The Bay Shore former Manufactured Gas Plant (MGP) Site is located in the town of Bay Shore) and the Village of Brightwaters, both in the Town of Islip, located in Suffolk County. The main site covers an approximate 10-acre area, near the south shore of Long Island, approximately 6,000 feet north of the Great South Bay. The surrounding area is suburban, and land use is mostly commercial and residential with some light industry. The property is bounded on the east, north, and west by residences and small commercial businesses and to the south by the Long Island Railroad (LIRR). Immediately south of the LIRR are a few residences and an adjacent National Grid owned parcel that was formerly used as a commercial lumber property. Further south are residences in neighborhoods on Lawrence Lake and Lawrence Creek.
The manufactured gas plant operations were located on a parcel of land in Bay Shore, between Clinton and Fifth Avenues. The Brightwaters section of the facility, located west of Clinton Avenue, housed a number of tanks, including gasoline, drip oil and a million-gallon petroleum storage tank used with the oil gas process.
The Bay Shore site opened as a gas plant in 1889 under the ownership of the Mutual Gas and Light Company. From 1899 to 1917, the Suffolk Gas and Electric Light Company owned and operated the site. In 1918, LILCO became the legal owner of the site and carburetted water gas and oil-gas operations were conducted there until 1973, when the plant was demolished.
Following completion of the initial phase of the Remedial Investigation (RI), four Operable Units (OUs 1-4) were designated, each of which have unique and separate issues. OU-1 constitutes the main site area. OU-2 is the groundwater plume downgradient of OU-1. OU-3 includes the Brightwaters Yard and associated groundwater plume. OU-4 includes an area east of OU-1 where former process waters were discharged.
The Remedial Investigation, conducted under the oversight of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, determined the presence of potentially hazardous materials on the site associated with former MGP operations; and some of these materials are found offsite in two dissolved phase groundwater plumes. One plume moves from the Bay Shore side of the site in a south-southwesterly direction towards Lawrence Creek. This plume path is approximately 500 feet wide and its entire area is designated as Operable Unit 2. A second plume moves southerly from the area of Operable Unit 3 in the direction of O-Co-Nee Pond and is less than 100 feet wide. The chemicals include volatile aromatic hydrocarbons such as benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylenes (BTEX) and Polycyclic Aromatic Hydrocarbons (PAHs). Operable Unit 4 is in an area under and near the parking lot for the Bay Shore Long Island Railroad station, includes several privately owned properties and also includes the headwaters for Watchogue Creek, also known as Crum’s Brook. Interim Remedial Measures have already addressed some of the environmental issues in this area.
There are no findings indicating that chemical constituents from the site have impacted currently used drinking water supplies in the community.