CLOSE
Tags Posts tagged with "Brookhaven"

Brookhaven

by -
0 222

Suffolk Republicans select candidate with experience serving as town councilman, building commissioner

Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone file photo

The Suffolk County executive race is on.

Jim O'Connor is stepping up to challenge Steve Bellone for Suffolk County Executive. Photo from Jim O'Connor
Jim O’Connor is stepping up to challenge Steve Bellone for Suffolk County Executive. Photo from Jim O’Connor

County Republicans have selected Jim O’Connor to challenge Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone (D) in November. And in his words, O’Connor said he could not be more honored to represent his party in the pivotal race.

“John Jay LaValle [chairman of the Suffolk County Republican Committee] called me up and asked me if I would be interested in the position, and I said of course,” he said. “Why wouldn’t you be interested in that position?”

O’Connor, now a resident of Great River, is a partner in the Manhattan law firm of Maroney O’Connor LLP. He has a long resume of working in local government, starting in the Town of North Hempstead in 1998 as an elected councilman, where he served until 2001. From 2006-08, O’Connor was appointed building commissioner for North Hempstead.

He had a very brief run at the Nassau county executive spot in 2001 — for approximately 48 hours, to be exact — before the Nassau Republicans chose to back candidate Bruce Bent instead.

O’Connor’s opponent, Bellone, also garnered similar public service accolades before assuming office at the county level in 2011. Bellone served on the Babylon Town Board for four years, starting in 1997, and was then elected supervisor of Babylon Township in 2001.

Since being voted into office, Bellone said he was proud of passing three consecutive balanced budgets under the tax cap, securing a $383 million investment in clean water infrastructure — the largest of the county in 40 years — and negotiating labor contracts that make new employees more affordable and requires new employees to contribute to health care costs.

“We must continue to move Suffolk County forward,” Bellone said in an email through a spokesperson. “While we have made a lot of progress there is so much work left to do.”

Specifics of moving Suffolk County forward, Bellone said, include continuing to hold the line on taxes, creating new jobs, growing the economy and keeping young people on Long Island.

Bellone also said he is interested in utilizing better the many assets that Suffolk County has, including Stony Brook University, Brookhaven National Laboratory and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory. If re-elected, he said he wants to make sure the county is leveraging those assets to create innovation jobs.

But O’Connor said he found flaws in the way that Bellone has handled the financial aspects of the county.

“The attitude is, ‘Let’s put off tomorrow what we could do today,’ and that is hurting my children and my children’s children, in terms of the amount of debt that will fall on their shoulders,” O’Connor said in a phone interview.

Under an O’Connor administration, there would be an implementation of a Suffolk County debt management plan, which would start the process of a debt ceiling, much like what has been done in Washington D.C., O’Connor told Times Beacon Record Newspapers in an exclusive interview.

“It’s a simple concept,” he said. “Let’s look at the county’s existing revenue streams and compare it to the county’s maturing debt in an effort to retire, or reduce, the interest payments that will burden future generations of Suffolk residents.”

Suffolk County has $180 million of structural deficit and more than $1.5 billion in cumulative debt, according to O’Connor, who said these factors have led the New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, a Democrat, to say that the county is in fiscal distress. O’Connor said he wants to stand up for the taxpayers of the county.

According to Bellone, when he first entered office, Suffolk County’s finances were in free fall, with a deficit of more than $400 million. He has since cut the deficit significantly by shrinking the government by more than 10 percent.

“I know that Suffolk County taxpayers are overburdened,” Bellone said. “That’s why I am committed to staying under the property tax cap at the same time as I cut my own salary and volunteered to be the first employee in the history of Suffolk County to directly contribute to their health care.”

Keith Davies, campaign manager for Bellone, said his candidate was the right choice for residents to continue moving Suffolk County forward: “Steve Bellone has a proven record of protecting our tax dollars and our quality of life. He’s balanced three consecutive budgets, kept taxes under the tax cap and protected our drinking water by investing in our clean water infrastructure.”

The Suffolk County Republicans, however, said they believed O’Connor would lead the county in a better direction.

In a statement, LaValle said O’Connor’s reputation from both Democrats and Republicans from North Hempstead is what drew him to asking him to fight for the position.

“He’s a guy that is very well respected of course by Republicans in the area, but also by many Democrats,” LaValle said. “In this day and age of almost political hate, here is a guy where not only Republicans but prominent Democrats were speaking very highly of him. That stuck with me.”

by -
0 364
Residents brainstorm during the Community Vision Forum. Photo by Victoria Espinoza

North Shore lawmakers are gauging the public’s opinion as they revisit what Route 25A should look like.

Brookhaven Town Councilwoman Valerie Cartright (D-Port Jefferson Station) gathered residents, business owners, community leaders, teachers and elected officials at a forum at the Kanas Commons of The Stony Brook School on Monday, June 30, to discuss the future of the section of Route 25A between Main Street in Stony Brook and Bennetts Road in Setauket.

“As your councilperson, I thought it was important to engage in a community discussion regarding this issue,” Cartright said to the 95 residents gathered. She said that many members of Stony Brook, Setauket, Centereach and the greater Brookhaven area had been vocal about creating a discussion on this issue.

The public was divided into groups once they arrived at the forum and each group represented a different issue facing the road. The various issues included uses and zoning, traffic safety and transportation, design and aesthetics, impact on nearby businesses, Stony Brook University, community relations and infrastructure.

Each group was given a list of questions to discuss and then present to the entire forum. These questions were designed to get an idea of the changes the community wanted, the problems they thought this zone needed to address and what things the community wanted to preserve.

“This is a precursor to a land use plan,” said Brenda Prusinowski, the deputy commissioner for the Town of Brookhaven. “There are many steps to go once anything has been discussed here.”

Prusinowski said she was encouraged by the high number of residents that came out, and expected that everyone would come up with a great discussion to make the community better.

“This should be a gauge of what the majority wants, but also what every individual feels is important as well,” Cartright said.

Cartright urged that everyone keep an open mind and accept that conflicting opinions will arise. However, as the night unfolded, it seemed that a majority of the community members were on the same page.

Major issues that were brought up, in terms of improvement, were safety measures for pedestrians and bicyclists, the architecture and look of the downtown shops and better parking options near the Stony Brook Long Island Rail Road station.

Residents expressed a desire for a more cohesive look, while still maintaining the historical nature and heritage of the town, which leaders in attendance also support.

“We have a great sense of place, and that is important to all of us, that we maintain that,” said Suffolk County Legislator Kara Hahn (D-Setauket). “We want people to see the historic and charming feel of this community.”

Groups also said that although students from Stony Brook University can rent bikes to ride downtown, they still needed more safe paths to take. If students felt safer to go for a bike ride, residents argued they would be investing more into the area businesses by shopping there more frequently.

Many people said they felt there was almost an “iron curtain” between the students of Stony Brook University and the towns of Brookhaven and Stony Brook, and that more needs to be done to integrate the students.

Yet, other residents said that they feared the towns are losing their identity to the university.

“We were not brought together tonight to react to a problem, rather to look at our values as a community,” said state Assemblyman Steve Englebright (D-Setauket).

Englebright said that this community is host to a large economic engine with the university and that keeping the community great benefits the university and vice versa.

Preserving local small business was also very important, as no one said they were interested in seeing a national chain pop up anywhere near Route 25A.

 

by -
0 421

President announces candidacy against Valerie Cartright

Above, far right, Ed Garboski testifies before the town board. He has announced he is running for the seat held by Councilwoman Valerie Cartright. File photo

Ed Garboski will be taking a leave from his role as civic president as he works to unseat Councilwoman Valerie Cartright in the fall.

Garboski, of the Port Jefferson Station/Terryville Civic Association, announced his run against one-term incumbent Cartright (D-Port Jefferson Station) for Brookhaven Town Board’s 1st District at the civic’s meeting on Wednesday night — opening up much debate.

The association’s bylaws do not contain a provision for taking a leave of absence, which originally created a tricky situation for the membership during the discussion. The room was divided — and at times argumentative — over whether Garboski should resign his position as he runs for political office on the Republican and Conservative tickets.

Faith Cardone said she felt it would be a conflict of interest for him to remain the president while running a political campaign for the Town Board.

Garboski said he had wanted to take a leave of absence, largely because he foresees having less time to fulfill his presidential duties, but was limited because of the bylaws’ shortcoming. He pushed back, however, when some called for his resignation, including fellow civic executive board member Joan Nickeson.

Councilwoman Valerie Cartright. File photo
Councilwoman Valerie Cartright. File photo

“I don’t think that I need to resign as of right now,” he said. “Where’s the conflict [of interest]?”

Other members also spoke up against Garboski remaining in his civic position.

“I don’t want to insult your integrity, Ed,” Gerard Maxim said, but having Garboski serve as president while also running for Town Board “makes it awkward for us.”

There were, however, voices of support in the audience.

Kevin Spence, a Comsewogue library board member, said there is no ethical problem before Election Day.

“I don’t see where this is a conflict until he gets elected.”

After some back and forth, Garboski relented somewhat, saying, “if this is such a big problem … if it’s that important to this membership here that I step down, I’ll step down.”

But instead, another library board member, Rich Meyer, made a motion for civic members to vote on granting Garboski a leave of absence starting in August and ending after the election, overriding the bylaws.

The members unanimously approved the motion for his leave.

Once Garboski departs in August, Vice President Diane Lenihan-Guidice will step into his shoes, including running the civic meetings for the months he is away.

Cartright, who is running for a second term on the Democratic, Working Families and Independence lines, said in a statement she and Garboski “will continue to work together to address community concerns. As a sitting elected representative, I firmly believe government always comes before politics.”

She said if re-elected she would “address the needs and ideas of the community and advocate for an informative and transparent local government.”

by -
0 3641
Parking spots in the Brookhaven Town Marina lot were given to Port Jeff Village as part of a 2015 agreement, but the deal alienated parkland, according to the AG's office. Screen capture

Port Jefferson Village could add 50 more spaces to its metered parking arsenal, drawing them on asphalt in the town’s marina lot.

The village is leasing the spots as part of an agreement with Brookhaven Town regarding the historic First National Bank of Port Jefferson building at the corner of Main and East Main streets.

Town officials are selling the former bank — and the attached building on East Main Street that used to house the Brookhaven tax receiver’s office — to local developer Agrino Holdings LLC, which has approval from the Port Jefferson Planning Board to put retail space on the first floors and apartments above. The developer plans to renovate the tax receiver’s office and restore the bank building, a historic landmark.

But downtown Port Jefferson has a perennial parking problem, with a constant space shortage that can make it difficult for new developments to meet requirements in the village code. To offset the lack of spaces at the site of the mixed-use project, the town has been working with the village for more than a year on a parking space swap — leasing to the village some spots at the town-owned marina lot two blocks away.

The original plan involved the roughly 30 existing spaces that wrap around the old Suffolk County Water Authority building across West Broadway from McDonald’s. But Trustee Larry LaPointe explained at Monday’s board of trustees meeting that it would have involved “a spaghetti of easements and curb cuts.”

Instead the village will get land on the western end of the marina lot, near Beach Street, that it will restripe and meter. LaPointe said the size of that section will allow the village to create 50 new parking spaces, whereas the previous arrangement would have merely transferred ownership of 30 spots.

Revenue from the village’s other parking meters will cover the costs of restriping and adding the new meter.

by -
0 407
Supervisor Ed Romaine makes friends with a dog at the town animal shelter. Photo from Brookhaven Town

By Talia Amorosano

Brookhaven Town is reducing adoption costs at its animal shelter this month.

According to a recent town press release, the Brookhaven Animal Shelter and Adoption Center on Horseblock Road will offer discounted adoption fees through June. While the fees are normally $137 for a dog and $125 for a cat, they have been dropped to $60.

The lower fee includes a free neuter or spay for the animal as well as a free microchip, vaccinations, heartworm test and animal license.

The reduced price is partly the result of renovations that are currently taking place at the shelter.  The shelter’s website notes that “pet overpopulation is of great concern” and that it is especially important for some of the animals to be adopted during the next four to six weeks because kennels will be renovated during that timeframe.

The shelter has also invested in new air conditioners, freshly painted walls and new floors.

But Martin Haley, Brookhaven Town’s commissioner of general services, said adoption discounts like this one are common throughout the year regardless of special circumstances like construction and renovation, because the shelter staff is constantly trying to incentivize adoption.

As of Monday, there were 78 animals in the shelter.

Haley said the number fluctuates every day and the shelter’s goal is to keep the population manageable. He said the animals can become difficult to manage at numbers of 80 to 100, but it varies on a case-by-case basis with animals’ spatial and behavioral needs.

According to Haley, most of the animals currently housed at the shelter are dogs, but there are also about 30 cats and kittens available for adoption.

The shelter is open from 9:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Mondays, Tuesdays and Fridays; from 9:30 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Thursdays; from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturdays; and from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Sundays. It is closed on Wednesdays.

Anyone interested in adopting a pet may call the shelter at 631-451-6950 or visit www.brookhaven.org/animalshelter for more information.

by -
1 352
Councilman Neil Foley, left, and Supervisor Ed Romaine stand by the jetty where a Selden man allegedly crashed his boat and then fled the scene. Photo by Alex Petroski

By Alex Petroski

Town and county officials aren’t taking boating safety lightly, and are urging residents to take precautions while out on the water this summer.

Boating safety was the topic of discussion at a press conference held at the Sandspit Marina in Patchogue Thursday, following a hit-and-run incident on May 24.  Mark Tricarico, 31, of Selden, was arrested and charged with leaving the scene of a boating accident involving injury, according to a Suffolk County Police department press release.

Tricarico allegedly crashed a 23-foot boat into the west jetty at the entrance of the Patchogue River on the night of the 24th. One passenger was treated for minor injuries. Tricarico could not be reached for comment.

“If everyone follows safe boating procedures, most accidents can be prevented,” Brookhaven Town Supervisor Ed Romaine (R) said on Thursday, just yards away from the site of the incident.

June and July are typically the busiest boating months of the year on Long Island, and Romaine along with Suffolk County Police Marine Bureau Deputy Inspector Ed Vitale urged boaters to be aware of boating laws in the hopes of avoiding a repeat of the events of May 24.

From left, Assistant Deputy County Executive Tim Sini; Police Marine Bureau Deputy Inspector Ed Vitale; Brookhaven Supervisor Ed Romaine; and Brookhaven Councilman Neil Foley at a press conference on boating safety. Photo by Alex Petroski
From left, Assistant Deputy County Executive Tim Sini; Police Marine Bureau Deputy Inspector Ed Vitale; Brookhaven Supervisor Ed Romaine; and Brookhaven Councilman Neil Foley at a press conference on boating safety. Photo by Alex Petroski

Romaine and Vitale also reiterated some general boating safety precautions, like avoiding alcohol while operating a boat, being aware of weather forecasts and following paths set by buoys.

“Stay in the navigable channels,” Romaine said. “Understand what the buoys are for.”

Operating boats while intoxicated was a point everyone touched on.

“You don’t see it that often until you see a boat up on the rocks,” Jesse Mentzel, a bay constable, said in a one on one interview.  “It happens, and they could hit another boat just as easily.”

Assistant Deputy County Executive Tim Sini attended the press conference on behalf of Suffolk County Executive Steve Bellone (D).

“We want to make one thing clear—boating while intoxicated will not be tolerated in Suffolk County,” Sini said.

Sini added that there would be checkpoints and patrols to monitor the waterways and ensure that everyone remains safe this summer.

Some additional safety precautions suggested by Romaine and Vitale included a boating course approved by the U.S. Coast Guard as well as a swiming and first-aid course, operating at safe speeds, and designating an assistant skipper in case you are injured or otherwise unable to assume command of the vessel.

“The water can be a very hostile environment,” Vitale said.  “It’s a beautiful looking place and it is truly, but it can be very hostile to people.  You have to pay attention.  You have to be aware of the weather.  You have to be aware of the currents.  This is something that every now and then people get out on the water and they just don’t get it.”

by -
0 483
The Sleight House on Christian Avenue in Stony Brook is safe from future development. Photo by Phil Corso

It’s history.

A Christian Avenue home already added to Brookhaven’s historic landmark list earlier this year received another big boost this week to make sure it retains its 19th century charm. The Stony Brook home known as the Sleight House received a historic preservation and conservation easement, thanks to the Peconic Land Trust, further solidifying its place in history.

John v.H. Halsey, president of the Peconic Land Trust, announced last week that Elizabeth and Brian Merrick had donated the easement on the 1.2-acre property, permanently protecting its significance and preserving its character. The easement came to be because Elizabeth Merrick, whose family has Stony Brook roots, has long treasured the Sleight House, circa 1880.

“This House has been important to my family for a long time, and we wanted to make sure that its historic character would always be preserved,” she said. “We’re so pleased that our partnership with the Peconic Land Trust has enabled us to accomplish this.”

Built by Charles M. Sleight, the owner of a prominent wheelwright and carpentry business around 1880, the Sleight House remained in the Sleight family until the early 1960s. Sleight’s wife, Adella Abigail Sleight, was a descendent of the Bayles and Hawkins families, both of whom were descendants of Brookhaven’s first settlers, the Peconic Land Trust said. The family’s archives, including photographs and newspaper clippings, are a part of the collection of Three Village Historical Society.

“By taking the additional step of placing a Historic Preservation and Conservation Easement on the Sleight House, the Merricks have protected the home’s historic integrity for future generations,” Halsey said. “We are thankful to both Elizabeth and Brian for preserving a part of Stony Brook’s historic character.”

The Brookhaven Town Board approved the late 19th century home’s designation on March 26, after a public hearing on the matter. The Civic Association of the Setaukets and Stony Brook and the Three Village Community Trust supported the decision.

The Sleight House is a Folk Victorian home with Queen Anne embellishments—a popular design along Long Island’s North Shore during the late 19th century. Other historic features of the Sleight House include a common “L” shape, cross gable configuration with simple treatment of the exterior walls, decorative verge board sawn balusters, sawn bracketing, and a decorative gable end treatment. The front porch is also original to the House and stretches nearly across its entire west facade.

Although the town’s Historic District, through the Historic District Advisory Committee, provides oversight of the Sleight House by typically requiring review and approval for additions and alterations, the Merricks’ donation of an easement goes beyond local governance and permanently protects and preserves the Sleight House and the surrounding property’s historical, cultural, scenic and aesthetic values.

As part of the easement process, a Historic Structure and Significance Report was prepared by Stony Brook architect and Brookhaven Historic District Advisory Committee member John Cunniffe, and is included in the easement documents to serve as a baseline for the Trust’s enforcement of the easement.

“With the Merricks’ foresight and the Peconic Land Trust’s skill set to properly guide and execute this Historic Preservation and Conservation Easement, not only does the historic nature of the Sleight House remain protected, a new precedent has been set in this very important historic corridor,” Cunniffe said. “The preservation of ‘context’ has been achieved through this process and, simply put, is priceless.”

by -
0 1839
Above, Morgan May at the LSST site in Cerro Pachón, Chile, last month. The dryness of the site is essential for good viewing. Water vapor in the air causes stars to twinkle, or to have blurred images. Only the heartiest small cactus can survive at this elevation and in this low moisture. The LSST site is on the southern edge of the driest desert in the world, in the middle of 85,000 acres of land which is kept undeveloped to avoid light pollution for astronomy. Photo from Morgan May

Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s … billions of galaxies. Impossible to see with the naked eye, only vaguely visible through good telescopes, these galaxies will come to life in a way never seen before when the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope starts providing images from its mountaintop home in Chile in 2020.

Before this technological wonder is completed, people like Morgan May, a physicist at Brookhaven National Laboratory, are testing to make sure this ambitious project provides clear and accurate information.

Recently, May and his colleagues at BNL conducted two tests of the telescope.

The LSST will have 200 individual silicon sensors that are the film in the 3.2 gigapixel digital camera. The process of making the sensors is imperfect, with the sensors starting out as molten mass.

Impurities or variation in the temperature can cause imperfections that look like tree rings around a central circle, which create electric fields that can cause a distortion in the image.

“Because we are trying to measure things at a much higher level of precision, the tree rings were a source of great concern,” said May, who receives funding from the Department of Energy’s Office of Science-Cosmic Frontier Research.

They found that these radial imperfections were much smaller than in previous detectors, which was already a benefit to the project. Looking at the likely actual measurements using these sensors, May and his colleagues found that these tree rings had a small effect on the data, which was a pleasant surprise, but one that took some time to prove.

In another test, May, working with Columbia University graduate student Andrea Petri, examined whether differences in the sizes of the three billion pixels in the camera might also cause problems interpreting the information.

May and Yuki Okura, a postdoctoral fellow from Japan’s RIKEN laboratory who is stationed at the RIKEN-BNL Research Center, measured how much light each pixel picked up in the detector. While the variation was small, they weren’t sure whether it was small enough to keep from causing problems with the data.

The team simulated a night sky. Once they gathered the information they would have collected from these slight pixel differences, they compared their simulated image to their original.

Fortunately for the scientists, this effect also proved manageable and won’t create confusion.

May and Okura’s work “did have a good outcome,” said Sam Aronson, director of the RIKEN BNL Research Center. “They showed that the sensor imperfections measured on the LSST sensors will not affect LSST’s science objectives.”

While May is relieved the telescope passed these two tests, he continues to search for other potential problems with this revolutionary telescope.

“I am confident the LSST is going to be successful in its goals, but we have to work very hard to follow every possible issue and resolve it,” he said.

As a part of the LSST Dark Energy Science Collaboration, May said his primary research goal is to answer the question, “What is dark energy?” May said he will be studying subtle features of enormous amounts of information that will become available. May will be researching a force that causes the universe to expand faster and faster, rather than contract.

Until the 1930s, everyone thought the universe was contracting. Edwin Hubble, for whom the Hubble Space Telescope is named, was the first to observe this expansion. It is as if a ball thrown in the air slows down as expected and then accelerates away from Earth, May said. One well-regarded hypothesis is that the universe is filled with something called dark energy that causes a gravitational force that repels rather than attracts.
Once the telescope goes online, the information will become widely available.

“We’re going to make our data public to the everyone in the United States,” said May. It will be possible for “children in high school or even elementary school to have their own galaxy or supernova.”

Born in Brooklyn, May lives on Long Island with his wife Dana Vermilye. The couple have a 23-year old son, Michael, who is in medical school and a daughter, Julia, who is a high school sophomore.

May sees cosmology and astrophysics as a new frontier in science. “It’s an area where great discoveries are being made,” he said. “If you are interested in science as an observer or a career, I would say [it’s] really in the forefront.”

by -
0 1652
Stony Brook’s B-Section is brand new. Photo from Dan Losquadro

Stony Brook has a bunch of brand new boulevards, thanks to Brookhaven bureaucrats, and residents are abuzz.

The Brookhaven Town Highway Department finished a long-anticipated road improvement project in Stony Brook last week in the area known as the B-Section, repaving 19 roads and making the neighborhood safer. Residents living in the community celebrated the milestone after more than two decades of wear and tear.

“It is a pleasure driving through the community now,” said Dr. Jay Orlikoff, who lives in the neighborhood. “The last time these roads were repaved was about 25 years ago and it was tough to get in and out of the community. This time it was very well done and the courtesy of the workers in how they directed traffic was extremely helpful.”

Highway Superintendent Dan Losquadro said the 19 Stony Brook roads have been near the top of his department’s list for more than a year, but budget constraints have limited his repaving initiatives. But as of the end of last week, the 19 roads — including Balfour Lane, Ballad Lane, Ballad Place, Barker Court, Barker Drive, Barnwell Lane, Beaverdale Lane, Bendix Lane, Bently Lane, Birdseye Circle, Blackwell Court, Blackwell Lane, Blueberry Lane, Bonnie Lane, Botany Lane, Bucknell Lane, Bunting Lane, Burgess Lane and Buxmont Lane — have new surfaces and are safer routes.

“They were in terrible condition. These were roads that, quite frankly, I wish I could have gotten to last year,” he said. “Unfortunately, as you can imagine, everything is budget-driven. There’s a finite amount of money.”

The highway superintendent said he has about 3,350 miles of road to maintain throughout Brookhaven on an annual basis, and more than $100 million worth of roadwork on his to-do list at any given time. But there is only roughly $17 million in funds available to complete the work.

“I’m trying to work my way through these roads, and one of the things I’ve tried to do with people is create a reasonable expectation,” he said. “There are three-to-five-year plans of how we need to get where we need to be, and I’m working toward that. A project like this, that can cost between three-quarters of a million dollars and $1 million, is just an extensive project.”

For the better part of a week, Brookhaven road crews took to the B-Section to rebuild concrete, curbs, drainage and paving components on the 19 roads. Residents waited patiently over several days of milling work and the end result, the superintendent said, was a safer Stony Brook.

“It is very gratifying to hear the positive feedback we have been receiving from residents in this community,” Losquadro said. “This is one more project I can check off our to-do list. The Highway Department will keep on pace to complete many more roads throughout this paving season.”

Looking ahead, Losquadro said he had another big project coming up, budget permitting, in the same vicinity near both Spyglass Lane and Buccaneer Lane, where he said roads are in terrible condition.

“We need to get in there and get that done,” he said. “With the budgetary constraints, I have to be honest with you, I can spend my entire allotment without a problem. But the residents throughout this town deserve attention. We try to do worst first.”

by -
0 317
A horseshoe crab no more than 4 years old. Photo by Erika Karp

With its horseshoe crab population dwindling, Town of Brookhaven officials are calling on the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation to ban harvesting within 500 feet of town property.

At the Mount Sinai Stewardship Center at Cedar Beach on Tuesday, Supervisor Ed Romaine (R) announced the Brookhaven Town Board is poised to approve a message in support of the ban at Thursday night’s board meeting.

A horseshoe crab no more than 4 years old is the center of attention at a press conference on Tuesday. Brookhaven Supervisor Ed Romaine is calling on the state to ban the harvesting of the crabs within 500 feet of town property. Photo by Erika Karp
A horseshoe crab no more than 4 years old is the center of attention at a press conference on Tuesday. Brookhaven Supervisor Ed Romaine is calling on the state to ban the harvesting of the crabs within 500 feet of town property. Photo by Erika Karp

Horseshoe crabs are harvested for bait and medicinal purposes, as their blue blood, which is worth an estimated $15,000 a quart, is used in the biomedical and pharmaceutical industries to detect bacterial contamination in drugs and medical supplies, due to its special properties.

While there is already a harvesting ban in place for Mount Sinai Harbor, Romaine is seeking to expand the restriction across the north and south shores so the crabs have a safe place to mate.

The crabs take about nine years to reach sexual maturity.

“We think it is time not to stop or prohibit the harvesting of horseshoe crabs … but instead to say, ‘Not within town properties,’” Romaine stated.

Brookhaven’s Chief Environmental Analyst Anthony Graves and clean water advocacy group Defend H20’s Founder and President Kevin McAllister joined Romaine at the Tuesday morning press conference.

Graves said the ban would help preserve the 450-million-year-old species’ population.

Preserving the species affects more than just the crabs: If the population continues to shrink, other species — like the red knot bird, which eat the crab eggs — will suffer.

“They are in some ways an ecological keystone species,” Graves said. “That means that they serve a function beyond their individual existence.”

East Coast waterways are the epicenter for the crabs and, according to McAllister, states like New Jersey, Delaware and Virginia have already enacted harvesting limits. The crabs’ nesting season starts in mid-May and lasts until the end of June. Officials said the crabs are oftentimes harvested at night and illegally.

Romaine said he has asked all of the town’s waterfront villages to support the measure. If the DEC moves forward with the ban, Romaine said the town could help the department with enforcement by establishing an intermunicipal agreement.

A DEC representative did not immediately return a request for comment.

Prev1...131415...16Next Page 14 of 16
TBR News Media is your local news and entertainment website.
We provide you with the latest breaking news and information for your community.
Contact us: [email protected]

Most Viewed

©