FY 25 budget measure omits congressional earmarks, affecting $19M in funding requests for local projects

Riverhead Town won’t see any portion of the nearly $12 million in federal funds it had requested for water district infrastructure and a downtown revitalization project in the federal government’s current fiscal year, after all congressional member items were eliminated from the stopgap funding bill passed by Congress late last week and signed by President Trump on Saturday. 

A $5 million grant requested by Schumer for the Riverside wastewater treatment plant will also go unfulfilled in the current fiscal year.

The nearly $1.7 trillion funding bill keeps the federal government operating through Sept. 30, the end of its current fiscal year, avoiding a looming government shutdown that would have taken effect at midnight Friday.

It eliminated all member “earmarks”— funding requests by senators and representatives for specific projects in their states or districts, which totaled more than $13 billion.

Among them were three from the Town of Riverhead: more than $7.6 million for Riverhead Water District extensions to bring public water to areas of Calverton where private drinking water wells are contaminated, requested by both New York senators; more than $2.6 million for PFAS/PFOA cleanup in Calverton, requested by Rep. Nick LaLota; and $1.75 million for a proposed downtown amphitheater, requested by Sen. Charles Schumer.

Members can resubmit the funding requests for fiscal year 2026, if there is agreement that congressional earmarks should be reinstated. Earmarks were stopped for a decade beginning in 2011 in the wake of high-profile scandals involving earmarks. When reinstated, they were limited to 1% of total discretionary spending in the federal budget and members were required to  publicly disclose their requests. 

Riverhead Water District Superintendent Frank Mancini took the news in stride. 

“We have been requesting this money for years and getting it in smaller amounts,” he wrote in a text message Saturday morning.  “This system we have is very broken and I look forward to major changes,” he said.

The town won’t be bonding for the two extensions in question, No. 95, which would serve an area west of Edwards Avenue and No. 96, which would serve the area around the western end of Middle Road, Manor Road and Twomey Avenue.  There are too few potential users in the extensions to pay its cost so it would be too expensive for each property owner, Mancini said.

“I’m not saying this does not matter. I just think it’s just one more bump in the road,” he said. “In the end if we come out of this with a system that more effectively spends our money to solve the problems I care about, like the environment and public water, then it will be a win for me.”

Removing “all the social issues like requiring disadvantaged contractors from the grant purchasing requirements” will allow him to “get  20-30% more work out of that same grant,” Mancini wrote. “Those are important issues but they should not be incorporated into the work that I do. We should concentrate on the single issue of installing main and cleaning ground water,” he said.

“We are just going to keep applying for funding and do as much work as we can to protect public health with [what] we get,” he said.

Southampton Town Planner Janice Scherer said the town is committed to building a wastewater treatment plant in Riverside despite the “$5 million shortfall.” Southampton will evaluate its options for filling that funding gap, she said. If congressionally directed spending is back in fiscal year 2026, the town could ask the senator to resubmit the request, Scherer said. Permitting and construction of the facility won’t get underway until mid-2027 and should be completed by 2030, officials said at a community meeting last week in Riverside.

Other requests for funding of local projects in FY 2025 include: 

• A $350,000 grant to Suffolk County to remediate the site of a former service station on the corner of Griffing Avenue and Pulaski Street,  including the removal of underground storage tanks, groundwater testing and soil excavation, paving, security fencing and lighting;

• A $350,000 grant to Peconic Hockey Foundation to upgrade chiller equipment at the Ed Westfall Arena in Calverton Veterans Memorial Park;

• A $600,000 grant to SEPA Mujer, Inc. to expand its “Thriving Latinas” program for survivors of gender based violence into a broader workforce development program; 

• A $1,215,000  grant to SEPA Mujer, Inc. to build/renovate mobile services to expand organizational capacity;

• A $394,000 grant to OLA of Eastern Long Island, Inc. to support its teen mental health program;

The hard stop to congressional member grants in the current fiscal year does not necessarily threaten the viability of any individual project. It is up to the individual applicants to develop alternatives or request re-submission in FY 2026 — if congressional earmarks are reinstated.

Editor’s note: This article was updated after its original publication to add the comments of the Southampton Town planner during a subsequent March 17 interview.