East Hampton supervisor raises alarm after short-chain PFAS detections in local wells

East Hampton Town Supervisor Kathy Burke Gonzales described a coordinated response after the Suffolk County Water Authority reported detections of short-chain PFAS in a set of wells serving part of town.

"They called to say that the wells on Buckskill Road — there are four wells there — tested positive for short-chain PFAS," Gonzales said in a taped East End News interview. She said three wells were taken offline and one was restricted to emergency use only. The supervisor said the Bridal Hampton well field supplied about 7% of the town's water and that affected customers on public water are now being supplied from other parts of the Suffolk County Water Authority system within East Hampton.

Gonzales traced the concern to a May 2023 battery-storage fire on Cove Hollow Road. She said state environmental investigators (the DEC) took soil samples and in December 2023 concluded there was no further action needed. In late May 2026, the Suffolk County Water Authority began testing across its wells and identified short-chain PFAS detections in the Buckskill/Bridal Hampton well field, which prompted a coordinated task force of affected agencies and door-to-door outreach by the Suffolk County Health Department to identify private wells and collect samples.

The supervisor said sampling by the health department typically takes about four weeks to return lab results and emphasized the need to "follow the science" to determine contamination sources, movement, and remediation steps. She told the program that initial counts of private wells in the affected area have shifted from an early estimate of about 30 households to 26 that remain in the current affected area.

The broadcast used several informal spellings for the contaminant (short-chain "P F p r a" and "P Foss"). The town's account, as presented on East End News, attributed testing and the sampling protocol to the Suffolk County Water Authority and described ongoing coordination with state agencies and the county health department; no enforcement action or remediation plan was presented on air.