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Suffolk County Water Quality Protection and Restoration Program

File photo

By Samantha Rutt

Brookhaven Town Board held its recurring meeting on Tuesday evening, Dec. 19. Supervisor Ed Romaine (R) opened the meeting with a brief moment of silence to reflect on the giving nature of the holiday season and wished the town a clean bill of health and prosperity in the new year.

Following the moment of silence, Chief Fire Marshal Christopher Mehrman gave a brief presentation on the damages sustained from the Dec. 17-18 storm. Several photographs of the related damages accompanied the presentation. Although the fire marshal’s presentation concentrated on Fire Island and the barrier beaches, he explained that every community sustained some damage.

“Though we are mainly concentrated on the barrier beach, Fire Island, every community sustained some degree of damage,” Mehrman said. 

The presentation provided a detailed estimate of the loss of height and width on the shoreline of the Fire Island Pines community. The loss of dunes will affect the overall protection of this area from the nearby ocean. Romaine emphasized the importance of recuperating from this loss.

“It is something that Councilman Foley (R-Blue Point), Councilman Panico (R-Manorville), and I warned about several months ago,” Romaine said. “Our fear would be exactly what has happened, threatening the stability of the island and several of the homes.”

Upon conclusion of the presentation, the meeting continued with its usual discourse before addressing the dedication of the Edward P. Romaine Nature Preserve, an approximately 8-acre property in East Moriches. The land is a mix of native grasses and shrubs that provide a habitat for various species and will be preserved for open space. 

“There’s no better gift you can give than open space on an island that has sometimes been overdeveloped,” Romaine said. 

“Edward P. Romaine, a long-standing elected official in Suffolk County and supervisor of the Town of Brookhaven for the past 11 years, has been an advocate to protect natural resources and the environment,” the town notes in its resolution. “It is the town’s desire to recognize the many contributions made by Edward P. Romaine to the Town of Brookhaven and the environment by naming this nature preserve in his honor.” 

In conjunction with land preservation, a $60,000 grant — that the town will match — was approved as part of the Suffolk County Water Quality Protection and Restoration Program. The project will restore habitats along Cedar Beach by the removal of invasive plants, establishing native plant species, installing wildlife tunnels, promoting coastal resiliency, enhancing habitat, improving water quality in Mount Sinai Harbor and the Long Island Sound, and supporting the improvement of vulnerable local diamondback terrapin population.

Brookhaven Town Board will reconvene on Jan. 11. To learn more about the Dec. 19 meeting and future meetings, visit the Town of Brookhaven website: brookhavenny.portal.civicclerk.com.

Former New York State Assemblyman Steve Englebright speaks during an environmental protest outside the William H. Rogers Legislature Building in Hauppauge on Tuesday, July 25. File photo by Raymond Janis
By Steve Englebright

Pure water is our most essential natural resource.

Suffolk’s economy is anchored by our two largest industries which are tourism and agriculture. Each of these forms of commerce needs clean water in order to remain viable. Polluted beaches and contaminated produce will not draw visitors from afar nor will they sustain farming. Public health needs, however, are more concerning. Living on top of our drinking water has proven to be very challenging because it is easily contaminated by our daily activities. The chemicals we continuously introduce into local ground and surface waters are what threatens the health of our families, communities and economy, each of which depends upon a generous supply of predictably pure drinking water.

‘How we manage this issue will guide the destiny of our county.’

— Steve Englebright

All of the water that we drink or use for everything from industry to personal hygiene is sourced from wells that tap Long Island’s aquifers which are natural water-bearing sediment horizons. Long Island’s aquifers are a reservoir of rain-absorbing sand and gravel that is everywhere below our feet. This fresh groundwater eventually seeps into the tidewaters that define our island’s edges. Virtually all of our fresh and salt waters are connected which is why pollution that enters the system on land eventually will contaminate our harbors and bays.

Scientific research has proven that the most widespread source of groundwater contamination in Suffolk is human waste, especially nitrate-rich urine, that is flushed into Suffolk’s more than 380,000 cesspools. Because cesspools do very little to cleanse the waste that enters into them they are a major source of nitrate contamination of our ground and surface waters. When any large amount of this chemical enters a body of surface water it may cause explosive plant growth. Seasonal decay of this overgrowth often causes ecological harm such as fish kills.

In recent years millions of state and county dollars have been invested into learning how to halt the progressive decline of water quality. This work led directly to a proposed referendum which is entitled the Suffolk County Water Quality Restoration Act. This legislation — which would require voter approval — economizes by consolidating numerous county-owned sewer districts and dedicating 1/8 of 1% of county sales tax toward installing both technologically advanced cesspool upgrades and new sewers for compact business districts. No property taxes are involved. Seventy-five percent of the sales tax that would be collected could be used to address the greatest need which is to provide grants to homeowners to cover most of the costs of installing advanced wastewater treatment technology within each cesspool.

If approved by Suffolk’s voters, money raised could be leveraged to attract matching federal and state dollars to further reduce local costs.

Because of the importance of protecting reserves of pure fresh water this issue has historically been a bipartisan legislative priority that has largely been off limits to red and blue bickering. Unfortunately, that wholesome tradition was compromised on July 25 when the Suffolk Legislature’s Republican majority voted unanimously to deny residents the opportunity to vote on the issue of pure water. By killing this highly anticipated public referendum, citizens have been blocked from directly weighing in on efforts to protect and improve ground and surface waters. 

It has been widely reported that this outcome was insisted upon by political party operatives who want to believe that this environmental referendum would bring out so many Democrats to vote that it would disadvantage Republican candidates in the election on Nov. 7. As the voter-approved $4.2 billion New York State Environmental Bond Act recently demonstrated this is just plain wrong. That referendum passed easily last November even though there was a low Democratic turnout. 

Tellingly, none of the Republican candidates for the many county offices that will be on the November ballot showed up at the hearing of July 25 to speak for passage of the referendum. Their absence made it clear that the county Republican Party has turned away from Suffolk’s most urgent environmental issue in an attempt to profit politically from a voter suppression scheme.

Cleaning up our water sources requires an informed and engaged citizenry. The county’s Water Quality Restoration Act referendum would enable vigorous public education on this subject to occur as voters of all political persuasions strive to inform themselves ahead of their vote. Unfortunately, by canceling the referendum county Republicans have lost their way; they should not have taken from Suffolk’s residents their constitutional right to say through their votes what the county’s future should be. 

Trying to suppress voter turnout in Suffolk by blocking public participation in the single most important economic and environmental issue affecting the county’s future contradicts the bedrock premise and promise of our democracy. It was wrong to cancel every local voter’s sacred right to express their opinion in a public referendum. 

How we manage this issue will guide the destiny of our county. Clearly, the people of Suffolk deserve to have a chance to vote either for or against clean water at the next opportunity which could be as soon as next year. This crisis demands that we again all work together. 

Restoring direct voter participation to the most critical questions relating to our sole source of drinking water and related quality of life issues is the best way to protect and enhance the equity of our homes, the health of our loved ones and the viability of our regional economy.

Steve Englebright served as New York State assemblyman for the 4th District from 1992-2022. He is a Democratic candidate this November for the Suffolk County Legislature, running against Anthony Figliola (R-East Setauket) for the 5th Legislative District.

Town of Brookhaven submits grant application to pay for dredging

A grant would help pay for dredging of Miller Place Duck Pond. File photo by Giselle Barkley

A local ecosystem needs saving.

The Miller Place Duck Pond — located at the intersection of North Country Road and Rocky Point Landing Road — is too low, looks dirty in the summertime and appears to be invaded by destructive species.

Those are some of the complaints residents have made to Tom Carrano, Brookhaven’s assistant waterways management supervisor, who, along with his team, has been monitoring the pond in recent years, determining that the concerns are valid.

The small but vibrant pool of water, which sits across from Laddie A. Decker Sound Beach School and has long served as an educational tool for its teachers, has been found to be overrun with a multitude of plant species not native to Long Island, some identified and some not, which Carrano said have the potential to “wreak real havoc.”

“There aren’t that many areas left where local amphibians and reptiles can go on the North Shore, so these small systems are extremely important.”

— Tom Carrano

The pond currently contains water lilies, plants that thrive in areas of high nitrogen loading and sedimentation, and, possibly, Caboma and watermilfoils — plants whose root systems are known to threaten the quality of fresh waters, greatly affecting swimming and fishing.

Because of these findings, the town board recently submitted a grant application to the Suffolk County Water Quality Protection and Restoration Program as well as the Stewardship Initiative in hopes of acquiring funds to eradicate the invasive species and restore and maintain the health of the water.

“We’re just hoping to make this little ecosystem — which is very special to the community — better than it is today,” Carrano said. “There aren’t that many areas left where local amphibians and reptiles can go on the North Shore, so these small systems are extremely important.”

The restoration, of which the projected cost is $240,000 with a $120,000 town match, will include dredging the pond to remove excess sediments and all invasive plant matter and using the highway department’s Vortechs unit — a hydrodynamic separator that “combines swirl concentration and flow controls into a shallow treatment unit and retains trash, debris, sediment and hydrocarbons” — to reduce stormwater runoff and filter clean water from natural wetlands. If the grant is received, Carrano said he expects work would begin in the summer of 2019.

“We have a very comprehensive plan that we’ve worked on and we’d like to go after some grant funding to go and take care of it,” Councilwoman Jane Bonner (C-Rocky Point) said. “We’re taking it piece by piece. We know we can do the dredging in-house, because we’ve done so in the past.”

Bonner said the pond was dredged and invasive species were taken out in the 1980s, but said the problem is, over time, people dump their own fish into the water.

Miller Place Duck Pond, which has been contaminated by nonnative fish and plants being dumped into it, warns against dumping on a sign by the pond. Photo by Kevin Redding

“[Dumping] what’s in their own fish tanks, such as plants, and they’re not native to the Island,” she said. “Birds drop seeds, animals drop seeds and then you have invasives. The grant funds will go toward bringing the pond back to where it was.”

Carrano said by installing the Vortechs unit and creating a cleaner water filter, he is confident it would stop all sediments from entering the water again, eliminating the need to have to worry about dredging the pond for a “very long time after this.”

Although the wetland is outside of his district, state Assemblyman Steve Englebright (D-Setauket) spoke highly of the plan to save it, calling the pond “a crown jewel” in the Miller Place community.

“This is a very important water body simply because it anchors one end of the historic district in Miller Place and is, visually, critically important to the sense of place for that whole area,” the assemblyman said, noting insects reproduce in the water, and it attracts birds, reptiles and local wildlife. “We don’t have many ponds on Long Island on an overall landscape basis and open freshwater bodies are extremely rare, so I would strongly support the idea of restoring it.”

He did, however, warn dredging too deep with a perched pond like this runs the risk of taking away the clay base that holds the water.

“That would not be good,” Englebright said. “So, while dredging makes sense, it also makes sense to try to restore the pond a shallow depth rather than gauging down deeper, which could be dangerous.”