigarette smoke, wood smoke, tar, asphalt and at some hazardous waste sites, according to the federal Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry.

An “air sparging” system used to strip contaminants from the water there stopped working in 2013 after eight years and was shut down, but soil extraction continues at the site, according to NAVFAC.

The cost of this cleanup was estimated at $4.2 million over 10 years, according to NAVFAC.

tgannon@timesreview.com

Courtesy image: U.S. Navy

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