SUFFOLK CLOSEUP: Support Horseshoe Crab Protection Measure

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

 “We are destroying this incredible living fossil, chopping it up for bait,” New York State Assemblymember Deborah J. Glick told me in an interview last week. 

She is the author of a bill in the State Assembly which with a companion measure in the State Senate have passed that would protect horseshoe crabs. They would prohibit horseshoe crabs from being taken from the waters of New York State except for educational and research purposes

The legislation is now before Governor Kathy Hochul to sign or veto.

In a letter to the governor, Assemblymember Glick, a Manhattan resident with a Suffolk County connection—she spent several years renting on Fire Island, the shore of which is among the habitats for horseshoe crabs—wrote: “Horseshoe crabs have existed for over 400 million years. Commonly referred to as living fossils, these marine creatures predate the earliest dinosaurs by hundreds of millions of years. Their long existence on our planet has led them to be a keystone species of which many other marine and avian species rely on for their continued survival.”

“Unfortunately,” wrote Glick, “humanity’s exploitation of this prehistoric species has threatened to end horseshoe crabs’ 400-million-year existence.”

Environmentalists in Suffolk County are enthusiastically backing the legislation and so is a global expert on horseshoe crabs, a scientist from Suffolk, Dr. John Tanacredi, a resident of the Town of Huntington. “It needs to be done,” said Tanacredi of the proposed ban

From New York State waters, principally off Long Island’s shores, 150,000 horseshoe crabs are taken every year—mainly for bait to catch whelk and eel, said Tanacredi, director of the Center for Environmental Research and Coastal Oceans Monitoring (CERCOM) located in West Sayville, a component of Molloy University in Rockville Centre. He is a full professor of Earth and Environmental Studies at Molloy. 

In Smithtown, horseshoe crabs gather along its Long Island Sound coastline. 

For many decades Tanacredi has extensively studied horseshoe crabs. He points out that horseshoe crabs aren’t all over the U.S. but are limited to the Atlantic Coast from Maine to Florida. In a presentation before the group Long Island Metro Business Action in 2021, he said they could now be “on the cusp” of local “extinction.”

The Seatuck Environmental Association, based in Islip, also in a letter to Governor Hochul, has expressed “on behalf of the board of directors and supporters” of it “the organization’s strong support” for this “horseshoe crab protection measure” and “urge you to sign the legislation into law. If done, this beleaguered species, of which approximately 3.5 million have been killed in New York State over the past quarter century for use as bait in the eel and whelk fisheries, will finally receive the protection it deserves.”

“As a result of this huge take,” said the letter, signed by Enrico Nardone, executive director of Seatuck and an attorney, and John Turner, Seatuck’s senior conservation policy advocate, “horseshoe crabs have declined precipitously in New York coastal waters, most notably at numerous sites around Long Island. Many Long Islanders have noted the significant decline in horseshoe crab populations, recalling when the species was abundant in New York coastal waters decades ago.”

The letter says the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation “has set annual harvest quotas for the crabs at 150,000 animals and has implemented a few other measures in an effort to conserve horseshoe crab populations….Unfortunately, these strategies have failed to reverse the loss.”

“We understand there is opposition to the legislation from the Long Island Farm Bureau, representing baymen, and several companies that ‘bleed’ horseshoe crabs for the production of Limulus Ameboxyte Lysate (LAL), which is used to detect…bacteria on surgical equipment and implants. We believe their opposition is unjustified,” said the letter to the governor.

Regarding bait, “there are other baits and bait formulations that have proven effective in catching both whelk and eel,” it continued. 

And, “there are synthetic alternatives to LAL that negate the need for companies” to “bleed” horseshoe crabs. “A new laboratory manufactured product, recombinant rFC [scientific shorthand for recombinant Factor C] is an alternative to LAL and has proven to be as effective and in some cases more effective than LAL. Not surprisingly given its effectiveness, rFC has been approved for use in Europe, where it is displacing LAL. In the United States, the U.S. Pharmacopeia is very likely to approve the use of rFC in the United States later this summer,” said Seatuck.

Seatuck is asking people to write to Governor Hochul asking her to sign the legislation. On its website—https://seatuck.org—is an “Action Alert” saying: “Your help is needed to ensure New York seizes a historic opportunity to safeguard horseshoe crab populations.” 

“Please take a moment to urge Governor Hochul to enact this important measure,” it says, and lists the phone number of the governor’s office, 518-474-8390, the link to her “official contact page” and suggests, too, “mailing her a letter or postcard.”

Adrienne Esposito, executive director of a leading environmental organization here, Citizens Campaign for the Environment, says: “We have been depleting the species for decades and it is time to stop. We are incredibly excited that horseshoe crabs will finally have needed critical protections in New York State so its populations can rebound.” 

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 at Old Westbury and the author of six books.

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP: Put Treated Wastewater In The Ground Not The Ocean

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

John Turner, who with his Seatuck Environmental Association has been in the forefront in working for recharge of highly treated wastewater back into the underground water table on which Suffolk County depends, is optimistic that if a countywide referendum in November on water preservation is approved, that goal can be widely realized here.

A major factor is the new Suffolk County executive, Ed Romaine, who as a county legislator and a town supervisor, has long advocated recharge of wastewater.

Romaine, at an event at the start of this month at which he signed a water protection bill providing for the referendum on funding sewers and “innovated/advanced” I/A septic systems, criticized how many of the existing sewer systems in Suffolk “pour out” wastewater into coastal waterways—bays and water bodies including the Long Island Sound and Atlantic Ocean. 

If approved in the referendum on Election Day this year, November 5, the current county’s sales tax of 8.625 percent would be increased by 1/8^th of a cent to raise money for sewers and high-tech I/A septic systems. This would be in addition to the existing quarter cent sales tax which includes support for water preservation. If the referendum passes, both would continue to 2060 allowing, notes Turner, for a “very significant” amount of funds. 

A key to the money financing recharge: 13 words in the measure, the Water Quality Restoration Act, that provide for funds to go for sewers and I/A systems, continued acquisition of watershed land in the Pine Barrens—“and projects for the reuse of treated effluent from such wastewater treatment facilities.”

Put together earlier has been a “Long Island Water Reuse Road Map & Action Plan,” with Turner and Seatuck deeply involved. Turner is senior conservation policy advocate at Islip-based Seatuck. The plan highlights an endeavor in Riverhead as a model. The “Riverhead reuse project,” it relates, started in 2016 to “redirect highly treated wastewater, as much as 260,000 gallons per day” from the Riverhead Sewage Treatment Plant to “irrigate the nearby Indian Island County Golf Course,” an alternative to discharging it into Flanders Bay.

“Reusing water, for some other valuable purpose, provides numerous benefits,” says the plan, “including protecting public wells and water supplies from saltwater intrusion.” It calls for highly treated wastewater to be utilized for a variety of purposes including golf course irrigation, in greenhouses, on lawns and fields of educational and commercial locations. It specifies sites for this. 

Turner, former legislative director of the New York State Water Resource Commission and director of Brookhaven Town’s Division of Environmental Protection, says he is “excited about” recharge projects which through an approved revised Water Quality Restoration Act could get funding.

“We’re ready,” he commented.

These include, he was saying, having Sag Harbor send treated effluent to irrigate the Sag Harbor State Golf Course at Barcelona Neck to the south of the village’s sewage treatment plant which currently dumps effluent into Sag Harbor Bay. It includes having the Port Jefferson Sewage Treatment Plant “redirect” effluent it now dumps into the Long Island Sound to St. George’s golf course in nearby Setauket, where he lives. And it includes sending the effluent from the Shelter Island Heights Sewage Treatment Plant, now discharged into Shelter Island Sound, to golf course courses on Shelter Island. 

For many decades, there have been some officials in Suffolk County seemingly unaware of the consequences of discharging wastewater from sewage treatment plants into coastal waters and the Long Island Sound and the Atlantic.

And this has been despite the major negative impacts of such dumping in neighboring Nassau County which is 85 percent sewered and where all the sewage treatment plants “discharge into coastal waters,” notes Turner. As a result, he says, lakes, ponds and streams in Nassau—the “uppermost expression of the aquifer system” on which Nassau, like Suffolk, is dependent as its sole source of potable water—“have dropped considerably.” Hempstead Lake, for example, now “is Hempstead Pond,” he says. Also, the lowering of the water table in Nassau has resulted in saltwater intrusion into it. 

Suffolk is now 25 percent sewered. 

Suffolk’s last county executive, Steve Bellone, pushed a project during his tenure called “Ronkonkoma Hub” to feature 1,450 apartments and many offices and retail stores—and sending its wastewater to the county’s Bergen Point Sewage Treatment Plant in West Babylon. That plant was built to dump 30 million gallons a day of wastewater through an outfall pipe into the Atlantic Ocean. 

“I am so opposed to this,” said Romaine then. He was Brookhaven Town supervisor. “Pumping the wastewater miles away and sending it out into the ocean is a terrible mistake. This is going to impact on the aquifer. The level of Lake Ronkonkoma is going to drop. People are talking about water quality but we must also talk about water quantity.” He urged instead a sewage treatment plant for the Hub that would include recharge. 

Fortunately, in saving Suffolk County’s sole source of potable water, Romaine is now the county executive. Says Turner: “Ed has long been very supportive of recharge.”

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 at Old Westbury and the author of six books.

Tommy The Turkey: The Rest Of The Story

Now, for the Rest of the Story

By June Capossela Kempf

Just couldn’t help following up on the adventures of Tommy the Turkey who was spotted wandering, all alone, around these parts last month. Seems like he visited dozens of residents here, with some reporting endearing encounters with him and others reacting with alarm and dismay.

“Now he is chasing deer,” Fannie, our disgruntled neighbor reports, who if you recall, was herself chased all over her backyard – when she went after Tommy with a broom. A lot of us endeared ourselves to the fowl visitor, despite Fannie’s persistent complaining. Soon a neighborhood watch was formed – just to keep tabs on him. His photo even went viral and Tommy soon became a celebrity in town. When the need arose to change a conversation from politics or religion it was safe to ask, “Has anyone seen the turkey lately? “Everyone had a ‘story’. 

And then – came a new chapter.

Fast forward – a few weeks go by, and I find myself stuck in a traffic jam on Moriches Road. It wasn’t dismissal time at Mills Pond School, so I wondered what was holding things up. There were no annoying horns honking – just everyone patiently sitting in their vehicles waiting for something.  When I saw a turkey emerge between the fenders, my heart skipped a beat.

Was that Tommy? Seeing that he made it safely across the street, I expected traffic to start moving; but everyone just stayed put. 

“You can go now people,” I muttered. But nothing happened because a second turkey was following a few feet behind Tommy. This one appeared a little smaller and less colorful. I rashly deduced that his companion was a hen.  

 Halleluia, I thought.  Tommy found a friend. Naturally, I named her Henrietta without really knowing if that was, in fact, my Tommy in the first place.  No matter, I was imagined that by now, he had begun to establish his own new flock in which he occupied the top rung of dominance. He would never be banished and alone again. He was now king of the hill.  What a comeback!

With both birds safely across the street, the usual madness resumed on the Moriches Road raceway. Overjoyed, I headed for home, pulled down my street but had to slam on my brakes when I got to Fannie’s house. There were two turkeys and 3 fledglings merrily nibbling at all her azalea plants. 

Where did they come from? Who are they? Was that Tommy and Henrietta on Moriches Road or is this Tommy with some other Henrietta and their brood traipsing all over Fannie’s lawn?

 I was so confused, I decided to call the nature preserve again. This time I spoke to a pleasant wildlife expert named Nancy. After I shared my concerns over the additional wild turkeys on the loose, she supplied a wealth of information for me to mull over.

“Be aware,” she said. “That turkeys are aggressive. Don’t get too close to them. They will attack people, other animals and have even been known to chase cars.”

“Will they attack deer?”

“Oh yes, and quite often lately, since the deer have been overpopulating the whole island at an alarming rate.”

She went on. 

“Your area is not only home to turkeys.  There are families of snapping turtles wandering around the streets too.” Nancy was on a roll as she rattled off a list of local wildlife species that may be hanging around like red tailed hawks, ospreys and herons.

“Did you know there are some wild foxes in the woods behind your house?” 

After thanking Nancy for all the information, I had one more question for her.

“Shoot.” she said.

“Could you give me any ideas on how to lure the turkeys to my garden?”

“What?” she said. “Why?”

 “To keep the deer from ‘gobbling’ up all my Hosta plants.” With that, Nancy abruptly ended out conversation. And that, dear readers. is enough of the rest of this fowl story.

June Capossela Kempf is a Smithtown resident and the author of  Yo God! Jay’s Story. June’s book can be found at www.ml. facebook.com..Traditionally published by.Keithpublications.com

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SUFFOLK CLOSEUP: 72% Of HS Teachers Believe Cell Phones"Major Problem In Classroom"

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

Nearly a dozen Long Island school districts have in recent weeks joined in a lawsuit in federal court charging that social media giants including Facebook, TikTok and Snapchat are having an “addictive and dangerous” impact on youngsters, doing “harm” to them. The school districts from Suffolk County in the suit are Brentwood, East Islip, Kings Park, Port Jefferson, Islip and South Huntington.

The lawsuit is part of a national legal effort by school systems.

U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek MurthyAnd it comes as U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy has announced he would push for a warning label on social media platforms advising that that they might present a “risk of harm to the mental health and well-being of children and adolescents.” There would be labels like those now appearing on tobacco and alcohol products. Murthy is recommending that parents set limits on cellphone use by their children, that Congress to act to deal with platforms that “prey on developing brains and contribute to excessive use,” and for companies behind the platforms to make changes.  

“I don’t think we can solely rely on the hope that the platforms can fix this problem on their own,” said Murthy. “They’ve had 20 years.”

In February, the New York City administration of Mayor Eric Adams filed a lawsuit charging that Tik Tok, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat and You Tube platforms were designed to “purposely manipulate and addict children and teens to social media applications.”

And last year, New York Attorney General Letitia James and 32 other state attorneys general filed a lawsuit charging that Meta, Facebook’s parent company, purposely installed “addictive” features. James claimed that Meta has “profited from children’s pain.”

In May, New York Governor Kathy Hochul announced she wants to explore a “compromise”—a ban on internet access by students by cellphone but otherwise their being able to use them in school. “If you want to reach your parents because there’s an emergency [such as] you forgot your lunch money, you can communicate, if it’s essential,” said Hochul. “But to have access to the whole internet while you’re supposed to be in class is a different question.”

And last week, Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin issued an executive order to have the state limit or ban cell phone use in schools. “Creating cell phone and social-media free educational environments in Virginia’s K-12 education system will benefit students, parents and educators,” he said. He directed the Virginia Department of Education to establish guidelines with a “clear goal to protect the health and safety of our students by limiting the amount of time they are exposed to addictive cell phones and social media and eliminate clear distractions in the classroom.”

A Pew Research Center report issued this month found that 72 percent of high school teachers in the U.S. regard cell phone use a “major problem in the classroom.”

In Suffolk County, several school districts have been considering or have initiated bans on using cellphones in the classroom. Cellphone use in schools has been barred in countries including France, Finland, China, Italy, Portugal, United Kingdom, Sweden and the Netherlands.

As for me, I’ll be starting my Fall 2024 classes at the State University of New York at Old Westbury at the end of August and again tangling with a problem that didn’t exist when I began as a journalism professor there 46 years ago. Now I need to add to my syllabi the passage: “Smartphones and similar electronic devices, because they divert a student’s attention, are not to be used during class. Please put your smartphone or similar device away and forget about texting or checking on email during class.”

I find my Apple IPhone indispensable—indeed, when I misplace it, anxiety sets in until I happily locate it. But, as I verbally tell the students, voicing compassion for their digital pause, I don’t think using a smart phone in class is OK due to its interference with learning. 

The British magazine, the New Scientist, ran a lead editorial last month headlined “Smart solutions” with a sub-head: “Phased introductions to cellphones and social media would help kids more than bans.” 

It began: “’Get phones out of schools.’ ‘Social media is toxic for teenagers.’ Messages like these are flying around the globe and seem to have reached a zenith of late. In the UK, concern over harms from social media and screen time have led to the Smartphone Free Childhood campaign and a government crackdown on smartphone use in schools. Ministers are even considering banning the sale of smartphones to under-16s.”

It noted Murthy’s call “for cigarette style warning labels on social media platforms” and said: “More than 40 percent of U.S. children have a smartphone by the age of 10, and the concern is that excess screen use can lead to health problems, including obesity, sleep disturbances, depression and anxiety.” The New Scientist continued: “A smarter way forward would be to give children access, even from a young age, but in a controlled and considered manner. Imagine what a smartphone utopia would look like. It would be phased—you wouldn’t give kids access to the entire internet at first, you would let them into walled gardens.” The magazine said “you would allow limited messaging with strict moderation that relaxes with age.”

Is that a sensible, workable plan—or unrealistic, a fantasy?

“Smartphones, social media and screens are here to stay in our children’s lives,” said the New Scientist, “no matter how many warning labels are put in place. Now is the time to think seriously about how to provide the tools they need to navigate the reality of growing up online.”

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 at Old Westbury and the author of six books.

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP: Primary Is Over It's Avlon Of Sag Harbor And LaLota Of Amityville

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

John Avlon decisively defeated Nancy Goroff in the Democratic primary to be the party’s nominee to challenge Republican incumbent Nick LaLota in the lst Congressional District after a campaign by Goroff that was highly negative.

“Today we proved that the positive defeats the negative,” said Avlon in a victory address. 

He received more than 70 percent of the vote. 

The lst CD includes Smithtown, the five East End towns, the northern half of Brookhaven and much of Huntington. It has historically alternated between Republican and Democratic representatives. 

As Judith Hope, long a sensible voice in Suffolk (and state) Democratic Party doings and the first woman to become a town supervisor in Suffolk history when elected supervisor of East Hampton in 1973, said during the contest: “I am deeply disappointed in Nancy Goroff’s decision to ‘go negative’ in her Democratic primary race with John Avlon. The district mailings and TV ads with sinister photos of John and misleading or totally false ‘information’ about John are truly disturbing. She says it’s imperative for Democrats to take back the House of Representatives, but this ugly campaigning is no way to do that, and she knows it. I am changing my vote in the primary. I will now be voting for John Avlon. Shame on you, Nancy.”

New York State Democratic Party Chair Jay Jacobs said: “John Avlon has built a campaign that draws on real local support and enthusiasm—in contrast to Nancy Goroff who loaned herself $1.2 million to just run negative attacks against John….When Democrats in a primary resort to attacking other Democrats solely in the hope of winning that primary but with no care to the consequences if they do not, they lay bare the selfishness that motivates them—which is unbecoming to public service. I urge all Democrats in primary contests to focus on policy differences…”

East Hampton Democratic Chair Anna Skrenta said: “I’ve heard from many Democrats in the Town of East Hampton who have been bombarded with mailings and TV ads with sinister photos and misleading or totally false ‘information’ about congressional candidate John Avlon. The negative messaging has come from both Nancy Goroff’s campaign and the 314 Super PAC that supports her. Most of the folks I’ve heard from are angry and disappointed in Goroff for running a dark and divisive smear campaign.” 

Skrenta continued saying Avlon “is a very public figure. He’s not hiding anything. There are no Republican or MAGA skeletons in his closet. Far from it. Please Google him. You will literally find hundreds of videos, articles, interviews, and podcasts where he very clearly articulates his positions on any number of issues. He is a moderate Democrat who has warned against the dangers of extremism and hyper-partisanship to our democracy and our country for decades. This has been a consistent theme and the ideological foundation of his entire career as an author, editor, print and TV journalist, and presidential historian. I urge everyone to do this research. Sadly, our politics have devolved into fear and anger-fueled debates where truth, facts, and history no longer matter. But John is an antidote and a breath of fresh air in today’s toxic climate.”

There were more such reactions to Goroff’s attacks on Avlon that were largely based on his being a speechwriter three decades ago for New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani in his second term when the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center happened and Giuliani was widely heralded as “America’s mayor.” 

Avlon commenting on CNN last year about a documentary it was airing titled “Giuliani: What Happened to America’s Mayor?” said: “I think that he got caught in a right-wing echo chamber ecosystem where he was totally invested in an alternate reality that was fundamentally hyperpartisan.” He said his earlier view “of the man I knew and was proud to work for is fundamentally off.” A book Avlon wrote published in 2010 was titled “Wingnuts: How the Lunatic Fringe Is Hijacking America.” 

Goroff, a former chemistry professor at Stony Brook University, in a torrent of mail pieces and TV ads blasted Avlon. One typical Goroff flier declared: “Avlon Is Trying To Hide His GOP Ties….John Avlon doesn’t want you to look behind the curtain. That’s where he’s hiding a big secret he doesn’t want you to know. He’s a Republican insider!”

I’ve written how attack ads and negative campaigning have become, unfortunately, commonplace in U.S. politics. They served as a centerpiece of the Goroff campaign.

There’s nothing wrong with primary contests. They enable vigorous debates between potential nominees. But as Hope said, “ugly campaigning is no way to do that,” and as Jacobs said, they should “focus on policy differences.”

Avlon of Sag Harbor will face LaLota of Amityville in the November election. 

State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele, Jr. of Sag Harbor said in an Avlon flier: “John Avlon is the best candidate on Long Island I have ever seen, which is why I know he can win in November.” Goroff of Stony Brook lost to LaLota’s predecessor, GOPer Lee Zeldin of Shirley, by 10 percent of the vote in 2020.  

Avalon’s definition of a “wingnut” is “someone on the far-right wing or far-left wing of the political spectrum—the professional partisans, the unhinged activists and the paranoid conspiracy theorists. They’re the people who always try to divide rather than unite us.”

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 at Old Westbury and the author of six books.