Riverhead’s retiring sewer district superintendent looks back at his trailblazing career

One of Riverhead Town’s longest serving senior employees, Sewer District Superintendent Michael Reichel, is set to retire this month after 35 years as its top wastewater treatment official.

Reichel, a 62-year-old lifelong Riverhead resident, has spent his career in the town’s wastewater departments and spearheaded major projects to make the town’s wastewater treatment plant, within an environmentally sensitive area, into a model facility revered by environmental and engineering professionals.

He joined the department in 1984 as an operator trainee — an entry level position — and worked his way up the ranks, he said in an interview last month about his career. He was hired in 1990 as the superintendent. It was a big learning curve at first, he said; he’s had to learn on the job how to solve problems.

“It’s different every single day, and it’s busy from the moment I come in to the moment I leave,” Reichel said of his job. “There are so many things going on that the position has grown so much from what it was.” 

The town’s wastewater treatment and sewer system has undergone dramatic changes since 1990, Reichel said. 

The Riverhead Sewer District was “a simple sewer district, simple sewer plant and scavenger waste plant” when he started. Back then, the sewer district, originally constructed in 1937, only served properties in downtown Riverhead. “Since that time, we’ve extended the sewer district to include the Route 58 corridor. We’ve upgraded a lot of pump stations,” he said. 

“It’s gone from something that was very small to something that is very huge, because we constantly work on new projects to upgrade the system, make implementations for better treatment, for more efficiency, and whatever it may be,” Reichel said. “And the town is continuing to grow, so a lot of applications [are coming] in.” 

Reichel is responsible for the budgets of the Riverhead Sewer District, Riverhead Scavenger Waster plant and the Calverton Sewer District, he said. The town formed the Calverton Sewer District in 1999, when the town was given the former Grumman plant by the Navy; the town has upgraded the wastewater facility as the property transformed into the industrial park known as EPCAL.

As a part of his responsibilities, he manages 16 town employees. A career is all about “the people that you work with, and what you expect from them and what they expect from you,” Reichel said. “And as long as you have that understanding and they know that you’re doing everything that you can for them, then they will do everything that they can for you.”

His employees “really made the plant what it is. And I can’t ask for it for a better crew,” he said.

Reichel oversaw the completion of two major upgrades to the wastewater treatment plant on River Avenue, which, in addition to receiving wastewater from the sewer district’s system, as well as from septic systems in Riverhead and Southampton town. 

Those changes come primarily because of new technologies that can filter and treat wastewater to a higher quality. One of the most rewarding parts of his job, Reichel said, is being “in a position to make changes that are positive for the environment.” 

“When you do wastewater treatment, you’re taking out the contaminants that could be harmful to human life and the environment, animal and plant life, microorganisms in the watershed, and then you know where you’re discharging the water out,” Reichel. “So you have to treat that or you’re going to be polluting yourself.”

Nitrogen, in particular, is potent in wastewater and contributes to algal blooms and increased aquatic plant growth in water bodies; that can reduce oxygen to levels that cannot support marine life, resulting in massive fish kills in water bodies like the Peconic River.

The treatment plant received a major upgrade in 2000 to comply with new environmental regulations and to use ultraviolet light for disinfection. 

In 2016, another major upgrade was completed, this one to reuse the water treated for the sewer plant. The idea, which Reichel said he had pushed for for decades, was to irrigate neighboring Indian Island Golf Course, owned by Suffolk County, with the treated wastewater effluent. It would also discharge less nitrogen than before. The price tag ended up being $24 million. 

Riverhead Town — and Reichel in particular — were praised for their leadership for the irrigation project. The Environmental Protection Agency’s regional director hailed it as “a model not just for Long Island but for the nation.” The wastewater treatment facility upgrade would also win a top award from the American Council of Engineering Companies of New York.

And it would also give Reichel what he holds as his proudest achievement as superintendent: the Environmental Protection Agency’s Environmental Champion Award.

The irrigation project was one-half of a vision Reichel had when he became superintendent: creating a beneficial reuse from the material left over from the waste treated at the plant. The other half? Putting the mud-like sewage sludge that comes out of the plant to good use. 

That project involves treating the sludge into an environmentally friendly class A biosolid. It will reduce the amount of sludge the plant will send to out-of-state landfills, and treat it to the point where it could be used as soil conditioner locally— removing the cost of transporting it altogether. That project has been in the planning stage for the last few years, but is just getting underway and is estimated to cost Riverhead Town $18.65 million — which Reichel said the town will pay off with the savings it will reap each year. 

Reichel will sadly not see that part of his vision realized as superintendent.

“I wanted to see it to the end. It’s just taken so long I can’t wait any longer. My work is getting in the way of things that I want to do,” Reichel said. 

Reichel said he’s on call 24-7. “That’s one thing that I will not miss, is the phone calls at two o’clock, three o’clock in the morning for process failure here or in Calverton, or from police for a plug up,” he said.

His goals in retirement? Hike the Appalachian Trail with a friend (they have about a third of it done so far); spend more time with his wife; golf and bike. He will also take a job working in aquaculture, he said. 

Reichel’s last day is March 22. Board members have indicated his deputy superintendent, Tim Allen, will be promoted to superintendent.

Supervisor Tim Hubbard said “other towns and municipalities are looking to copy what we did here — what Micheal did here in the sewer department. He’s going to be missed.”