Any good places to fill water tanks - Eastern LI Sound?

[Bene505]

Are there any places where one can get good water in the eastern sound?

Mods - reposted here, since it belongs in the Loing Island forum

In Martha's Vinyard (Edgartown) last summer, they had a floating water dock that was anchored near the channel. You simply pull up, tie on, and fill you water tanks. It was anchored at both ends so it wouldn't swing, and 2 boats could fill-up at the same time. The water tasted good.

Gratuitous water picture


Montauk has a town dock but the water tastes HORRIBLE. It tastes like it baked in a big plastic hose all day, before getting to your boat. Which it actually did. I tried letting the water run for 30 minutes and it still tasted horrible.

Are there any places where one can get good water in the eastern sound? We usually moor or anchor all summer and a watermaker isn't in the budget. We hold 268 gallons, which holds our family of 6 for quite awhile, even with some quick showers. I'd be willing to sail a few hours to get water. (Want to sail anyway, so why not?)

Any ideas on good place to get water?

Regards,
Brad

[BoxedUp]

Originally Posted by Bene505

Are there any places where one can get good water in the eastern sound?

Mods - reposted here, since it belongs in the Loing Island forum

Are you sure you didn't mean Lawn Guyland?...

Anyway, take a look at this:
http://www.scwa.com/SCWA_AWQR.pdf

As you can see, Long Island gets our water from the ground called aquifers.
I live in Nassau County and have been using bottled water for drinking ever since MTBE was detected in the ground water supply near our water district and even though the officials say it's safe to drink.

How much water do you consume that you can't carry a couple of gallons of a good quality bottled water for potable use? That's what we do on our charters in the BVI as they recommend not drinking the water from your tanks.

[Bene505]

Originally Posted by BoxedUp

Are you sure you didn't mean Lawn Guyland?...

Anyway, take a look at this:
http://www.scwa.com/SCWA_AWQR.pdf

As you can see, Long Island gets our water from the ground called aquifers.
I live in Nassau County and have been using bottled water for drinking ever since MTBE was detected in the ground water supply near our water district and even though the officials say it's safe to drink.

How much water do you consume that you can't carry a couple of gallons of a good quality bottled water for potable use? That's what we do on our charters in the BVI as they recommend not drinking the water from your tanks.

Good points BoxedUp. I'd heard that we sit on our aquafer, like swimming in a kitty pool. The water/pollutants doen't go anywhere. (As opposed to someplace with a river, I guess, that pushes things downstream.) I used to buy those gallon, nice, clear-plastic Poland Spring containers. Now they don't sell them in the grocery store anymore.

Maybe I need to sail to CT to fill-up. I get 4 free nights at Brewers marinas, because I wintered with them. Anyone know if the Connecticut water is any better?

How about the Woods Hole area?

Regards,
Brad

[CalebD]

I wonder if filling your tanks on the CT coast makes sense.
Have you tried the water in Glen Cove yet?

[Bene505]

Originally Posted by CalebD

I wonder if filling your tanks on the CT coast makes sense.
Have you tried the water in Glen Cove yet?

Hi Caleb,

Yes. It's not bad, but then I'm not sure you can taste the pollutants. There is some southerly "flow" to the water underground. I wonder if there's a well close to the coast that's got good water. Then again, if Suffolk County's gone bad, then the more populated Nassau County is certainly bad too.

By the way, I drink the tap water occasionally. Right now, I'd like to find water for showering, doing dishes, etc. Some place where I don't have to pay for a marina.

For instance, in Cochles Harbor on shelter Island, there's a marina that will empty your holding tanks for $5. (We tip the free pump-out people $5 anyway.) While that's going on, you can fill your tanks there too. (It takes maybe 20 minutes to fill our tanks.) That's worth it. Anyone know of other places like that?

Regards,
Brad

[BoxedUp]

http://www.ctwater.com/documents/2008WQFINAL-WEB.pdf

Page 14 has the CT Shoreline report.

[Bene505]

OK, I'm really looking for a place to fill up the tanks for generaluse. But while we on the subject, here's the chart from BoxedUp's link for CT areas near the shore:


It's a bit greek to me. I'll have to study it to see where the bext place to fill-up is.

Regards,
Brad

[CalebD]

There is an East Hampton Town operated marina in 3 Mile Harbor that has water. I am not sure about the quality or how easy getting H2O would be there as it is fairly far up the harbor. The water quality in EH seems to ok but I can't read all those charts to find out either. You should also be able to get water at the town dock in Mattituck Inlet if you can get all the way up that harbor - it gets a bit narrow and shallow. Coecles sounds pretty good too - clean out one set of tanks and fill up another.
I just have a feeling that the local water should be fine in a place like Stonington, CT., perhaps even Mystic Seaport.
Have fun reading those charts!

[WanderingStar]

You guys worry too much. Long Island has extremely clean water, with no taste. The contamination problems only apply to home well water (rare nowadays) The water company pulls water from deeper underground, and tests it constantly. Any marina water problems occur at the marina.

[BoxedUp]

I don't want to sound like Chicken Little and everyone has the right to ingest what ever water they wish but....

It's a well known fact that Long Island suffers from a higher incidence rate of cancer's than the rest of NY. Local clustering in breast, lung and colorectal cancer in Long Island, New York

Although public water utilities test their sources better than private wells, you can't disregard the fact that toxic pollutants were introduced into our water system for years before environmental concerns were introduced to stop the practice. The oil companies produced gasoline with MTBE which can never be removed from water and there is a permanently installed monitoring station at a previous gas station that had leaky tanks within 200 yards of our water districts main facility.

I'll stick with the bottled stuff.....

BTW, yesterday was the 40th anniversary of Earth Day and statistics show that our waterways and environment are much cleaner than it was 40 years ago. Keep up the good work everyone!