Verified as of September 16, 2026. We re-check these pages quarterly.
If your property is in East Hampton, Southampton or Shelter Island, there is a third layer of money available on top of the county and state grants — funded by the towns themselves through Community Preservation Fund water quality funding.
We are not going to put a number on any of them. The amounts and the conditions are set by each town, they change, and the difference between a stale figure and a current one is thousands of dollars of your money. Call the town. That is the whole advice, and these are the numbers:
| Town | Program | Phone |
|---|---|---|
| East Hampton | Septic Incentive Program, Department of Natural Resources | 631-324-0496 |
| Shelter Island | Water Quality Improvement Rebate | 631-749-0758 |
| Southampton | I/A OWTS Rebate Program, Community Preservation Fund Department | 631-287-5720 |
The other thing the town programs can do
This is less well known and it matters more than people expect.
The county and state grants do not cover permit application fees, engineering and design, or landscaping afterward. Those are your costs, and on the East End they are not small — an I/A design on a waterfront lot may need a town or village building permit and a wetlands permit from the Town Trustees or the state Department of Environmental Conservation, each with its own application and its own fee.
The Community Preservation Fund programs in Southampton, East Hampton and Shelter Island can reimburse those costs. So the sequence worth following is: county and state grants against the installer's invoice, town program against the costs the grants exclude.
Ask about it in the right order
- Start the county application, because the county and state grants are the large ones and everything else sits on top of them. Check eligibility first.
- Call your town as soon as you know you are proceeding. Ask what the rebate is worth today, whether it is a rebate or a direct payment, whether it stacks with county and state money, and what it will and will not reimburse.
- Ask specifically whether permit fees, the design professional's fee and wetlands applications are reimbursable — that is the gap the county money leaves.
- Ask what their deadline and documentation requirements are. A town rebate claimed late is a town rebate lost.
Which areas this reaches
Shelter Island is the whole town. Southampton covers Hampton Bays and Westhampton among others. East Hampton covers East Hampton, Springs and Montauk. The North Fork towns — Riverhead and Southold — are not on this list, but the Peconic Estuary Partnership maintenance grant does reach them.
A caution
Town programs are funded from a different pot than the county's sales tax and the state's appropriation, and they are smaller. That means they are more likely to have annual limits, application windows or a queue. None of that is a reason to skip the call — it is a reason to make it early, before your design is finished and your installer is booked.
Verified as of September 16, 2026. We re-check these pages quarterly. The three programs, their departments and their phone numbers were confirmed against Suffolk County's own Septic Improvement Program page and its 2026 homeowner process overview on that date. No rebate amount is stated on this page because none was verified — ask the town directly. Confirm current availability before counting on a number.
All work is performed by local licensed, permitted Suffolk County-approved installers.