Water Hogs of the Hamptons 2024: Superusers Raise Costs for All

The Suffolk County Water Authority says that it sees some evidence that messaging about smarter water usage management is starting to make a dent in the daily peak spikes in water usage — primarily early in the mornings in summertime when automatic sprinkler systems are programmed to soak hundreds of thousands of lawns — that cost the authority and its ratepayers millions a year to accommodate.

That messaging, however, does not seem to be reaching the uber-wealthy homeowners who are the biggest water hogs in the Hamptons.

In the first year that the SCWA created a dedicated account for advertising on television and radio, in newspapers and even on the giant digital Sunrise Highway billboards operated by the Shinnecock, the authority has seen a slight leveling off of the peak demands. It’s still early in the summer but Jeff Szabo, the CEO of the water authority, says they are hoping it means the message is getting across.

“We’ve really been focusing on ways we can better educate and communicate with our customers for several years now and talk to them about the importance of water conservation, the nature of the aquifer and how to shave those peaks so there is adequate pressure for our customers and for emergencies like firefighting,” Szabo said last week. “And we think it is working.”

The SCWA designs its water delivery system around being able to meet demand during the periods of just a few hours on the smattering of days through the summer months when usage surges to as much as 530,000 gallons of water per minute. But through the end of June, which included a period of very low rainfall and high temperatures, Szabo said, the system only climbed over 500,000 gpm once and only briefly — a sign that at least some users were not sucking in water during the well-known peak times of 4 to 7 a.m.

“So we haven’t seen those tremendous spikes,” Szabo said. “That tells me something had changed.”

No so much, though, in the world of the infamous “superusers,” as the SCWA dubs those residential properties — mostly large South Fork estates and modern mansions — that use more than 2 million gallons, and sometimes as much as 20 million gallons of water through SCWA mains each year.

Most homes connected to SCWA mains use less than 150,000 gallons per year.

Water usage data the Express News Group obtained through a Freedom of Information Law request from the SCWA shows that the biggest residential users of water on the South Fork continued to suck up millions of gallons of water to power sprawling sprinkler systems and so-called geothermal heating and cooling plants that use water to regulate temperatures.

The two biggest users, a pair of large oceanfront homes, one in Sagaponack and one in Southampton Village, used nearly 100 times as much water as the typical household in Suffolk County during the 12-month period starting on June 1, 2023 and ending on May 31, 2024.

The house at 7 Fairfield Pond Lane, an 8,600-square-foot Bates Masi design built in 2015 on 3 acres of Sagaponack oceanfront, used 14.18 million gallons during that time. The house at 1710 Meadow Lane in Southampton Village used slightly more than 13 million gallons.

The two properties were the top water sucks in the region in 2023 as well, when 1710 Meadow Lane drew in 12.5 million gallons and 7 Fairfield 11.2 million. Both homes are owned by paper corporations called limited liability companies, or LLCs — 7 Fairfield by Samudra Farms LLC and 1710 Meadow by Ickenham Limited — that conceal the real names of the owners.

All of the top 25 water users on the South Fork drew in at least 3.2 million gallons over the last 12 months.

Southampton’s estate section is the epicenter of super use of water, accounting for about half of the top 25 biggest water hogs. East Hampton Town has just five of the fattest hogs, barely cracking the top 10 biggest users with “only” about 6 million gallons used by 11 Beach Plum Court in Amagansett, the oceanfront house on Napeague that has long been the biggest, thirstiest house in East Hampton. Like many others, it is also owned by an LLC.

Just four other homes in East Hampton are in the top 25 largest users — 2 Tyson Lane West, 116 Apaquogue Road, 41 Two Mile Hollow Road and 10 West End Avenue.

A stretch of Dune Road in what is technically Water Mill but most people would call Bridgehampton, where a number of looming modern mansions have been crammed between the road and the dunes, is home to two of the biggest drains, including the home of Michael Rubin that hosted the celebrity soiree called the “White Party” this past week. And a smattering of others are scattered around Sagaponack and Water Mill’s oceanfront.

The list obtained by The Express News Group represents only homes that are connected to SCWA mains. There may well be many that suck as much or even more water out of the aquifer through private wells, but it is the superusers who are connected to the county mains that shift a substantial cost burden for their demands onto the shoulders of the other 400,000 homeowners who count on SWCA mains.

As the demand for water has soared in recent decades, the water authority has spent tens of millions of dollars to construct giant new storage tanks and upgrade wells and pumps to ensure that when demand is at its highest water pressure will remain strong enough to push water through mains.

“Those large users cost us millions of dollars to ensure that these homes are able to keep their lawn green,” Szabo said. “If we can reduce that we can save the average ratepayer money.”

The authority has adopted tiered rate systems that charge homeowners more if they use a higher than average amount of water, in hopes of incentivizing water savings. But those still relatively low costs have done little to convince even the owners of relatively modest McMansions to pare back lawn watering. The authority has talked in recent years about a special superuser fee that might get the attention of the super-rich — but has thus far not adopted one.

The messaging from the authority has focused on trying to convince property owners and managers to change their watering behavior. Much of it has been spent battling what the SCWA says is misconceptions about the watering needs to keep a lawn lush and green through the heat of summer.

Shifting watering to only every other day is better for grass because it will encourage deeper root growth and will not mean burnt-out lawns, the SCWA says. Even just adjusting the timing of automatic sprinklers so that they are not running between 4 and 7 a.m. can help the system keep up with demand.

The region has suffered from near-drought conditions in the heat of summer the last two years, and the water authority has also pointed to the stresses on the region’s aquifer, which supplies Suffolk County with all of its water.

The aquifer is not threatened currently, but the growing draw does raise concerns about the very long term. The aquifers beneath Long Island hold somewhere between 65 trillion and 125 trillion gallons of freshwater and receive about 300 billion gallons of “recharge” from rainfall each year, scientists have estimated. The SCWA alone pumps out about 70 billion gallons of water from its 270 wells, but that does not account for the more than 50,000 homes and commercial properties that use private wells.

“We are all stewards of the aquifer, and we all play a role and want to make sure it’s here for generations to come,” Szabo said.

The SCWA has encouraged superusers to connect sprinklers or geothermal systems to dedicated wells, which would not help concerns about the aquifer but would at least ease the burden on the SCWA infrastructure and the costs to upgrade it that are passed on to all of the water authority’s customers, most of whom do not live in the Hamptons.

The authority is exploring a variety of other ways to reduced demand also, from devising water-wise management plans for large commercial properties and businesses to finding ways to wedge water-conservation into the consciousness of the average Joe.

“A lot of our customers think that it’s a trade off — green grass or conserving water — and we don’t think that is the case at all,” the water authority chairman said. “People are overwatering their lawns. It makes a lawn less hardy. If you water the proper amount you are going to have a lawn that’s green and will be able to withstand those hot dry days in July and August. You will not overuse, and you’ll still have that nice green lawn that everybody wants.”