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Port Jefferson is fighting to keep property tax revenue flowing from the power plant and to prevent restrictions from being lifted on peaker unit output. File photo by Lee Lutz

A clerical item on the Brookhaven Town Board’s agenda regarding Caithness Long Island II, a proposed Yaphank power plant, caused a stir among some Port Jefferson residents on Thursday, as they questioned what exactly the board was voting on.

Earlier in the week, Supervisor Ed Romaine (R) predicted the issue at a Monday work session meeting. The item — accepting documentation about covenants and restrictions at the project site — was included under the board’s Communication Consensus agenda. Romaine said the town received correspondence that the information was filed with the Suffolk County Clerk’s Office, and the board had to vote to accept it. He added that the Town Board was not trying to sneak anything by residents.

“We have to list correspondence that we receive,” he said Monday.

Last July, the Town Board granted Caithness Long Island II a special permit for its proposed 752-megawatt power plant. Romaine and Councilwoman Valerie Cartright (D-Port Jefferson Station) remained in the minority and voted against the permit.

Some Port Jefferson residents adamantly oppose the project, as they fear it could negatively impact the chances of the Port Jefferson power plant being upgraded. Critics allege the Caithness project’s environmental impact statement was flawed and didn’t adequately address impacts on the surrounding communities and species living near the property, which is adjacent to an existing 350-megawatt Caithness power plant.

At Thursday’s meeting, standing together in the minority as they did on the special permit vote, Cartright and Romaine voted against accepting the Caithness communication. Cartright said the project should be re-evaluated, as PSEG Long Island has stated there will be sufficient local energy capacity until about 2020, and thus there is no need for Caithness II.

“In light of that fact, it appears to me that the [environmental review] process was based on an erroneous premise, as the original … findings for this project were in part based on an additional need of power,” she said.

During public comment, Port Jefferson Village Trustee Bruce Miller expressed his frustration with the Town Board granting the special use permit and with how backup documents, which officials said are available at the town and county clerk’s offices, weren’t provided with Thursday’s agenda.

Miller said he sympathized with Medford residents, some of whom attended the same meeting to advocate against a proposed casino in their neighborhood.

“Only two people on this board are voted for by the people from Port Jefferson,” he said, referring to the supervisor and the councilwoman, “and yet the rest of the board members can vote with impunity against us and against our interests.”

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The town is offering free mulch and compost, above, to town residents as supplies last. Photo from Brookhaven Town

Brookhaven Town has started giving away free mulch and compost to residents as part of a push to get some more green around town.

The mulch and compost will be distributed, upon submitting proof of residency, as supplies last. The material is not bagged, so people must provide their own containers and load the mulch and compst into their vehicles themselves.

Local distribution sites are open at Brookhaven Town Hall in Farmingville, on weekdays from 9 a.m. to 7:30 p.m.; Percy Raynor Park on Route 347 in South Setauket, on weekdays from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. and on weekends from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.; and the Rose Caracappa Center on Route 25A in Mount Sinai, on weekdays from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. and on weekends from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.

The material is also available at the Holtsville Ecology Center off Buckley Road from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., Monday through Friday; at the town landfill on Horseblock Road in Brookhaven hamlet on weekdays from 7 a.m. to 2:45 p.m. and on Saturday from 7 a.m. to noon; and at the town compost facility on Papermill Road in Manorville on weekdays from 7 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and 1 to 3 p.m.

All six sites are open to residents, but commercial vehicles may only pick up mulch and compost at the landfill and the compost facility, where there will be a fee of $12 per yard.

For more information about the mulch and compost distribution program, call Brookhaven Town at 631-451-TOWN.

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Suffolk County Legislator Kara Hahn file photo

A North Shore lawmaker is calling on Suffolk County to give green a chance.

Legislator Kara Hahn (D-Setauket) is pushing a pilot program that, if enacted, would inject green roof construction principles into roof repair or replacement plans for one county-owned building on a trial basis.

A “green roof” uses a garden or plantings to increase energy efficiency by insulating the building in the winter and reducing solar absorption in the summer, to decrease the need for heating and air conditioning, according to the not-for-profit Green Roofs for Healthy Cities organization. Green roofs can also attract various pollinating insect species, which would serve as an environmental benefit to the surrounding region.

“Structures that employ green roof concepts report increased energy efficiency,” Hahn said. “In the municipalities that have already installed these roofs, officials have discovered that being green is saving green.”

If enacted in Suffolk County, the pilot project would take root atop one county-owned building, Hahn spokesman Seth Squicciarino said. The county’s Department of Public Works would monitor the green roof to measure the benefits.

If successful, similar roof renovations could sprout up throughout the county.

Hahn said the DPW would select which building in Suffolk should get the roof repair or replacement project, select a vendor for the work and provide periodic reports on its progress as the seasons pass.

The plan was first put onto the table March 3 and the county Legislature’s Public Works, Transportation and Energy Committee mulled over the proposal at its April 20 meeting.

Hahn said municipalities throughout the country were already looking into similar projects and, in some cases, requiring new construction projects to include green roof principles. As for Long Island, green roofs are already in full bloom on the SUNY Old Westbury campus and on the East End’s southern fork.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recognized green roof projects as an effective management practice that, if implemented on a large scale, would reduce the volume of stormwater entering local waterways and lower water temperatures to enhance water quality. New York City has already enacted a $5.23 rebate for each square foot of many green roof projects, and the city of Syracuse has allocated nearly $4 million toward 37 different green roof projects to date.

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This state Department of Environmental Conservation map hilights special groundwater protection property in yellow, which includes a lot in the center on which a North Shore developer hopes to build.

A Setauket-based civic group is drawing a line in the sand as a North Shore developer looks to build three houses on an environmentally sensitive area.

Brookhaven is home to two of Long Island’s nine special groundwater protection areas, designated by the state Department of Environmental Conservation, and Charles Krohn of Windwood Homes, Inc. has applied for variances to divide his land within one of them — in East Setauket near Franklin Avenue and John Adams Street —  into three separate plots. But Shawn Nuzzo, president of the Civic Association of the Setaukets and Stony Brook, argued the town should adhere to existing zoning laws there to protect the area’s aquifer.

The DEC’s special groundwater protection area in question is a large, oddly shaped chunk of land on the North Shore that includes Stony Brook University, St. Georges Golf and Country Club, Ward Melville High School, wooded properties on the southern part of Setauket, pieces of Lake Grove and more.

“[This area] is critical to ensuring the future potability of our underground water supply,” Nuzzo said in a statement read aloud at the April 22 Brookhaven Town Board of Zoning Appeals meeting. “Granting variances to allow for these substandard lots would serve to undermine not only the state environmental conservation law, but also … Brookhaven’s own adopted comprehensive land use plan.”

The civic president said the town granted the area special protection in its 1996 land use plan — the most recently adopted plan to date — because of its environmental significance. In his testimony, Nuzzo asked the town to deny the requested variances solely to protect the environmental standards already in place, adding he was not opposed to development all together.

“If the applicant wishes to develop this property, we recommend they adhere to the town’s existing zoning ordinances,” he said.

Krohn, who lives in East Setauket, purchased the land from the town in September 2014 and said he was looking to build three homes between 3,000 and 3,500 square feet in the same community where Windwood Homes has already been developing for years.

“The houses might, in fact, be smaller than this footprint,” he said at last month’s Board of Zoning Appeals meeting. “These are not sold right now.”

Diane Moje of D&I Expediting Services in Farmingville represented Krohn at the hearing and said the goal was to make three equal lots for development.

East Setauket resident Thomas Cardno has lived near Franklin Avenue for nearly a decade and said he worries that overdevelopment would create a safety risk for young children, referring to the variance proposals as “jamming three homes on there” as a means to maximize profits at the expense of the families in the area.

The cul-de-sacs in the area are too crammed already, he said. “Just put two homes in there and call it a day, at this point.”

Moje, however, said the town has already granted similar variances for other homes in the surrounding area, making the current proposal nothing out of the ordinary.

“This is not out of character and not something this board hasn’t addressed previously, and granted,” she said.

Christopher Wrede of the Brookhaven Town Planning Department reviewed the proposal and said the variances posed no significant environmental impact. The Board of Zoning Appeals held the public hearing open, to get additional information in the coming months.

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Huntington residents could find it easier to afford solar panels on their homes, thanks to new initiative backed by town and City University of New York officials. File photo by Victoria Espinoza

Huntington Town residents looking to go solar can let the sunshine in at a discount, thanks to a new group-purchasing program spearheaded by town and City University of New York officials.

On Monday afternoon, town hall officials unveiled Solarize Huntington, a program that attempts to incentivize residents to go solar by offering discounts of up to 25 percent on installation costs through installer Direct Energy Solar. The level of discount would increase as the number of participants in the Solarize Huntington program grows, according to the town and Sustainable CUNY of the City University of New York. Solarize Huntington will also include educational workshops about solar energy and guidance on the process of going solar.

The program, which officially launched today, May 4,  runs through Sept. 10.

Homeowners who participate could purchase, finance or lease solar systems from Direct Energy Solar, the installer selected by CUNY through a competitive bidding process, town spokesman A.J. Carter said. Direct Energy Solar is also offering an additional $500 discount to the first 20 homeowners who sign contracts.

The average solar installation, with state and federal incentives included, could cost a Huntington homeowner around $16,000 for a 7-kilowatt system, according to Justin Strachan, a New York State solar ombudsman with Sustainable CUNY. Solarize Huntington could reduce that cost to somewhere around $12,000, he said.

Solar is already popular in Huntington Town, CUNY and town officials noted on Monday. Officials from Sustainable CUNY, Supervisor Frank Petrone (D), Councilwoman Susan Berland (D) and Councilman Mark Cuthbertson (D) attended a press conference launching the program on Monday at which Petrone said that last year, the town received 500 applications for solar installation permits.

“So that tells you the popularity and it tells you people are yearning for a program, for a supervised program, and something that’s going to be meaningful and cost-effective,” Petrone said.

Laurie Reilly, who directs communications for Sustainable CUNY, said the Solarize Huntington program is just one program among other solar initiatives funded by a more than $1 million U.S. Department of Energy grant. She also said Huntington was selected for the program because, at the time of the grant application, the town committed to work with Sustainable CUNY to make solar more accessible to residents.

“Huntington was the first one to step up and the first one to say, ‘We would like to do this.’”

This isn’t the only thing Huntington Town has done in recent years to encourage and increase the use of solar power to cut down on the consumption of fossil fuels. The town recently approved a fast-track process for approval of solar installation permits and used a federal grant several years ago to install solar panels at town hall, the town said in a statement.

The program launch is thanks to the partnership of Sustainable CUNY, the New York Solar Smart Program, the town and the town’s Advisory Committee on Energy Efficiency, Renewables, and Sustainability, according to a town statement.

Residents interested in signing up for the program can do it online at solarizhuntington.com, or at one of the Solarize 101 informational workshops the town is sponsoring to help residents learn of the program’s benefits.

The first workshop will be held on Monday, May 11 from 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. at town hall.

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Biologist, outdoorsman Eric Powers plans special event at Smithtown spot as spring weather arrives

Ranger Eric Powers with an eastern screech owl. Photo from Carole Paquette

The warmer weather has Smithtown residents spreading their wings and one upcoming event at a town park offers a literal translation of the phrase.

Biologist and outdoorsman Eric Powers will be hitting the North Shore next week to conduct a birding walk at Smithtown’s own Caleb Smith State Park Preserve on Jericho Turnpike.

Having extensively explored the historic Caleb Smith park, Ranger Eric — as most North Shore students know him — will lead attendees to some of his favorite locations to see birds and other wildlife, as well as highlighting plants and freshwater springs, the lifeblood of the park.

A former park ranger in Colorado, Powers led nature hikes until he joined the Peace Corps as an environmental education officer for two years. In 2005, he started his own company, Your Connection To Nature, dedicated to meaningful environmental education programs and ecotourism. These programs connect classrooms to field studies and give people a deeper understanding of their local environment.

Powers’ latest endeavors include a monthly cable TV series about Long Island nature, the Marine Explorers Summer Camp in Babylon and the original bobwhite quail vs. ticks project.

For more information, visit his website at www.yc2n.com.

The event, slated for Saturday, May 9, from 9 to 10:30 a.m., includes a preregistration requirement as space is limited. For more information, residents can call 366-3288 or 265-1054. The free event is part of the 2015 lecture series sponsored by the Friends of Caleb Smith Preserve, and will involve walking about two miles.

Walkers are urged to wear sensible footwear and bring binoculars and a camera with a telephoto lens, if they are able.

For more information about the activities and events of the park’s friends, visit www.friendsofcalebsmith.org.

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Recharge basin will reduce erosion at Pickwick Beach

Town workers get moving to construct a sump near the intersection of Amagansett and Shore drives. Photo from the highway department

The town highway department started work recently on a stormwater project that could improve water quality in the Long Island Sound and prevent erosion on a troubled bluff that has homes sitting on top of it.

Brookhaven Town officials hope a new recharge basin near the intersection of Amagansett and Shore drives in Sound Beach, once completed, will collect stormwater runoff from surrounding roads and thus reduce the amount discharging onto nearby Pickwick Beach and into the Sound. The decreased flow of runoff onto the beach would relieve pressure on the bluff there, which has dangerously eroded in recent years.

The recharge basin will be located at the town’s parking lot for the beach. In late 2013, the town bought property — which had previously served as an easement — adjacent to its lot for the purpose of constructing the sump. Earlier that year, the town finished the first phase of its stormwater mitigation project in the area, repairing an outfall pipe that broke during Hurricane Sandy and filling in the bluff with more than 2,000 cubic yards of fill to stabilize it and rebuild its slope.

The bluff had already eroded to a degree, but the hurricane created a 40-foot drop-off at the site and residents at the top of the bluff were worried about safety.

Highway Superintendent Dan Losquadro said the work on the both bluff and the pipe were not meant to be the end of the project — the end goal was a recharge basin that would take the erosion pressure off the bluff.

“It was just a Band-Aid so the bluff didn’t erode any further,” he said in a phone interview.

Excavation on the sump has already begun, Losquadro said, and he expects the project to take at least another two months — possibly three if the weather does not cooperate.

The sump has other benefits, from both an environmental and a maintenance standpoint.

When water flows through the streets during rainfall, it picks up and carries dirt, bacteria and other pollutants with it. That contaminated water eventually drains into bodies of water like the Sound in some places. The recharge basin will filter the water naturally instead.

“Wherever we can, we don’t want water draining into the Long Island Sound,” Councilwoman Jane Bonner (C-Rocky Point) explained when the town was acquiring property for the recharge basin. “We want it to drain into the sump.”

In a phone interview Tuesday, Bonner said the project would save the town money in the long run, as there would be fewer erosion costs in the area.

Losquadro said the basin would also be “much less labor-intensive,” because the highway department will only have to clean it out about once every decade.

It can also hold much more water than a storm drain — the highway superintendent said storm drains can hold a couple of inches of water while the sump can take at least 8 inches, “which is an enormous rainfall.”

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Sunken Meadow State Park Director Jeffrey J. Mason meets Smithtown West High School's Rachel Gladstone to review plans for the Sunken Meadow Recycling Project 5K Race and 1/2 Mile Fun Run for Kids. Photo from Allison Gayne

A Smithtown West High School junior is going the extra mile and hosting a recycling project in the form of a 5-kilometer race at Sunken Meadow State Park in June to promote a greener mindset across Long Island.

Rachel Gladstone, 17, has arranged the first ever Sunken Meadow Recycling Project 5K Race and 1/2 Mile Fun Run for Kids at Sunken Meadow State Park as her community project for the Girl Scout Gold Award she is working toward.

“I wanted to do something for the community at Sunken Meadow [State Park],” Gladstone said in a phone interview. “I really wanted to do something big and worthwhile.”

The cross-country runner said the idea came to her while passing through the park and seeing just how many recyclables were being thrown into the trash. She coupled that knowledge with knowing the park hosts several races, and let the two notions work together to form her own unique project.

“Every time I go there, I see trash cans always full to the top with bottles,” Gladstone said.

Gladstone said one of her biggest goals is to take the money raised at the run and buy recycling bins to place at various locations throughout the 1288-acre park and to also help promote recycling behavior by taking extra measures to make the bins visible to the public.

The teen said she is very big into environmental science and recycling, and she hopes to study it at the college level once she graduates form high school. Her mom, Ellyn Gladstone, said her daughter has been interested in recycling since an early age and she is happy to see her putting this project together.

The Gold Award that Gladstone is working so hard toward is the highest achievement in girl scouting, she said. It is a seven-step project that challenges the scout to change the world, and requires a minimum 80 hours of work — something Gladstone is sure to surpass as she continues to organize and promote the race.

According to one of Gladstone’s troop leaders, Paula Rybacki, the high school student has achieved all the major awards since becoming a girl scout in elementary school and the project she is working on is one of the biggest she has seen.

“This project is very different,” Rybacki said. “I’m really proud of her.”

Jeffrey Mason, the park director at Sunken Meadow State Park, said he was approached by Gladstone, who was hoping to make a difference, and he quickly got on board with the idea as he understands the six bins the park has now is not enough.

“We’re going to put them out in key locations and find the best fit where they get utilized,” Mason said. “We are going to start out small, the more people see, the more education.”

The event will kick off on June 13 with its 1/2 Mile Fun Run for Kids at 9:15 a.m. followed by the 5-kilometer run at 10 a.m. An award ceremony will be held at 11:30 a.m. to recognize top overall males and females in various age groups.

Race participants can take advantage of an early bird special entry fee of $20 until May 1. After that the fee is $25 until the day before the race. On the day of the race, runners will pay $30 to participate.

Smithtown has been doing its part to increase the frequency and accessibility of recycling, recently inking a deal with several neighboring municipalities to bring single-stream recycling to residents across the Island.

The various deals help Smithtown team up with other communities to share resources, making it easier for residents to recycle in one bin and have the items transferred at a minimal cost.

The town has already linked up with Brookhaven, the incorporated villages of Lloyd Harbor and Asharoken, to name a few.

And as the race approaches, Gladstone said she hopes this is just the beginning of a greater shift in recycling across the Island. She said she would like to hold a similar event annually at parks across Long Island to help promote recycling.

“I realize I’m not too young to make a difference,” Gladstone said. “This is just the beginning.”

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Workers clean up the section of Old Mill Creek behind Village Hall. Photo by Elana Glowatz

Old Mill Creek has been an unusual sight lately for those who are used to seeing the narrow Port Jefferson waterway choked with vegetation.

A contractor recently began working on the troubled creek, uprooting invasive trees and plants a few weeks ago and clearing the view to passersby. This week, workers were standing in the stretch of the stream behind Village Hall with an excavator at its bank. They are restoring the eastern half of the creek, which discharges into Port Jefferson Harbor.

Old Mill Creek has been polluted and dirty for a long time. Photo from Steve Velazquez
Old Mill Creek has been polluted and dirty for a long time. Photo from Steve Velazquez

Port Jefferson Village has a permit from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation to install rock supports at the creek, replace invasive plants with freshwater species, remove built-up sediment that blocks water flow, install filters to improve water quality and repair a pipe known as a culvert that channels the creek under Barnum Avenue.

That culvert repair will alleviate some flooding issues downtown, because the pipe is largely blocked up and causes problems during high tide and storms when the creek swells.

A goal of the project is to improve water quality in the creek and, indirectly, in the harbor.

Last month the village hired Holbrook-based contractor G & M Earth Moving Inc. to perform the restoration work and will use a DEC grant to cover three-quarters of the cost.

Old Mill Creek starts near Longfellow Lane and Brook Road, passes the Caroline Avenue ball field and goes under Barnum. From there it goes past Village Hall and wraps around Schafer’s restaurant before running under West Broadway and into the harbor.

Over the years, invasive species, flooding and pollution have beaten up the creek. Hazardous chemicals that had been illegally dumped over many years at the former Lawrence Aviation Industries property, an aircraft-parts manufacturer in Port Jefferson Station, traveled down-gradient into the creek.

Beyond the current restoration project, the village has further plans for improving and protecting the waterway, including doing similar work on the half of it west of Barnum Avenue and reducing stormwater runoff in its entire 517-acre watershed area.

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Tommy the chimp looks through his cage upstate. Photo from Nonhuman Rights Project

A state judge is ordering Stony Brook University to give its two lab chimpanzees a chance at freedom.

State Supreme Court Justice Barbara Jaffe called on the university to appear in court on May 27 and justify why it should not have to release its laboratory apes Hercules and Leo to a Florida sanctuary. The decision came 16 months after the Florida-based Nonhuman Rights Project filed a lawsuit in Suffolk County seeking to declare chimps as legal persons.

The judge ordered the school to show cause on behalf of the animals, to which SBU President Dr. Samuel L. Stanley Jr. and the university must respond with legally sufficient reasons for detaining them. The order did not necessarily declare the chimpanzees were legal persons, but did open the door for that possibility if the university does not convince the court otherwise.

“The university does not comment on the specifics of litigation, and awaits the court’s full consideration on this matter,” said Lauren Sheprow, spokeswoman for Stony Brook University.

The Nonhuman Rights Project welcomed the move in a press release issued last Monday.

“These cases are novel and this is the first time that an order to show cause has [been] issued,” the group said in a statement. “We are grateful for an opportunity to litigate the issue of the freedom of the chimpanzees, Hercules and Leo, at the ordered May hearing.”

The project had asked the court that Hercules and Leo be freed and released into the care of Save the Chimps, a Florida sanctuary in Ft. Pierce. There, they would spend the rest of their lives primarily on one of 13 artificial islands on a large lake along with 250 other chimpanzees in an environment as close to that of their natural home in Africa as can be found in North America, the group said.

The court first ordered the school to show cause and writ of habeas corpus  — a command to produce the captive person and justify their detention — but struck out the latter on April 21, one day after releasing the initial order, making it a more administrative move simply prompting the university to defend why it detains the animals.

In an earlier press release from 2013, the Nonhuman Rights Project said the chimpanzee plaintiffs are “self-aware” and “autonomous” and therefore should have the same rights as humans. The two plaintiffs, Hercules and Leo, are currently being used in a locomotion research experiment in the Department of Anatomical Sciences at Stony Brook University.

Sheprow confirmed in 2013 that researchers in the Department of Anatomical Sciences were studying the chimpanzees at the Stony Brook Division of Laboratory Animal Resources, which is accredited by the Association for Assessment and Accreditation of Laboratory Animal Care International and overseen by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The project’s initial lawsuit also defended another set of chimpanzees from upstate New York, Tommy and Kiko. State Supreme Court Justice W. Gerard Asher of Riverhead initially declined to sign the project’s petition for a writ of habeas corpus in 2013, which the group unsuccessfully appealed soon after.

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