SUFFOLK CLOSEUP : "LI Water Reuse Road Map & Action Plan"

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

Karl Grossman

Water reuse. It’s essential for Suffolk and Nassau Counties, dependent as they are on an underground water supply, a “sole source” aquifer below for water. A “Long Island Water Reuse Road Map & Action Plan” will be unveiled next week about making use—through reuse—of water from below.

For years, there’s been concern over the quality of the water in Suffolk and Nassau and steps have been taken to prevent and deal with contamination of water. But the issue of water quantity has been largely ignored.

Ancient Rome pioneered the building of sewers that dumped used water into nearby waterways. The centuries-old Roman system continues in Nassau. Some 85% of Nassau is sewered. And from those sewage treatment plants along Nassau’s north and south shores this so-called “wastewater” is sent via outfall pipes into nearby waterways and the Atlantic Ocean and Long Island Sound.

As a result, the underground reservoir of Nassau is “shrinking,” explains John Turner, senior conservation policy advocate at Islip-based Seatuck Environmental Association. Previously he was legislative director of the state Legislative Commission on Water Resource Needs of New York State and Long Island, and also director of Brookhaven Town’s Division of Environmental Protection. 

Seatuck, working with the Greentree Foundation and Cameron Engineering & Associates and a Water Reuse Technical Working Group of 28 members, has put together the “Long Island Water Reuse Road Map & Action Plan.” 

It will be presented this coming Wednesday on what significantly is World Water Day. Several nations around the world now excel in water reuse, and so do a few states in the U.S., notably California and Florida.

Meanwhile, with wastewater just dumped by Nassau and its water table dropping, Hempstead Lake has become known as “Hempstead Puddle,” notes Turner. Valley Stream is “Valley No-Stream.” Also affected have been other streams and water bodies in Nassau, and wetlands have been seriously impacted, too. 

About 25% of Suffolk County is sewered. It does have smaller treatment plants that recharge treated wastewater into the ground, but most of its bigger sewage treatment plants follow the way of Nassau County—and ancient Rome—and discharge into nearby waterways, the Atlantic and Long Island Sound.

Suffolk’s largest sewage plant, its Bergen Point Treatment Plant in West Babylon, was built to send 30 million gallons of wastewater a day through an outfall pipe into the Atlantic. 

And Suffolk County government has been pushing for new sewer systems to also send what they process through the Bergen Point plant into the Atlantic—including from a gigantic commercial development proposed for Ronkonkoma miles away, in the middle of the Suffolk.

A breakthrough in Suffolk County was an upgrade of the Riverhead Sewage Treatment Plant and in 2016 its treated effluent sent to the adjacent Indian Island Golf Course where it fertilizes the turf rather than, as was the practice, dumped into Flanders Bay. That water reuse project is a model for the “Long Island Water Reuse Road Map & Action Plan.” 

The plan begins: “Over the past half century, water quality in Long Island’s groundwater aquifer—the sole source of drinking water for more than 2.5 million Nassau and Suffolk County residents—and both freshwater and coastal surface water has steadily declined. Notably among this water quality program is the detrimental impacts to human and ecosystem health associated with excess nitrogen.”

“During the same time period,” it continues, “Long Island’s water quantity problem has also come into focus. High rates of pumping have impacted Long Island’s vast aquifer resources, with water table levels significantly decreased in many places.”

“Water reuse or water recycling, as it is also known, is a complementary strategy that can meaningfully help Long Island address its water issues,” it explains. “It involves ‘reusing’ highly treated wastewater generated from sewage treatment plants for water-dependent purposes instead of discharging it into the ocean or local coastal waters.”

That highly treated wastewater can be used for, among other things, irrigation “at locations such as golf courses, sod farms and greenhouses, as well as for lawns and fields at educational and commercial campuses.” It can be used at “commercial centers, industrial parks and jobs sites” which have “considerable potential to utilize reclaimed water for a range of purposes, from cooling to cleaning to mixing non-consumptive products, e.g., concrete.” And treated “reclaimed water can be used to address hydrological or ecological needs, especially those associated with over-pumping, such as augmenting streamflow or restoring aquatic habitat.”

More next week on the visionary and much-needed “Long Island Water Reuse Road Map & Action Plan.”

Karl Grossman is a veteran investigative reporter and columnist, the winner of numerous awards for his work and a member of the L.I. Journalism Hall of Fame. He is a professor of journalism at SUNY/College at Old Westbury and the author of six books. 

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP: Moody's Analytics "Long Island At Risk"

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

Long Island is ranked fourth for “highest chronic physical risk among the 100 most populous areas” in the United States for the impacts of climate change in a just-issued report of Moody’s Analytics. The Number One area threatened is San Francisco, then Cape Coral, Florida, then New York City—and then Long Island. 

“The most at-risk metro areas are predominantly coastal,” says the 14-page report. “The New York City area and Florida are especially vulnerable, but too are other parts of the Eastern Seaboard and California.”

A section titled “Housing” is a main issue in the report by Moody’s Analytics, a subsidiary of the Moody’s Corporation, a business and financial services company. Moody’s Analytics does economic research including about risks and describes itself as providing “financial intelligence and analytical tools to help business leaders make better, faster decisions.”

“Rising temperatures mean more frequent and severe natural disasters that could destroy homes and spark out-migration from some areas,” says the report. “Similarly, enough disasters will eventually force insurers to abandon markets they deem too risky; this has already happened in some parts of the country, including much of Florida, forcing the public sector to step in. That practice, however, will be difficult to sustain and could eventually compel more people to move out of areas that become classified as uninsurable. Similarly, while there is a strong tendency today to rebuild after natural disasters, a lack of insurance and government funding could make that far less palatable in the future.”

States the report: “The importance of accounting for climate change will only grow for the banking system and corporate decision-makers.”

In an interview last week in Newsday, Adam Kamins, a Moody’s Analytics senior director and author of the report, said: “With sea level rise, Long Island is a lot more exposed than the rest of the country for obvious reasons.” He continued: “Combined with acute physical risk associated with hurricanes, which are expected—especially if climate change goes largely unmitigated—to grow stronger, most frequent and to make their way north,” this “puts Long Island in a vulnerable position.”

“Retreat is not an option,” declares a Floridian in a voice-over at the end of a TV documentary aired nationally in December titled “Brink of Disaster Miami Sinking.” A focus of the program, broadcast on the Science Channel, is how Miami and most of South Florida have been built on top of porous limestone. That’s a sponge for inundation and flooding, it says, and thus climate change and ensuing sea-level rise and storm surge could be put the area under water.

The finest book I know about what all the vulnerable coastal areas face from climate change is Retreat from a Rising Sea, Hard Decisions in an Age of Climate Change. It was published by Columbia University Press in 2016. Its three authors are Dr. Orrin H. Pilkey, a leading expert on coastal impacts of climate change—he’s been to Suffolk County to speak—and is professor emeritus in the Division of Ocean Sciences at Duke University, and his daughter, Linda Pilkey-Jarvis, a geologist, and son, Keith C. Pilkey, an attorney.

They state: “Our dependence on fossil fuels has in part brought us to this place, causing a chain of events that warms the atmosphere, which in turn warms and expands the oceans, melts glaciers and ice sheets, and consequently raises the seas.”

“The deniers of climate change and sea-level rise continue to have a voice that seems to grow weaker with each superstorm. But a closer look shows that the deniers provide a façade of credibility for a host of politicians who contrive to ignore the rising sea,” they say. “Deniers have vested interests most related to the fossil-fuel industries in confusing us and hereby delaying regulatory action.”

“Greed and selfishness are often part of decisions to protect property at the price of beach destruction. In Southampton, New York, several beachfront billionaires are building massive walls to protect their individual homes, despite the community’s opposition,” they write.

“Why move back? Why retreat?” To these questions they say: “As the sea level rises, the replenishment sand will become less stable, will erode faster, and will have to be replenished more frequently, and the cost will rise exponentially. Seawalls built on eroding beaches will eventually cause the loss of the beach…” 

The 212-page book concludes: “There is not the slightest doubt that beachfront development will retreat on a massive scale, although widespread recognition of this and serious planning for it are lacking. In the meantime, until the problem becomes so obvious that even the most dedicated denier must give in, more local actions can be taken. First and foremost, building density should not increase, and large buildings (high-rises) must be prohibited. Good planning could include preserving space on the mainland to which buildings could be moved. New roads and other infrastructure should be placed as high and far away from the shoreline as feasible. Disincentives to expand or stay in place must be applied….Neither time or tide is in our favor.”

Karl Grossman is a veteran investigative reporter and columnist, the winner of numerous awards for his work and a member of the L.I. Journalism Hall of Fame. He is a professor of journalism at SUNY/College at Old Westbury and the author of six books. 

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP: Calone And Romaine Kick Off Campaign For County Executive

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

The race this year for Suffolk County executive—the top position in Suffolk County government—is taking shape with a contest between Republican Edward Romaine and Democrat Dave Calone. 

Romaine was first elected Brookhaven Town’s 70th town supervisor in a special election in 2012, and re-elected with large margins since. He has extensive county experience. Romaine was a member of the Suffolk Legislature from 1986 through 1989 when he was elected Suffolk County clerk, a position he held for 16 years. In 2005, he returned to the legislature and was re-elected three times before running for and becoming Brookhaven Town supervisor.  

It was a family tragedy that caused him to depart the legislature and run for Brookhaven Town supervisor. It was after his son, Keith Romaine, a two-term Brookhaven Town councilman, seen as moving up and becoming town supervisor, died at just 36. The young Romaine, or Moriches, suddenly contracted pneumonia and passed away from complications caused by a virus that attacked his heart. Ed subsequently ran for town supervisor to do what his son “might have done.” As he explained: “If my son had lived, he would be supervisor.”

As a legislator and town supervisor, Ed Romaine, of Center Moriches, has been highly active especially on environmental issues and pressing for sound fiscal policies. He was a major legislative force in battling and stopping the operation of LILCO’s Shoreham nuclear power plant. As the top elected town official in Brookhaven, Suffolk’s largest town, bigger than Nassau County, Romaine’s major undertakings have encompassed protecting the Carmans River and promoting the use of renewable energy. “We have put up solar panels everywhere,” he has said.

Romaine started his professional life as an educator and taught history at Hauppauge High School. He initially began serving in government as Brookhaven’s first commissioner of Housing and Community Development and later director of Economic Development.

Calone is a lawyer and a former state and federal prosecutor. In the U.S. Department of Justice from 1999 until 2003, his focus included both terrorism and corporate fraud. He announced in July that he was seeking to be the Democratic candidate for county executive. 

Calone was chair of the Suffolk County Planning Commission for eight years, a trustee of the Long Island Power Authority and a board member of the Community Development Corp., an affordable housing nonprofit. In business, he is president and CEO of Jove Equity Partners, a private equity and venture capital firm. He serves as a director of several U.S. companies.

There was a “kick-off” in Stony Brook last month for the Calone campaign with 250 people in attendance. Also last month, Calone, of East Setauket, said contributions to his campaign had reached $1.7 million. 

Says Calone: “The county executive role is not about left or right—it’s about moving Suffolk forward. As a former prosecutor and businessman, I am ready to lead our county to become safer, more affordable, and with more opportunity for everybody.”

A wrinkle earlier in the Democratic Party’s process of choosing a candidate for county executive this year was that Southampton Town Supervisor Jay Schneiderman considered running. “I’ll be a good candidate,” said Schneiderman in November. He was first elected Southampton supervisor in 2015 after being a Suffolk County legislator and is the only person to ever serve as supervisor of two Suffolk towns—first East Hampton and then, after being on the legislature, Southampton. However, last month he decided not to run saying that “for a variety of reasons, I have decided not to enter the county executive race at this juncture.” 

If he had gotten the nomination it would have been an interesting pairing considering that Romaine had been Schneiderman’s history teacher at Hauppauge High School

Suffolk Democratic Chair Rich Schaffer said following the Calone the kick-off: “As former prosecutor and as a business leader, Dave will lead a coalition to energize Democratic voters across the county.” That would be important if it happens because a key reason many Democratic candidates in Suffolk didn’t fare well in the 2022 election was the Democratic turn-out here—a 7.8 percent decrease from the 2018 election. Meanwhile, Republicans increased their turn-out from 2018 by 5.7 percent. 

And then there is how Suffolk’s huge number of independent voters will ballot. 

Regarding voter figures in Suffolk, the latest numbers from the New York State Board of Election (from November) show most are enrolled Democrats—380,756. The Republican total is 343,940. But then there are the independents, listed by the board as “Blank” voters—312,975. These independents are often the key in Suffolk elections

This year is the last for Steve Bellone as Suffolk County executive due to term limits. A Democrat from North Babylon and lawyer, he was a member of the Babylon Town Board and that town’s supervisor before his election as county executive in 2011.

Karl Grossman is a veteran investigative reporter and columnist, the winner of numerous awards for his work and a member of the L.I. Journalism Hall of Fame. He is a professor of journalism at SUNY/College at Old Westbury and the author of six books. 

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP: Global Warming "We Are In The Fight Of Our Lives"

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

The title is long but what’s being considered are projects that have financial costs with a very long series of dollar numbers. “Coastal Defense Megaprojects in an Era of Sea-Level Rise: Politically Feasible Strategies or Army Corps Fantasies?” is its title.

It is a detailed analysis just out about proposed “megaprojects” involving the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers that the Corps sees as protecting coastal areas from storms made extremely intense due to global warming or climate change. 

Consider $119,000,000,000. That $119 billion would be used for a plan featuring a series of retractable gates built in a six mile stretch out in the Atlantic Ocean from New Jersey to the Rockaways. Writing in The New York Times in 2021, Ann Barnard reported: “The giant barrier is the largest of five options the Army Corps of Engineers is studying to protect the New York area as storms become more frequent, and destructive, on a warming Earth.” Her article was headlined: “The $119 Billion Sea Wall That Could Defend New York…or Not.”

It continued: “The proposals have sparked fierce debate as New York, like other coastal cities, grapples with the broader question of how and to what degree it must transform its landscape and lifestyle to survive rising seas.”

This scheme was succeeded—after its cost, environmental impacts and practicality were questioned—by what Barnard in The Times described in an article last year as the Army Corps’ “latest vision of how to protect the region from future storms: a $52 billion proposal to build moveable sea barriers across the mouths of major bays and inlets along New York Harbor.” 

“If Congress approved the proposal,” she went on, “the federal government would pay 65 percent” of the $52 billion cost.” The plan, she added, would also include “31 miles of land-based levees, elevated shorelines and sea walls. It would require approval from the state and local governments that would foot the rest of the bill.” 

Whether $119 billion or $52 billion—taxpayers will be deeply affected. 

And also last year, for Long Island Dr. Malcolm Bowman, an oceanography professor at Stony Brook University’s School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, presented a study he did that proposed “sea gates” to serve as storm surge barriers at south shore inlets from East Rockaway Inlet on to five other inlets including Fire Island, Moriches and Shinnecock Inlets.

It is titled “Protecting Long Island from Future Sandy Flood Events: A South Shore Sea Gate Study.” The gates would be mostly left open but when a big storm approached, they’d close to prevent storm surges from entering the bays into which the inlets lead.

In presenting his study, funded by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, Bowman told the Long Island Regional Planning Board about the “sea gates—“Think of them like a saloon door.” As for cost, he set no figure but acknowledged that the plan would be in the multi-billion dollar range.

That “Coastal Defense Megaprojects in an Era of Sea Level Rise” report in the current issue of the Journal of Water Resources Planning and Management of the American Society of Civil Engineers was written by a professor from Rutgers University and two professors from Princeton University—including Dr. Michael Oppenheimer. They conclude: “We are pessimistic that storm surge barriers will be politically feasible climate adaptation options” for reasons including “modern environmental laws that provide avenues for expression of oppositional views within the decision process” and “the allure of alternative options that are more aesthetically pleasing and cheaper and faster to implement even when they do not offer equivalent levels of protection—e.g. green/nature-based solutions.”  Before joining the Princeton faculty, Oppenheimer was for 20 years the chief scientist at the Environmental Defense Fund, launched and long headquartered in Suffolk County.  

In medicine, there’s a focus on the cause, not just the effect, of a disease. These “megaprojects” focus on an effect of global warming, of climate change. Would it not be a wiser—and economically far more practical—to focus on the cause? Instead of the billions upon billions of dollars being proposed to try to deal with an effect, we need to get at the main cause of global warming: the burning of fossil fuels: coal, gas and oil. 

Efforts to combat global warming/climate change—notably a rapid transition to clean, green fuels—have for years not been strong enough. There’s been talk and talk, and some action. But time and again necessary steps have been blocked by vested interests—the coal, gas and oil industries—and politicians in denial of climate change often in the pockets of these industries.

As UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres declared at last year’s COP 27 Climate 

Change Summit: “We are in the fight of our lives, and we are losing. Greenhouse gas emissions keep growing, global temperatures keep rising, and our planet is fast approaching tipping points that will make climate chaos irreversible. We are on a highway to climate hell with our foot still on the accelerator.”

We must, indeed, fully challenge and counter the cause of an existential global illness.

Karl Grossman is a veteran investigative reporter and columnist, the winner of numerous awards for his work and a member of the L.I. Journalism Hall of Fame. He is a professor of journalism at SUNY/College at Old Westbury and the author of six books. 

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP: Governor Hochul And Housing

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

“Gov. Hochul’s ambitious housing plan meets suburban blockade” was the headline last week in the Gothamist. “Gov. Kathy Hochul’s plan to build 800,000 new homes over the next 10 years statewide is running into a familiar obstacle: suburbanites,” began the article.

It continued: “Already, local officials in Westchester County, the Hudson Valley and on Long Island are organizing against the central plank of the Democrat’s newly unveiled plan that would set housing production targets for every city, town or village in the state. If a municipality misses the mark, the state could step in and approve new housing development, Hochul said.”

“Suburban leaders,” it went on, “have proved themselves formidable foes; last year they led an organized, sustained public pressure campaign to force Hochul to retreat on a prior proposal that would have allowed single-family homeowners to legally rent out apartments in their attic, basement or garage, regardless of local zoning. Now, the same political forces say Hochul is again overstepping, even though hardly anyone is willing to criticize the plan’s intent of providing housing in areas of the state that desperately need it.”

State Senator Anthony Palumbo from New Suffolk was quoted as saying: “Look, do we need additional housing? Of course we do, but local control is critical.”

Earlier, after Hochul announced her “New York Housing Compact” in her “State of the State” address last month, State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele, Jr. of Sag Harbor issued a statement saying that “as the chair of the State Assembly Committee on Local Governments, it is important to offer constructive suggestions now to implement the governor’s vision.” He said “the governor’s proposal alludes to the creation of a state board to overrule local zoning decisions and possible rollbacks to the State Environmental Quality Review Act. Both of these actions are ill-considered. The best way to create affordable housing is with carrots and not sticks and with incentives and not mandates.”

Also, the Gossamist said “speaking to reporters in Rochester…Hochul said she anticipated the opposition from suburban leaders protective of home rule” but declared “I also know that we all have to play our part in solving a crisis, because people want to live in those communities. They want to live in Westchester and Nassau and Suffolk in particular. There’s a lot of jobs down there, and a lot of employers are saying, ‘I can’t get the workers I need.’ We have to have affordable housing to bring them out.”

I first wrote about housing in Suffolk in 1962. It was my first job as a reporter, at the Babylon Town Leader, and garden apartments were coming to the town and there was resistance and fear of Babylon becoming “another Queens.” I was assigned to visit several of the garden apartments and was told by residents that living in a garden apartment was what they could afford and, yes, different than the post-World War II Long Island standard: a house on a plot of land. A general view from neighbors was that the garden apartments fit in their communities.

These days, the affordability issue is far more intense. In 1964, we bought our first house, in Sayville, for $19,000. Even adjusting for inflation, that’s a small fraction of the cost of a house in Suffolk these days. Newsday last week reported the median price of a house in Suffolk in 2022 was $530,000. How can average people and the young afford the skyrocketed price of a house in Suffolk today? 

Our affordable housing situation is not unique. Consider what’s happening on Nantucket, the island east of Suffolk, part of Massachusetts, where an affordable housing battle has been going on. An article in the Daily Mail last month began: “Plans to build an affordable housing complex in Nantucket remain in limbo after locals objected to the scheme, insisting the affluent island does not have the infrastructure or resources for the development.“ What’s been named Surfside Crossing would be condos and homes on 13.5 acres with, it said, “70 percent designated for people who live on the island year-round.”

“The governor proposes a 3 percent new homes target for Long Island over the next three years,” said Thiele. He authored the Peconic Bay Region Community Housing Fund Act approved by voters in the last election that is to be financed with a .5 percent real estate transfer tax to help first-time homebuyers and has advanced a State Accessory Dwelling Unit Incentive Act. “Our region has seen the greatest growth in population in New York State” and “has seen successive development booms, all while still protecting critical natural resources….Local communities do not need to be bludgeoned into action with mandates and state overrides of local decision making. A much more collaborative approach is necessary.”

Long Island Association president and CEO Matt Cohen said last month: “Affordability is the existential crisis facing Long Island and it’s causing young professionals and others to leave because they cannot afford to live here. We must develop creative solutions now.” 

Indeed.

Karl Grossman is a veteran investigative reporter and columnist, the winner of numerous awards for his work and a member of the L.I. Journalism Hall of Fame. He is a professor of journalism at SUNY/College at Old Westbury and the author of six books.