Frustration with the slow pace of progress in the cleanup of the former Grumman superfund site in Calverton has residents and government officials fed up.

In a grassroots effort, members of the Calverton Restoration Advisory Board, community members and county and town officials have scheduled their own meeting outside of the Navy’s twice-annual cleanup updates in order to receive data obtained through an investigation by county health department officials. The meeting will take place on Tuesday, April 28 at the Manorville Fire Department headquarters.

At the last Calverton Restoration Advisory Board (RAB) meeting on Feb. 10, the Navy would not allow Suffolk health department staff to present well-testing data they’d collected over the prior year.

Calverton RAB member and clean water advocate Adrienne Esposito, executive director of Citizens Campaign for the Environment, said the county sampling was requested through the RAB, the data collection was completed, and members expected it would be shared as part of the Navy’s public process.

Addison Phoenix, the Navy’s current project manager for the Calverton site, said that Navy representatives and contractors are authorized to discuss “Navy-generated data associated with the environmental restoration program.”

Esposito called that decision “very unhelpful,” because it undermined the idea of agencies working together in partnership. Further, she said, the information would “educate members of the public” and “add to the understanding of what is a concern and what is not a concern” as a result of groundwater contamination at the site and a plume of contamination that has been migrating off-site.

Members of the RAB are appointed by the Navy to provide citizen input on the environmental cleanup and restoration of the former military manufacturing and testing facility. Its meetings are intended to provide the community with periodic updates from the Navy on the status of its investigation and cleanup/restoration efforts — as well as an opportunity to give the Navy feedback and ask questions.

The first Calverton RAB meeting was convened on April 28, 1998. The most recent meeting held in February was the Calverton RAB’s 62nd meeting.

Frustrations with the pace of progress in the cleanup and the Navy’s stance on the scope of its investigation have been present since the beginning. The RAB’s first community co-chair, Sherry Johnson of Manorville, served from its first meeting in 1998 until 2002 — when she quit after becoming disgusted with the Navy’s lack of responsiveness, she said ina RiverheadLOCAL interview in June 2021.

Johnson recalled in that interview how reluctant the Navy was to do groundwater testing, and how it refused to test off-site. “I can’t tell you how many times I argued with them about testing,” Johnson said. “I’m sure towards the end I was screaming at them.”

Source: RiverheadLOCAL