The Ward Melville gymnastics team traveled to Hampton Bays High School Oct. 19 where they came out the winners. The League III table-topping Patriots are now 5-0.
The Ward Melville gymnastics team will travel next to North Babylon High School, also unbeaten, Friday, Oct. 26, at 4:30 p.m.
For more photos from the meet, visit www.tbrnewsmedia.com.
By Alex Petroski & Sara-Megan Walsh
Recyclable materials have been building up at the Brookhaven Town recycling plant in Yaphank ever since China stopped accepting imports from American facilities in January, but the future of the facility is even more up in the air now.
Brookhaven Town Supervisor Ed Romaine (R) said contractor Green Stream Recycling terminated its 25-year contract to operate the Yaphank facility effective Oct. 29 citing financial woes due to market changes. The company signed the agreement with the town in 2013.
“We’re a regional facility — for them to do that it certainly isn’t going to speak well of the future of their waste management business on Long Island,” Romaine said.
The town plans to pursue legal action against the contractor for breach of contract, according to the supervisor.
Green Stream Recycling, owned by principals Joe Winters and Anthony Core, also of Hudson Baylor Brookhaven LLC, did not return a phone call requesting comment.
Romaine said the town will be putting the contract out for an emergency bid Nov. 1 for a new facility operator, and the town board will select a replacement at a Nov. 2 special meeting.
“They had three years of very good profits, and then as you know more recently there have been changes obviously in the recycling market where most of our recycling goods went,” Romaine said.
The terms of contract with Green Stream Recycling yielded $20 per ton of processed recyclables, a quarter of which went back to Brookhaven with the remaining 75 percent
redistributed to neighboring municipalities that had agreements with Brookhaven to send their recyclables to the Yaphank facility, Romaine said. The supervisor said the town hadn’t received any money from Green Stream since May, though Brookhaven has continued making payments to other municipalities.
“The Town of Brookhaven believes very strongly in the benefits that a municipal recycling program brings to our respective communities and hence the reason we continued acceptance and payment for the material received from the Town of Huntington,” Romaine wrote in an Oct. 23 letter to Huntington Supervisor Chad
Lupinacci (R).
Similar letters were also sent to Smithtown Supervisor Ed Wehrheim (R) and the other municipalities that have single-stream recycling agreements with Brookhaven.
John Clark, director of Environmental Waste Management for the Town of Huntington, said the town was previously informed Aug. 23 Brookhaven would not renew the intermunicipal agreement to accept Huntington’s collected recyclables set to expire at the end of this year. Under the terms of the agreement, Huntington received up to $15 per ton of recyclable material delivered to the Yaphank facility.
In 2017, Huntington collected and delivered more than 14,000 tons of material to the single-stream recycling plant that was processed through the intermunicipal agreement. This resulted in more than $152,000 in net revenue, according to town spokeswoman Lauren Lembo.
The town had already issued a request for proposals Oct. 18 in an attempt to find an alternative solution to start Jan. 1, 2019, which may include converting back to dual-stream recycling where residents may be held responsible for sorting their trash again.
The news of Green Stream Recycling ending its contract with Brookhaven will pose only a temporary issue for Huntington, Lembo noted.
“The Town of Brookhaven believes very strongly in the benefits that a municipal recycling program brings to our respective communities and hence the reason we continued acceptance and payment for the material received from the Town of Huntington.”
— Ed Romaine
“We are already in the process of reaching out to potential recycling vendors and other municipalities to execute a two-month agreement that would get us through the end of the year under our single-stream recycling mode,” Lembo said.
Russ Barnett, Smithtown’s environmental protection director, said the town had received a telephone call from Brookhaven Oct. 19 to immediately cease sending recyclables to Brookhaven’s Yaphank facility. Smithtown’s town board plans to issue an emergency request for proposals at its Oct. 25 meeting seeking a new contractor to cart and process its residents’ recyclables, according to spokeswoman Nicole Garguilo. It’s unclear what if any impact this may have on Smithtown’s tentative 2019 budget.
“Residents should continue doing what they are doing right now,” Barnett said. “We’re not asking residents to make any changes.”
Smithtown Town plans to temporarily store all collected materials at its Municipal Services Facility on Old Northport Road in Kings Park until a new carter is found. A new recyclable operator could mean a move back to dual-stream recycling.
“We’ve got a broad solicitation out there to identify what our options might be,” Barnett said. “Whether we will be offered services as an unsorted single-stream recyclables for sorting and purification elsewhere, or whether or not people might propose that prior sorting [by residents] needs to be done.”
A spokesperson for the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation said in a statement the agency is working with Brookhaven and the other towns impacted to develop solutions that will allow for processing of existing materials at the site and long-term solutions to continue recycling in the region, as well as working with industry stakeholders to solve the problem of drying up markets for the recycled material.
Benner’s Farm in East Setauket celebrated its annual Harvest Festival on Oct. 20 and 21 with pumpkin picking, apple cider demonstrations, a haunted hayride, music, vendors and visits with the farm animals. The two-day event attracted over 1500 visitors.
Photos by Elyse Benavides
On Long Island, the cost of property taxes weighs heavily on many people’s minds. In Brookhaven, the town is working with villages, schools, libraries, and other special districts to consolidate municipal services, which should lead to savings for homeowners. Any initiative to save taxpayers money is a worthwhile endeavor in our book.
After a two-year long process, New York State recently awarded Town of Brookhaven a $20 million grant for its application as part of the Municipal Consolidation and Efficiency Competition. The grant is a byproduct of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s (D) attempts to cut costs, share services and streamline inefficiencies in order to reduce property taxpayers’ burdens statewide.
In a field of finalists that were all upstate counties other than Brookhaven, the town came out on top, and Brookhaven Supervisor Ed Romaine (R) wasted no time in gathering representatives from villages, ambulance and fire districts, school districts and library districts to create a Council of Governments Committee. On Oct. 10 the council met to discuss the best practices of governance, shared services and intermunicipal opportunities expected to come from the $20 million cash influx.
Due to his leadership qualities and ability to work across party lines, we have confidence that Romaine has the ability to implement the money in an effective way. Project proposals have included using town contracts to buy in bulk things like asphalt replacement, which can save money for villages since the town can get a better price due to its size. Villages such as Port Jefferson could benefit not only from highway services but a town purchasing portal, electronic records management and storage.
While we know the council is in good hands, we hope the committee will take a serious look at how to run each agency more efficiently, even if some are not consolidated, and we also have suggestions for the future.
In addition to implementing current plans established during the grant application stage, the council hopes to explore possible other future initiatives. As the town moves forward, one suggestion we have with any potential plans is to call on local village officials and district heads to organize public meetings where residents can attend and discuss their concerns with town officials or brainstorm suggestions.
We also hope that Brookhaven will lead the way for other municipalities outside its scope. While we know not every town has the privilege of a $20 million grant, after implementing changes in Brookhaven, we hope to see town leaders reach out to other towns in Suffolk County for examples and suggestions to save their residents money.
The chance to save taxpayers money has the potential to cross town lines in the next few years.
By Teresa Dybvig
We almost missed the stunning sight — hundreds of monarch butterflies in one place at our very own West Meadow Beach, or to be more precise, the West Meadow Wetlands Reserve.
If you have walked along the beach recently, you’ve probably noticed the field of seaside goldenrod (Solidago sempervirens) lighting up the edge of the dunes all the way down the beach.
On Thursday, Oct. 4, my husband and I happened to turn away from the water to gaze at the goldenrod glowing in the late daylight. As we approached, we saw hundreds — probably thousands — of buzzing bees and wasps on the flowers. Then we saw a flash of orange, then another, and another. To our astonishment, everywhere we looked, we could see up to 10 monarch butterflies without turning our heads!
We returned on Sunday with a camera and more time. Walking steadily down about a third of the beach, we counted 144 monarchs! I’m sure there were many more; the field is so deep we couldn’t see every flower, and when monarchs fold their wings to eat, they are as thin as a blade of grass from the front. And we didn’t even get to two-thirds of the field. I’m not exaggerating when I say there were, literally, hundreds of monarchs on the beach that day.
If you have ever seen a monarch butterfly, you know it is gorgeous. It also has a jaw-dropping multigenerational migratory life cycle. The monarchs feasting on the goldenrods at West Meadow are fueling up to fly 2,700 miles to Mexico, at an average rate of 25 to 30 miles per day. Some have already traveled great distances to get here.
This generation of monarchs is sometimes called the “supermonarch” because it’s the only generation strong enough to make the trip, overwinter on a cool, damp Mexican mountaintop, and fly north again to lay eggs in the earliest-growing milkweed in the southern U.S. before its life comes to an end. The eggs laid by the supermonarchs will grow into monarchs who will fly north and repeat the process, living only two to five weeks.
The next supermonarchs are the offspring of the offspring of the previous generation of supermonarchs. Sometimes they are the offspring of the offspring of the offspring. So no monarch flying to Mexico has ever made the trip before. Yet thousands of generations have made the journey.
Our eastern monarch butterfly, Danaus plexippus is in a heartbreakingly steep and dangerous decline. For every 10 monarchs in the sky two decades ago, there are now only two. Researchers estimate that this species could be extinct within 20 years. If the monarch ceases to exist, we humans will have been the cause.
Monarchs are in danger because of human activities. We have cut down the trees monarchs require to overwinter in Mexico, we have killed milkweed that is critical for monarch caterpillars by spraying fields and their peripheries with herbicides like Round-up, we have paved over land where monarchs used to fuel up on nectar for their spectacular fall migration to Mexico, and we have contributed to changes in weather that can render the monarch’s route dangerous.
But we humans have also been working to help the monarch stay in the skies. People in Mexico are growing trees to replace the ones that were cut. Government agencies and ordinary citizens in the U.S. and Canada are planting milkweed in reserves and home gardens. And we are planting more fall-blooming native plants to fuel the long migration to Mexico.
This is where West Meadow Wetlands Reserve comes in! The seaside goldenrod there is one of the primary foods for monarchs migrating south. The wildflower’s blooming season is relatively short, so if you want to see the miracle in action, keep a lookout next fall in late September and early October.
Walk past the left end of the swimming area until you see the shining field of yellow flowers. Stand facing it for about a minute, and you will see a flash of orange, then another, and another. “We did this,” you can say to yourself. Our community. We set aside land for these flowers to grow, and they are helping these amazing creatures stay in the sky.
The author is a resident of Stony Brook.
Photo by Bill Landon
Ward Melville Patriots girls varsity volleyball team traveled to Bay Shore Oct. 16, but the Patriots lost to the Marauders 3-0 and are now 6-6 overall.
The Patriots will travel to Centereach Oct. 18 at 4 p.m., before hosting Sachem East Oct. 22 at 6:15 p.m. and Longwood Oct. 24 at 4:15 p.m. Ward Melville will travel again to Commack High School Oct. 25 at 4 p.m.
By Bill Landon
The 4th annual Patriot Run hosted by the Thomas Cutinella Memorial Foundation was held Sunday, Oct. 14, at Wildwood State Park in Wading River. The foundation is a nonprofit started in memory of Thomas by his parents — Frank and Kelli Cutinella — with the goal of improving awareness for football-related head injuries. Thomas was a Shoreham-Wading River football player killed as a result of an on-field collision in 2014. The race is held in his memory every year.
By Bill Landon
The Mount Sinai Mustangs football team scored a homecoming game victory Oct. 13, defeating Center Moriches 42-21. Mount Sinai improved its record to 6-0 with the victory, and will look to make it seven straight to start the season Oct. 19 at home against Elwood John Glenn.
By Bill Landon
The Miller Place Panthers girls volleyball team defeated the Shoreham-Wading River Wildcats Oct. 11 at home three sets to two, though everyone involved was a winner that day. The game was part of the annual Dig Pink initiative held during Breast Cancer Awareness Month in October in which the teams partner with the Sideout Foundation to to raise money to benefit the North Shore Neighbors Breast Cancer Coalition, a local nonprofit dedicated to helping families with someone battling the disease.
By Ernest J. Baptiste
Not a week goes by without a news story referencing the misuse of, addiction to, treatment of and deaths caused by opioids. And it’s no wonder. While the United States accounts for 4.4 percent of the world’s population (per U.S. Census Bureau figures), we consume 30 percent of prescribed opioids worldwide, according to the International Narcotics Control Board.
Sadly, within New York State, Suffolk County bears the brunt of this notoriety. Based on information from the NYS Department of Health, between 2009 and 2013, the county reported 337 heroin-related deaths — more than any other county in our state.
As Suffolk County’s only academic medical center, Stony Brook Medicine has the clinical, research and educational expertise to lead our community in the battle against addiction. We have a duty and an obligation to do so. For years we have worked closely with both Stony Brook Southampton Hospital and Eastern Long Island Hospital to help those affected by the opioid crisis.
In 2017, we took our commitment a step further by launching an Addiction Psychiatry Division. Our team of experts evaluates, diagnoses and treats people who suffer from one or more disorders related to addiction. They also conduct research into the causes and effective interventions for addiction and train our health are professionals in how to better identify and treat addiction.
In addition to treating those affected by the opioid epidemic, it’s also important to have a forum where the physicians and nurse practitioners, who have the authority to dispense prescriptions for pain medication, can explore, and develop, with input from the public, the future of pain management medicine.
This was the premise for a recent conference panel discussion held in August at Stony Brook University Hospital titled, Changing Perceptions About Pain Management and Opioid Use Across the Continuum of Care. During the panel discussion, Stony Brook experts explored current issues in the practice of managing chronic and acute pain. The event was part of our Ethical Decision Making Series and attracted over 100 clinicians and members of the community.
This month, Stony Brook has two more opioid epidemic-related events planned.
On Thursday, Oct. 18, Stony Brook Southampton Hospital will present its 5th annual Addiction Medicine Symposium at Stony Brook Southampton University, Avram Theatre, 39 Tuckahoe Road, from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. The goal is to help increase knowledge and improve performance of medical staff members, residents, nurses and other health care professionals when working with patients who suffer from addiction. To learn more, visit https://cme.stonybrookmedicine.edu.
The following day, Friday, Oct. 19, the opioid epidemic will be the focus when the Stony Brook University Neurosciences Institute hosts its 9th annual Meeting of the Minds symposium at Stony Brook University’s Charles B. Wang Center, 100 Nicolls Road, Stony Brook from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. The free event is open to physicians and other health care professionals, researchers, students and anyone with an interest in the opioid epidemic.
Experts from Stony Brook Medicine will present, discuss and explore the clinical implications of their scholarly research findings and discuss translational and informatics approaches to the opioid epidemic. This year’s keynote speaker will be Bertha Madras, a prominent psychobiologist, public policy maker and member of the President’s Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis. Breakfast will be provided and a discussion and Q&A will follow each presentation. To learn more, visit www.neuro.stonybrookmedicine.edu/motm.
Let’s fight the opioid epidemic together as a community so that our children and future generations of Long Islanders won’t have to.
Ernest J. Baptiste is chief executive officer of Stony Brook University Hospital.
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