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Environment & Nature

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Loader in front of a sand salt storage facility. Photo by Gavin Scarlatos

By Gavin Scarlatos

Rock salt has long been one of the primary methods used for combating the onslaught of snow and ice during the winter season. Known for its accessibility and cost effectiveness, rock salt impedes ice formation by lowering the freezing temperature of water and is a common deicing agent used both residentially and by transit authorities. 

The Town of Brookhaven Highway Department maintains numerous salt storage facilities with a combined rock salt capacity of nearly 25,000 tons. During any given snowstorm, the department sets out to treat its 3,700 lane miles of road with rock salt as a preventive measure against treacherous driving conditions. But the widespread dispersal of the sodium chloride chemical compound can lead to unintended consequences that have a negative effect on our trees and other landscape plants.

“Rock salt dries out and changes the pH of soil, and sometimes it even changes the form of fertilizer, so the plants can’t uptake the right amount of nitrogen and other available micronutrients,” said Nick Bates, Long Island district manager of The Davey Tree Expert Company. 

Davey Tree is one of the oldest and largest tree care companies in North America, providing research driven environmental consulting, arboriculture and horticulture services.

“The part of the tree taking in the water from the soil are its fine root hairs,” Bates said. “Rock salt burns the root hairs very easily and dries out the tree’s roots substantially, so the tree won’t be able to pull up water as effectively as before and will dry out or even die off.”

Bates emphasized how this process varies depending on the type of the tree or plant, pointing out how plants growing near the coastline are able to handle the salt intake efficiently while the species of plants located closer to the middle of Long Island are more susceptible to salt damage. 

“Arborvitaes and White Pines are most affected by rock salt,” Bates said. “Sometimes they are planted in traffic mediums and along highways. After the roads start getting salted, you’ll see the Arborvitaes turning a brown or yellow color while those planted away from the road will still be a nice, lush, beautiful green.”

Since exposure to rock salt is in some cases inevitable, Bates offered insight on how to best protect trees and other landscape plants against the damaging effects: “There’s quite a few things you can do. The best thing is to maintain the tree’s health in general, providing the tree with extra fertilizers will boost its ability to better handle external stressors. You can also give trees and plants extra water in the late fall before everything starts to freeze. Giving the trees a deep soaking means they’ll have more water in their systems for when the winter starts to dry them out. You can even give trees extra water in the spring as well, to help flush the rock salt out of the soil.” 

Bates added a warning. “There’s a fine line,” he said. “You don’t want to keep the plants completely flooded so all of the air in the soil gets pushed out and filled with water. The roots still need to be able to breathe.” 

Although traditional rock salt is still the cheapest and most practical deicing agent, there are more environmentally conscious alternatives that better protect plant life. Calcium chloride, while still damaging, does not burn the plants as badly as salt composed of sodium chloride, since it is less potent. 

Another approach is to add sand or even sawdust into the rock salt mixture, providing traction in icy conditions while mitigating the impact on vegetation by reducing the amount of salt being used. Also, preparing for rock salt exposure ahead of time by spreading gypsum or lime on soil in the late fall will reduce rock salt’s negative effects on trees and other landscape plants.

“One of the best things to combat the effects of rock salt is to plant the right trees in the right spots. If you live on a main road where a lot of salt gets spread, you could plant trees that are less susceptible to salt damage, and that’ll make your life a lot easier and the trees a lot happier,” Bates said.

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One of the 2023 Nissan Leaf EV cars, parked in front of the FSC Campus Center. Photo from FSC

Farmingdale State College (FSC) recently announced the addition of two new electric vehicles to its campus vehicle fleet, bringing to five its total of electric (EV) or hybrid vehicles, and moving closer to its goal of going fossil fuel free by 2035.

The two 2023 Nissan Leaf vehicles are four-door compact size cars and join a 2013 Nissan Leaf, a 2013 Toyota Prius, and a 2013 Chevy Volt, all of which are driven by Campus Vehicles authorized operators. The cars are branded with the FSC logo on the front doors and a “FSC Electric Vehicle” logo on the rear doors, with the motif of a globe blanketed by a leaf. The cars retail for a base price of $36,000.

“With a maximum range of 250 miles, fast charging port and installed spare charger our electric vehicles are more than capable of handling all of our in-state driving for college business,” said Michael Cervini, Campus Energy Manager for FSC. “These cars will be used by staff traveling for recruitment or professional development purposes.”

“We expanded our EV fleet ahead of Governor Hochul’s executive order for all state agencies to achieve certain sustainability and emissions goals,” said Greg O’Connor, Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer for FSC. “Combined with our campus bike share program, water conservation initiatives and planned upgrades to our HVAC systems and installation of green energy technology in our new science building, the vision is to exceed those benchmarks.” FSC received an Honorable Mention as a Bike Friendly University from the League of American Bicyclists in October.

FSC hosted Long Island’s Car Free Day and Sustainable Mobility Showcase in September 2023, which promoted all aspects of sustainable transportation including EVs. In partnership with RESC and Transit Solutions, the Office for Sustainability launched the Sustainable Transit Ambassador Program, a focus group which brings stakeholders from across campus together to discuss improving sustainable mobility at FSC. An annual EV Symposium also seeks to educate the public on the benefits of EVs. In addition, students, faculty and staff have access to FSC’s Solar Carport Charging Station, which includes stations for 20 electric-charged vehicles.

O’Connor noted that the green energy program is part of the commitment to environmental issues that students are looking for when choosing a college.

“Students want their school to embrace the values that they do, using less energy, reducing carbon footprint and taking steps that will help to reverse decades of damage to our planet. We believe in those values as much as they do and are embarking on these plans to make a long lasting impact to the environmental health of Long Island.”

About Farmingdale State College

Farmingdale State College offers 46-degree programs focused on emerging, high-demand, and relevant careers to help prepare the next generation of leaders in technology, engineering, business, healthcare, science and the arts. With nearly 10,000 students, FSC is SUNY’s largest college of applied science and technology. More than half of our graduating seniors leave debt-free and 94% are employed six months after graduation or enrolled in graduate school. FSC is home to Broad Hollow Bioscience Park, which supports the development of biotech start-up companies and partners with surrounding businesses and research institutions along the Route 110 Business Corridor. Our engaging student experience, highly inclusive campus and sustained commitment to accessibility, affordability, and student support, helps make FSC one of the best values in higher education.

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Disposable plastic utensils can take hundreds of years to decompose.
A Column Promoting a More Earth-Friendly Lifestyle

By John L. Turner

John Turner

Earlier this year New York City passed an ordinance aimed at banning utensils in take-out orders from restaurants unless specifically requested by the customer. This common sense waste reduction measure, called “Skipping the Stuff,” will keep millions of plastic utensils out of the waste stream where they’re either burned or buried. Similar legislation is likely both in Suffolk County and New York State.   

There’s no reason, however, to wait until additional laws are passed to reduce your use and disposal of unneeded plastic utensils by simply remembering when you next order take-out food to tell the restaurant to “skip the stuff.”  After all, the extra plastic spoons, knives, and forks, probably individually wrapped in plastic film, aren’t needed in most situations, are not recycable and take hundred of years to break down. A benefit to the law, in addition to it being better for the environment, is it saves local businesses money; not a bad thing! 

The “Skip the Stuff” effort and city law is an excellent illustration of waste reduction, the highest priority in waste management — reducing the amount of garbage produced in the first place. Its value is captured in the phrase: “There’s no environmental impact from garbage that’s not created.” So, since those plastic utensils are unneeded by you and yet another burden on the environment, let’s make an effort to “Skip the Stuff”!

A resident of Setauket, author John Turner is conservation chair of the Four Harbors Audubon Society, author of “Exploring the Other Island: A Seasonal Nature Guide to Long Island” and president of Alula Birding & Natural History Tours.

 

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White-throated Sparrow. Photo courtesy of Unsplash
Dark-eyed Junco. Photo courtesy of Unsplash

By John L. Turner

John Turner

Walking along the edge of an uneven row of withered goldenrods, adorned with countless fuzzy heads brimming with seeds, I noticed some bird movement in the lower branches of the shrubs interspersed among the flowers. Lots of movement in all directions as the small earth-toned birds flitted up and down, toward and away from me. I was in the presence of a flock of fourteen white-throated sparrows actively feeding on the ubiquitous goldenrod seed. Their presence was a nice welcome to my morning. 

The white-throated sparrow is a most handsome bird, possessing, as its name makes clear, a distinctive white throat patch (its Latin name is Zonotrichia albicollis with albicollis meaning “white-necked”). Even more prominent in this species are the five bold longitudinal black and white head stripes (three white and two black) with a pretty splash of yellow just behind the bill in a place known as the lores on the two lateral white stripes.   

There’s an interesting story about these light-colored head stripes that underscores how the natural world is much more complex than it may, at first, appear.  These stripes come in two distinct colors: white and tan, so a sparrow may be a tan-striped white-throated sparrow or a white-striped white-throated sparrow. This color difference is genetically based, apparently due to a single chromosome part inverting while going through mitosis — remember genetics from high school biology class? In a case of mistaken identity John James Audubon thought white-striped individuals were male while tan-striped birds female, a reasonable assumption given the fact more colorful birds are typically male. You can see this mistake in his illustration of the species in his famous “Birds of America.”

Birds of the same species that display different plumages are referred to as “morphs” or “forms.” The Eastern Screech Owl is another local example of a bird species that exhibits morphs, having two colorful forms — grey and rufous birds. The Parasitic Jaeger, a gull-like bird occasionally seen in the ocean off the island’s south shore has three color morphs — light, intermediate, and dark.

White-throated sparrow

And you might reasonably think that white-striped males would always select a white-striped female as a mate and the same with tan-striped individuals, but it’s actually just the opposite. White-striped males overwhelmingly prefer tan-striped females (and vice versa) while tan striped males select white-striped females (also vice versa), a concept ecologists fancily refer to as “negative assortative mating.” Researchers have determined the morphs behave differently with white-striped birds being more aggressive but with less adept parenting abilities than tan-striped birds.  These two traits seem to balance out as the two morphs are about equally represented in the species overall.  

White-throated sparrows don’t breed on Long Island (with very few noted records) but are common winter visitors and one of the more common species to visit bird feeding stations, often feeding on the millet and other grain that spills to the ground.  If white-throated sparrows come to your feeders try to distinguish the two color morphs and note any difference in behaviors. As mentioned above, research suggests the white-striped forms are more aggressive and tend to dominate tan-striped individuals. Have you observed this? 

As winter melds into spring you might hear the distinctive song of this sparrow. One of the bird’s colloquial names — Old Sam Peabody — comes from its song that seems like it’s saying that fella’s name with a few extra Peabody’s thrown in at the end. Others liken it to My Sweet Canada, Canada, Canada. I think the second description is a wee bit more accurate both because it sounds closer to the bird’s song and because the species breeds across a broad swath of forest in our country neighbor to the North.  

Another common winter visitor to bird feeders is a sparrow that doesn’t much look like  one, as it doesn’t have the earth-tone browns and tans typical of most sparrow species.  It’s the Slate-colored or Dark-eyed Junco or as the famous New York naturalist John Burroughs called them  “snowbirds” since they often appear in New York around the time of the season’s first snowfall.  

A widespread breeder across North America (but not Long Island as it breeds further north) this species consists of 15 subspecies many of which look different, giving rise to distinctive names such as the white-winged, pink-sided, red-backed, and gray-headed juncos. Given their distinctive morphological differences, which is thought to have occurred a few thousand years ago, this species appears to be on its way to evolving into several other species. If we can hang around for a few thousand more years we might find out the answer. 

The junco (it’s Latin name is hyemalis meaning “of the winter”) is a handsome bird with “our” subspecies being dark grey on top with white on the belly and under the tail.  Females are tinged with brown on top. Both sexes have triangular pink bills, the color of bubble gum, which they use to capture insects, collect seeds and berries, and/or the food you put out in your feeders.   

Dark-eyed Junco

Speaking of feeders, according to Project FeederWatch, run by the Cornell University’s Project Laboratory of Ornithology, the Dark-eyed Junco is recorded at more feeders in North America than any other bird. 

Another plumage trait all juncos share are outer tail feathers that range from partially to fully white. These bright white “banner marks” are examples of deflective coloration and are a feature commonplace in birds. It’s hypothesized their function is to confuse predators or deflect their attack to a non-lethal part of a bird’s body but this purpose has not been proven experimentally beyond a reasonable doubt so the purpose remains  conjectural. The Eastern Meadowlark and American Robin are other examples of birds exhibiting banner marks. 

Another interesting aspect of junco life is that not all birds overwinter in the same area. Generally male juncos, both adult and young, overwinter in more northern locales while females migrate further south. The reason for this seems to be the desire for male birds to be closer to prime breeding territories, the adults to reclaim them and younger males in an effort to quickly find an available territory. Females have no such worries and can benefit from more moderate climates to the south.

So, what at first appears to be two nice uncomplicated winter visitors visiting your feeding station actually reveal, like when the layers of an onion are peeled back, a reality with complexity and depth possessed by all living creatures that share our world.

A resident of Setauket, author John Turner is conservation chair of the Four Harbors Audubon Society, author of “Exploring the Other Island: A Seasonal Nature Guide to Long Island” and president of Alula Birding & Natural History Tours

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Hikers at Sunken Meadow State Park on Jan. 1. Photo courtesy Kara Hahn
Hikers at Sunken Meadow State Park on Jan. 1. Photo courtesy Kara Hahn
Hikers at Sunken Meadow State Park on Jan. 1. Photo courtesy Kara Hahn

By Aidan Johnson

New York State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, with the Department of Environmental Conservation and the Canal Corporation, partnered together to host the 13th annual First Day Hike at Sunken Meadow State Park in Kings Park. The Jan. 1 event was just one of many that were held across the state and nation to help kick off the new year, according to the state Parks website.

Kara Hahn, deputy regional director at New York State Parks, considered the event a “tremendous success.”

“The hike began on the boardwalk overlooking the beautiful white pebble beach on the Long Island Sound. Participants made their way east toward the marsh, crossed over Sunken Meadow Creek on the New Bridge and followed Mousehole Trail back west along the creek,” Hahn said in a statement.

“The group then crossed back over the creek at Old Bridge and returned to the boardwalk, proceeding west to the park office to complete the 1.5-plus mile hike,” she added.

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Assemblyman Keith Brown (R,C-Northport) congratulates Board of Greenlawn Water District on receiving grant funding through the NYS Water Infrastructure Improvement Act (WIIA) on Jan. 10, 2024.

Assemblyman Keith Brown’s (R,C-Northport) office attended a ceremony on Wednesday, Jan. 10, to help congratulate the Board of Greenlawn Water District on being awarded a $1.4 million grant through the NYS Water Infrastructure Improvement Act (WIIA) to complete Drinking Water (DW) Project No. 19713, which will include wellhead treatment for volatile organic compounds (VOCs) at Well No. 6.

Through the WIIA grant, the board has been awarded $1,392,300, including total estimated eligible project costs. The Environmental Facilities Corporation (EFC) will determine the actual amount of the grant when the project is complete and final project costs have been confirmed.

“I am very excited to see the board put this grant funding to good use to protect the drinking water for our Greenlawn residents,” said Brown. “Thank you and congratulations to the Greenlawn Water District Board of Commissioners, Chairman John H. Clark, Treasurer John T. McLaughlin, Secretary James M. Logan, Superintendent Robert Santoriello and Chief Plant Operator Frank DeMayo on this grant—I will be on the lookout for future updates on this project and others you intend to take on to continue to improve water quality for our residents.”

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Reviewed by John Turner 

We humans have done a pretty good job at mucking up the planet, scraping away the planet’s skin for minerals and timber, farms and ranches, not to mention the type of development that characterizes so much of Long Island — shopping centers, industrial parks, and residences. These impacted places, especially the first few, lend themselves well to rewilding to restore the natural, living fabric that was once there.  

You might reasonably ask “What is rewilding?” not to mention what wilding means. As we learn in The Book of Wilding: A Practical Guide to Rewilding Big and Small (Bloomsbury Publishing  PLC) by Isabella Tree and Charlie Burrell, it is a form of ecological restoration (to restore to the wild condition). What separates it from typical ecological restoration efforts, however, is that the rewilder may not try to restore exactly what was once there or definitively know what species end up colonizing a rewilded site. In this regard rewilding falls in between active, intense hands-on ecological manipulation and non-intervention or just letting “nature take its course.” 

The concept of rewilding developed in the late 20th century when several conservationists offered a vision of North America, rewilded through the implementation of three “C’s” as guiding principles — cores, connectors, and carnivores. Cores involve the expansion of national parks and other public spaces; connectors involve land protection work to connect these expanded public spaces so wildlife can move between sites to promote genetic health among species through genetic exchange and as a hedge again local extirpation in one area; and, lastly, carnivores means the introduction of predators such as wolves, bears, etc. where possible, recognizing the critical role they play in maintain the health of ecosystems.

In Europe, where there are not the expansive wilderness areas like those found in North America, rewilding has taken on a slightly different definition or tone. Here it is viewed as “kickstarting the ecosystem” or as the authors state: “Putting nature back in the driver’s seat.” They do this by restoring rivers and wetlands by restoring their hydrology, promoting keystone species (species that play a disproportionate role in maintaining the stability of a natural community just as a keystone in an arch keeps an entire arch intact), reintroducing missing species (or if they cannot be reintroduced due to extirpation introduction of surrogate species that behave in a similar way ecologically) and implementing strategies to promote biodiversity, which as its name suggests is the full suite of living things in a specific area.       

We learn this and so many other things in this rewilding guide. And what a guide it is, all 559 pages worth, providing both breadth and depth on insights, principles, ideas, and strategies on rewilding. It is easy to get intimidated by this book given its level of detail and the sheer amount of information it contains. However, it is written in a clear and straightforward style, the authors recounting years of experience in their effort to rewild  a 3,500 acre estate in West Sussex, Great Britain. 

The book is a “how to guide,” covering all the elements necessary to make places that have been compromised once again ecologically diverse and stable, thereby providing the numerous benefits in the form of goods and services intact wild areas provide (e.g. clean water and air, soil creation, timber and wild food production). 

While some chapters on wilding have limited applicability to Long Island or New York State, such as introducing large herbivores, a number of chapters in the book have specific relevance to Long Island.

One such chapter is the discussion on “rewilding water.” As the authors note,  wetlands — rivers, streams, ponds, lakes, bogs, marshes etc.  — cover a tiny percentage of the Earth’s  surface, estimated to be about 1 to 2%, but contain habitat for 10% of  all animal species and 30% of all vertebrate species. It is clear: wetlands are important from an ecological and biodiversity perspective. 

What are the elements of rewilding a wetland, say, a stream? 

◆ Restore naturally meandering, S-shape channels in the waterway if previously straightened (so many streams and rivers have been in an effort to carry water away); 

◆ Revegetate the banks to eliminate erosion and plant trees along the banks to create shade that create cooler water conditions conducive for fish like trout (the authors recommend 50% of the water surface be shaded);

◆ Leave tree trunks and branches that have fallen in the stream since they provide hiding places for aquatic wildlife; 

◆ Create pools in the stream bed so water remains for invertebrates and fish during low water periods and create gravel bars that provide microhabitat for invertebrates; 

◆ “Daylighting” streams by unburying them and removing structural conduits; and

◆ Removing weirs, dams and other impediments to the movement of fish and other aquatic animals.  

This last recommendation has special relevance to Long Island as the overwhelming number of streams contain obstacles from past road and railroad construction and placement of grist mills. Dam removal would immediately help a number of species such as river herring and American eel. 

The book makes similar constructive recommendations relating to other rewilding elements such as vegetation and with animals. A section entitled “Rewilding Your Garden — Applying rewilding principles in a small place” may be of special interest to homeowners. It contains great tips on how to make the surroundings around a home more diverse and environmentally friendly, not to mention beautiful.  

Each chapter has an introduction and then for ease of reading has distinguishing green colored pages which highlight a separate but related section providing informative specifics of the rewilding effort; these are called “Putting It Into Practice”. This approach is useful in distinguishing theoretical and scientific underpinnings of rewilding from the practical steps needed to achieve the desired rewilding element.  

Underpinning this book is an optimistic perspective that with careful, sensitive and appropriate human intervention, nature can heal itself, if given half a chance. 

As the book makes clear, if the ideas, strategies, and recommendations flowing from rewilding principles are implemented in your backyard garden, neighborhood park, or on a much larger scale knitting together national parks, the natural world will be a more healthy, diverse, richer and beautiful place.  

The Book of Wilding: A Practical Guide to Rewilding Big and Small is available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble.

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Suffolk County District Attorney Ray Tierney. Photo from Tierney's office

On December 15,  Suffolk County District Attorney Raymond A. Tierney announced his “Evergreen Initiative” – a combined legislative and law enforcement agenda that aims to halt devastating pollution and dumping at the county’s parks, beaches, and forests.

Joined by County Executive-Elect Ed Romaine, Suffolk County Sheriff Errol D. Toulon, Jr., Crime Stoppers President Patrick Fazio, Brookhaven Supervisor-Elect Dan Panico, and Winter Brothers owner Jim Winters, as well as leadership from the State Department of Environmental Conservation, the Pine Barrens Commission, the State Police, the Suffolk Park Rangers, District Attorney Tierney outlined a multi-point plan to turn the tide on environmental assault.

The Evergreen Initiative will:

1. Raise and sustain awareness of rewards available to citizens who report dumping and pollution under current Suffolk County Law, as well as posting reward signage;

2. Encourage more reporting of environmental crimes by increasing the rewards for tips to 33% of the fines collected by the District Attorney through the criminal justice process;

3. Increase the fine schedule for dumping/polluting on county land to $15,000 for individuals, with corporate fines reaching $25,000;

4. Encourage municipalities to mirror the county fine schedule, so that town and village parks are equally protected;

5. Invest an additional $10,000 into environmentally-friendly covert surveillance equipment and deploy the trip-alert system throughout county parklands;

6. Coordinate with Crime Stoppers and the Suffolk County Parks Watch reporting systems to facilitate easier reporting;

7. Seize and impound all vehicles that are utilized to dump or otherwise pollute public lands;

8. Ensure that fines and clean-up money are used locally in Suffolk County;

9. Putting offenders to work cleaning Suffolk parks and beaches as part of their sentences; and

10. Seek maximum financial penalties on all environmental cases. The combination of increasing fine schedules and reward percentage will mean that a Good Samaritan report of dumping can receive up to $8,250 from fines and up to $5,000 from Crime Stoppers.

District Attorney Tierney also emphasized that the statute of limitations on certain dumping crimes can reach back to 2018 and reports leading to convictions are always welcome and will be rewarded in accordance with the law. As part of the Evergeen Initiative, the increased rewards for reporting dumping and pollution will be posted on the public entrance of every county park.

“I am confident that these measures will make an impact,” said District Attorney Tierney. “Our office will continue to seek maximum financial penalties, which will translate to higher rewards for those who report polluters. All local municipal leaders are encouraged to adopt similar local legislation at the town and village level so that our incentives do not redirect the illegal dumping to your parks. We all must work together so that Suffolk’s natural beauty is universally protected.”

“Over the past year, Brookhaven has conducted more than 750 roadside cleanups and 32 other cleanups requiring heavy equipment for illegal dumping, which has included everything from residential waste to boats, campers and even floating docks. The new Evergreen Initiative will be an important tool in curbing illegal dumping and protecting our environment,” said County Executive-Elect Ed Romaine. “I want to thank District Attorney Tierney for his leadership on this issue to protect our open space, our groundwater and our residents from the impacts of illegal dumping.”

“The Suffolk County Sheriff’s Office has been involved in the patrol of the Central Pine Barrens region for the past three decades and we have seen numerous cases of illegal dumping. We’ve discovered garbage of all sorts, from paperwork and yard debris to larger items like furniture, mattresses and even boats,” said Suffolk County Sheriff Errol D. Toulon, Jr.

“Illegal dumping is lazy, illegal and harmful to our environment and our island’s resources. Make no mistake, if you are dumping illegally in Suffolk County, especially in our pine barrens, we will find you and you will be held accountable.”

“D.A. Tierney’s Evergreen Initiative, supported by County Executive-elect Romaine, Sheriff Toulon, and other elected officials, provides a new dimension of deterrent to tackling illegal dumping in Suffolk County Parklands and the Pine Barrens Region,” said Chief of the Suffolk County Parks Rangers Steve Laton. “Suffolk County Park Rangers remain committed to working with our law enforcement partners to thwart illegal dumping in Suffolk County.”

“As the owner of Long Island’s largest solid waste management and recycling firm, I would like to applaud District Attorney Ray Tierney for leading the fight against illegal dumping,” said Jimmy Winters, Owner of Winter Bros. “The actions announced by him today will help disincentivize the dumping of harmful materials in our ecosystem and hold criminal actors accountable.”

“Crime Stoppers takes all criminal activity seriously, particularly crimes against our environment,” said Crime Stoppers President Patrick Fazio. “Suffolk County residents can contact Crime Stoppers at 1-800-220-TIPS to report dumping or other pollution and receive up to $5,000 for their tips.”

“Illegal dumping is selfish and irresponsible and has a negative impact on our environment and our communities,” said New York State Police – Troop “L” Long Island – Troop Commander Major Stephen J. Udice. “The New York State Police will continue to work with our law enforcement and prosecutor partners to hold those accountable that choose to irresponsibly and illegally engage in the act of illegal dumping.” I

n addition to increasing fines, rewards, and signage, District Attorney Tierney’s Evergreen Initiative will allocate more than $10,000 worth of additional environmentally friendly covert surveillance equipment, such as cameras, drones, and license plate readers, to undisclosed park lands to catch those who pollute in the act.

Another component of District Attorney Tierney’s Evergreen Initiative will partner his office’s Biological, Environmental, and Animal Safety Team (BEAST) Unit and Asset Forfeiture Bureau with local police departments to penalize those who are caught in the commission of an environmental crime by having their vehicles impounded and held until all fines are paid off – including the cost of clean-up. The fines collected will be kept locally and used to cover all costs of prosecution. In addition, offenders will be put to work cleaning Suffolk County beaches and trails, planting trees, sorting recycling, and contributing efforts to the county’s environmental organizations.

Through the Evergreen Initiative, an economy will be created that works for Suffolk County’s local ecosystem. 5 To report pollution, individuals may use any of the following (in an emergency or to report a crime in progress always dial 911)

 Suffolk County Parks Watch: [email protected] or 631-854-1423

 The Suffolk County Pine Barrens Complaint Line 877-BARRENS

 Crime Stoppers: 1-800-220-TIPS or www.p3tips.com or download app at P3Tips

 Suffolk County DA: suffolkcountyny.gov/da/contact-us (Report Pollution tab)

The District Attorney will track all reports that lead to convictions so that appropriate rewards are paid.

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Gov. Kathy Hochul announces $479 million in grants for water infrastructure projects. Photo courtesy the Office of Governor Kathy Hochul

As on any other weekday, traffic buzzed along Vanderbilt Motor Parkway in Hauppauge on Tuesday afternoon, Dec. 12. Yet unknown to those in their vehicles, it was no ordinary weekday.

At the Suffolk County Water Authority’s Education Center and Laboratory, Gov. Kathy Hochul (D) joined public officials, environmentalists and SCWA staff to launch $479 million in grants statewide to invest in clean water.

The program earmarks $30 million for the state’s clean water septic system replacements, directing $20 million of that sum into Suffolk County. Another $17 million will support protecting drinking water from emerging contaminants, Hochul added.

The governor projected the initiative would spur 24,000 new jobs statewide and save ratepayers $1.3 billion annually.

“This is a great day for the people of this county and the people of this state,” she said. “It’s an investment in our environment. It’s an investment in justice. And it’s an investment in our future for all of our children.”

From left, Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone; Gov. Kathy Hochul; Adrienne Esposito, executive director of the Citizens Campaign for the Environment; and Suffolk County Water Authority board chair Charlie Lefkowitz. Photo courtesy the Office of Governor Kathy Hochul

Outgoing Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone (D) reported that 360,000 homes and businesses within the county operate on aging septic systems and cesspools, contaminating the sole-source aquifer on Long Island. He said this stimulus, coupled with a $10 million investment by the county Legislature, would enable the county government to fund septic replacements in 2024 and 2025.

“This is an exciting moment because we can see the path to solving the crisis,” Bellone said, adding the funds would bolster the clean water septic industry in Suffolk while advancing the administration’s two primary objectives of establishing a countywide wastewater management district and the Clean Water Restoration Fund — blocked by the county Legislature earlier this year.

SCWA board chair Charlie Lefkowitz said the funds would assist the public utility in its mission of eliminating emerging contaminants from the drinking supply.

“This announcement today is historic,” he said. “It’s historic that the sewer projects, the septics that contaminate and get into our bays and streams and harbors — we can finally address it.”

He added, “We look at some of these large infrastructure projects that we’re working on — sewer projects, the electrification of the Long Island Rail Road’s Port Jeff Branch — these are projects that when you look back 100, 150 years and none of us are here, they’ll say, ‘That group of people really did it the right way.’”

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