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Wastewater is handled at a sewage treatment plant on the North Shore. File photo by Susan Risoli

There’s something in the water — our own excrement.

Last week was national SepticSmart Week, an annual U.S. Environmental Protection Agency initiative created to teach people how to care for their septic systems. People should know how to maintain these waste systems to prevent their contents from seeping into the ground and into our drinking water aquifer, but it’s a shame that we are still at this point.

Suffolk County politicians frequently talk about their lofty goals to build sewer systems throughout our neighborhoods. In addition to better protecting surface and groundwater, sewers enable commercial and residential development, which is what we need to keep Long Island a viable community for future generations. But we rarely see progress toward the widespread sewer goal.

Part of the problem is the tremendous cost of “sewering up” all of our homes and businesses. However, it’s better to start paying now than when we are in the throes of another recession and desperately need sewers in order to attract business and keep the economy chugging along; or when we wake up one morning to find our water supply irreparably saturated with human waste particles.

Although there are admirable government initiatives to reduce nitrogen pollution, sewers are the ultimate solution. Maybe our electeds are hesitant to be the hated ones handing taxpayers a large bill for the projects, but someone’s got to do it.

Until our elected officials start taking real action, there are things we can do to help spare our drinking water, such as investing our own money in our septic systems, upgrading them to more environmentally friendly ones and safely cleaning them out more frequently to prevent overflowing.

According to Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone’s office, there are 360,000 county lots with septic systems and cesspools that add nitrogen pollution to our communities. If even 10 percent of those lot owners upgraded their septic systems, it could make a world of difference.

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Photo by Wendy Mercier

At what point does a neighborhood nuisance become a problem that warrants lethal action?

A few North Shore communities have been debating whether to legalize hunting deer in their residential areas, after complaints relating to an increase in their region’s deer population. Hunting advocates say the ticks deer carry have been transmitting Lyme disease to humans; the animals are eating their garden plants; and the deer are moving traffic hazards.

As a result of the complaints, Huntington Town officials have given residents of Eaton’s Neck the green light — under certain restrictions — to hunt deer with longbows on their own properties. Officials in Belle Terre Village, after receiving emotional pushback from many community members, did not take action on a similar proposed hunting law. The issue is still up in the air in Head of the Harbor, where officials recently floated a proposal to allow hunting there as well.

There are many problems with allowing people to hunt deer in a residential location: It will not have the desired effect; it is an unreasonable and disproportionate response to nature; and there is great potential for negative consequences.

It’s not a problem for nature to occur around Long Island, it’s merely a fact of life. We hear residents bemoan the loss of open space and cry out against development. Well, this isn’t “The Sims” life simulation video game — we can’t cherry pick the greenery and sprawling beaches, and kick out the deer. Or rather, we shouldn’t.

There are nonlethal ways to patiently deal with the deer issue: Spray deer and tick repellant in your area; use tick repellant on yourself when you go outside; check your body and clothes for ticks when you hang out in tall grass or woods; use plants that deer do not eat; and drive slowly on small back roads that are surrounded by woods.

Let’s not forget that hunting is dangerous in a residential area because accidents can — and do — happen.

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John Feal speaks at an event advocating for first responders in the aftermath of Sept. 11, 2001. File photo

The definition of hero is a person who is admired, or idealized, for courage. And we can’t think of a more courageous act than stepping up and putting others first in the aftermath of a tragedy like the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack.

When the dust had settled on that horrific day, elected leaders stood hand-in-hand with our first responders, whether they were firefighters, police officers or just volunteers. The narrative was that we would honor their sacrifices and do whatever it took to back them up, long after the debris was removed.

And yet here we are, 14 years later, making them wait to see whether the government will have their backs when they need it most. Never forget, right?

This week, Nesconset native John Feal headed to Washington, D.C., alongside other heroic first responders from across the Island, state and country to call on Congress to renew the James Zadroga 9/11 Health and Compensation Act. Originally approved five years ago, the legislation helped provide health care and programs to more than 33,000 of our first responders and their families because of complications stemming from their efforts at Ground Zero. But that legislation is slated to expire next month, and it’s not clear whether it will be renewed.

What happened to doing whatever it took to support our heroes? It is shameful to have this same discussion every few years, once legislation expires, because all that does is turn these people into political bargaining chips. To us, that doesn’t seem like a worthy reward for their sacrifices.

It’s time to take permanent action so people like Feal and the many others who worked alongside him know that we will have their backs — because they had ours when we needed it most.

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This month, hoards of Long Island students started their first year of high school. Almost all of those new ninth-graders were born in 2001, and they were either infants during the 9/11 terrorist attacks or still growing in their mothers’ bellies.

It’s shocking that we’ve reached this point, since the memories of what happened that day are still tender for so many of us. How can they be 14 years past? But time, as it always has and always will, marched along and here we are.

The kids who are in ninth grade now will be in college in no time, and the professional world after that. They will be part of a generation of adults who will discover new cures for diseases, build new developments in our neighborhoods, create new art to share their feelings about the world we all live in. It’s crucial that we impart to them how significant Sept. 11, 2001, was and continues to be, and how much it changed the world.

There’s a mantra we hear so often that we hope it doesn’t lose its power: Never forget. We say it in particular about the Holocaust and the other horrors of World War II, such as the attack on Pearl Harbor, and it carries a lot of weight in that context because there are so few Holocaust survivors and WWII veterans who are still alive. But it is also appropriate to say in the case of 9/11, this society’s day that will live in infamy.

However, in light of the milestone we have reached, of our children born in 2001 reaching a significant level of maturity and awareness, we would add something to that concept: Never forget, and never stop talking.

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File photo

It’s the start of the school season, and that should signal us to be a little more wary behind the wheel.

With some schools already in session and some schools opening soon, we are urging drivers who are rushing to and fro to bring their patience and common sense with them.

Just this week in Smithtown, a police checkpoint netted 11 individuals and charged them with DWI — most of those Smithtown residents. It’s a scary number.

Over in Cold Spring Harbor, on Woodbury Road, an elderly woman died after crashing into the woods on Friday evening.

With this kind of troubling traffic safety news becoming the norm lately, we all need to step up our defensive driving game instead of stepping on the gas.

When on the road, come to a full stop at a stop sign, not a rolling stop. Always stop behind a school bus with its lights on — a resident told us this week that she routinely witnesses cars blowing past buses that are stopped. Those are children that could potentially be put at risk. And it goes without saying that we should take extra precautions in school speed zones.

The list goes on. Always signal before merging into a lane. And if you’re in the wrong lane, don’t try to cut across multiple lanes, especially on major thoroughfares. Obey crosswalks — we can’t tell you how many times drives ignore them.

Following the rules of the road goes a long way in keeping our families safe. Let’s all be a little more courteous and careful behind the wheel.

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Brookhaven Town wants to limit the number of cars allowed per house. Photo by Elana Glowatz

Long Island is infamous for its numerous layers of government, and sometimes those layers try to legislate too much of our lives.

An underlying misconception about what truly affects “quality of life” is forcing our elected officials to pitch laws that are more knee-jerk reactions and overregulation than appropriate responses. We are seeing it in several North Shore communities, like in Brookhaven Town this week.

As part of the town’s fight against overcrowded and illegal rental houses — many of them inhabited by students in the neighborhoods around Stony Brook University — officials want to limit the number of allowed vehicles per bedroom in a house, to help them track the number of people living in a home.

But elected leaders are reacting based upon unrealistic expectations of what “quality of life” should mean to the average Long Islander.

Telling a homeowner how many vehicles they can have, based on the number of bedrooms in a home, is drawing a dangerous line in the sand. What would that do to the basic Brookhaven nuclear family with four older kids, sharing two bedrooms? What would that do to the average car collector? Let’s also not forget about a different — but relevant — issue on Long Island: It’s difficult to even get around out here without a vehicle because of shoddy public transportation. And now we are going to limit the number of cars a family home can possess?

There are already provisions in place to penalize irresponsible neighbors who make too much noise, don’t properly dispose of trash or park on lawns — true quality of life issues. Cracking down on vehicle ownership is beyond the pale, especially if everyone is parked legally. If we cannot use existing provisions to track or police rentals, perhaps they are not enough of a nuisance for us to get involved.

Neighborhoods change. People build. People leave. New people with new personalities come in. These things happen, and it isn’t the job of our county or town officials to make regulations in an attempt to control that.

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Stock photo

We didn’t make up that headline. That is the name of an actual recent military study, the second of its kind, that found at least 9 million American youths are too overweight to serve in the armed forces.

That’s about a quarter of our young people between ages 17 and 24, according to population statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau.

Being overweight or obese is the top medical reason preventing young people from enlisting, according to the military study. One retired Army general called childhood obesity “a potential threat to our national security” in the future.

In case anyone was unsure of whether we have a weight or obesity problem in this country, that fact should really hammer it home. The military study gives a snapshot of what is occurring throughout our entire nation.

The problem is parents.

Some may feel outrage to see this blunt statement in ink, but the fact is that parents are responsible for teaching their kids, partly by example and partly by directive, how to eat healthy and live a healthy lifestyle that includes physical activity.

It’s true there is a degree of health and nutrition education in schools and, of course, schools should strive to offer healthy food in their breakfast and lunch programs. However, school districts should only be supplementing what parents are supposed to do in their own homes. An obvious reason for this is that children spend a tremendous amount of time with their parents and learn the most from them and their examples throughout their lives. And it is up to parents to raise their children and show them how to make good decisions, not the public school system.

Of course there are medical conditions that cause weight gain, such as hypothyroidism and Cushing’s syndrome, and complicate matters. But those conditions — both of which are much more prevalent in females than males, who are the primary target for military recruitment — certainly do not account for anywhere near all of the overweight young people. In fact, both conditions are more likely to affect older people than children and young adults.

Some may argue that it’s hard to teach kids about proper nutrition when they are bombarded by fast food ads, or when the parents are busy working to support the family. But we’re not saying parenting is easy — we’re saying it’s a parent’s job.

Teaching kids how to eat healthy and exercise is important and many parents need to step up their game, or it’s not just our military recruitment numbers that will suffer.

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Teq CEO Damian Scarfo, and President Chris Hickey. Photo from Lisa Hendrickson

There’s been a lot of hubbub about the 21st century classroom, where interactive whiteboards replace chalk, and pencils and pens are subbed out for iPads and Chromebooks. Even our own governor has incentivized such reforms at our schools.

But let’s push pause and ask: Is all this technology helping or hurting? And what benefits are we missing out on in the real world beyond the bright screens?

This week, a Huntington Station company, Teq, announced it had partnered with Canadian company SMART Technologies — yes, the creators of the famous SMART Board that is a staple of today’s classrooms — to be the sole distributor of Smart products for grades K to 12 in New York. That’s a big deal and we applaud Teq’s success. The educational tech company, already projecting sales of $50 million this year, anticipates the partnership will boost its revenues 20 percent.

That’s not just chump change, and it’s a good deal for Long Island’s economy.

Yet how much of our new technologies are really needed for learning and how much are we just advancing for the sake of advancing? It feels like a lot of the new software and hardware is needed only to keep today’s student boredom at bay, as many kids are so used to having tech products in the home that they will not concentrate on paper.

A culture of distraction is one of the greatest setbacks of today’s overly technological society. We understand that it benefits our students to be familiar with today’s gadgets, so they will be prepared for tomorrow’s success. But it also benefits children to know what it feels like to hold a real book in their hands, to solve a difficult math problem using a pencil and loose-leaf notebook, to be able to tell time without a digital display, to play outside instead of staring at their phones.

Today’s kids are being handed iPads not long after retiring baby bottles.

Steve Jobs once told a New York Times reporter that he limited his own children’s tech time at home. Instead of rushing to live in a completely digital world, our educators, parents and political leaders should place importance on carving out some time for a little reality — some quiet time and disconnect to facilitate thinking and creativity.

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A rain garden in Rocky Point is a pretty way to collect stormwater runoff. File photo

Just about every time there’s any significant rainfall on the North Shore, our newsroom gets an advisory against swimming in our local waters — mostly embayments off the Long Island Sound.

As it issues the advisories, the Suffolk County Department of Health Services always explains that stormwater runoff increases bacteria levels in waterways, and because these little nooks and crannies of water along the North Shore do not flush out as quickly as other places, it can be unhealthy to go for a dip.

Stormwater runoff is an environmental issue we talk about a lot, but it seems we are not actually addressing the problem. There’s so much pavement in our residential and commercial developments that rainwater has nowhere to go but toward the sea, and it carries with it all the dirt, chemicals and trash it passes along the way.

The ideal solution is increasing the amount of permeable surface in our neighborhoods so the runoff goes into the ground instead, where it is naturally filtered. We can do that by taking note of the locations we see to be in the most need of improvement and calling on our elected officials to install more catch basins, which absorb and help filter the runoff.

We can also lobby for our municipalities — and even our businesses as well — to use permeable surfaces in parking lots or driveways. These absorbent pavements are not just fantasy; they exist and, though they are more expensive than asphalt, would save us a ton of money on stormwater and environmental maintenance costs in the future. And most importantly, no matter the cost, they would help protect the only home planet we have.

On a personal level, we can help our local bodies of water by planting rain gardens on our properties, as they help absorb stormwater runoff, and by refusing to use harmful chemicals to treat our lawns.

Everyone can do something to ease the burden of bacteria on our waterways. Protecting the environment is a group effort, so we all need to step up to the plate.

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A utility crew gets to work on Old Post Road in Port Jefferson after a storm wreaked havoc on the area. Photo by Elana Glowatz

Tuesday morning’s storm literally came out of the blue. The skies were clear and calm on Monday and residents were going about their summer, as they should.

Some may have even welcomed the news of pending thunderstorms and rain — we could use the shower. But then it hit.

By the time we woke up Tuesday morning, we were reminded just how fragile our environment is. Trees were in our streets. Traffic lights had gone black. Police were scrambling to make sense of the aftermath of what was a short but intense early-morning storm filled with heavy winds, rain, thunder and, in spots, hail.

We will spend the coming days digging ourselves out, as we always do in the wake of severe weather events. But let’s not just get back to business once the roads are cleared and the traffic lights flicker green, yellow and red once more.

This was a freak weather event. We did not have the courtesy of a week’s warning as we did during storms with names like Irene or Sandy. We did not see this one coming.

And now, we are all paying for it.

We are calling on our elected officials to use this severe storm as a catalyst to catapult environmentally focused legislation and reforms.

For example, we like to talk a lot about moving our power lines underground in order to save them from toppling trees. But the price tag is usually what puts that idea right back into our political pockets, stored away for another day. Well that day is fast approaching.

This summer has already had its fair share of gentle and not-so-gentle reminders that our environment is suffering. In June, we spent weeks discussing the causes and effects of low oxygen levels along our shores that left our waterfronts riddled with dead fish. The tragic event sparked a political debate over the Island’s environmental future but, again, we still await concrete action.

We are also calling on our legislators and our readers to use this storm as a reminder to stay on top of the greenery we all take pride in. Clean up your yards and have your trees routinely inspected and trimmed to ensure they can sustain the kinds of storms that catch us off guard. We can also stock up on nonperishable foods and batteries to ease the panic in a storm’s aftermath. There is always more we can do.

It’s time we come to terms with the notion that significant action is necessary, and is worth the financial investment. One way or another, we will end up paying in the long run. Let’s start paying now instead of the inevitable next time traffic lights go dark.

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