DEC Moves Into Its New Home At Nissequogue River State Park In Kings Park

On Saturday, October 16 community members joined DEC employees planting trees in front of the DEC bldg. Tours of the bldg. were available to the public. On October 7th Governor Kathy Hochul announced the opening of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation’s new Marine Resources headquarters located in the Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation’s Nissequogue River State Park, Kings Park. The new building, which features a range of sustainable green features, will serve as a central hub for DEC’s Division of Marine Resources and its essential work to manage and conserve New York’s marine fisheries, shellfish, and other protected marine life habitats.  

“From recreational anglers out for a day to commercial shellfish harvesters who have fished our state’s waters for generations, the health of New York’s marine ecosystem is critical to the economic health of our coastal communities,” said Governor Hochul. 

The facility is LEED Silver-certified by the U.S. Green Building Council for energy efficiency construction. It includes water-use reduction and rainwater management features, environmentally conscious and low-pollution-emitting building materials, and facilitates the production of up to 100,000 kWh/year of solar-generated energy. Construction of the new $26 million facility was supported by funding from NY Works and is aligned with the goals of the Nissequogue River State Park Master Plan.   

Nightime view of DEC building at Nissequogue River State Park in Kings ParkSustainable features at the new facility include:   

• Ground- and roof-mounted solar panels equipped to generate more than 100,000 kWh of energy each year;   
• LED lighting, energy-efficient electrical systems, and optimized water process use to reduce consumption;  
• Indoor environmental air quality controls, outdoor heat-reduction materials, and reflecting paint to minimize energy use;  
• Low-impact refrigerants;    
• Environmentally friendly, low-emitting, and recycled construction materials;  
• High-quality indoor daylight and views of natural outdoor spaces to reduce the use of electrical lighting;  
• Green and electric vehicle parking and charging stations for visitors and staff;  
• Bike rack and a connection to a nature trail;  
• Rainwater bioretention and rain gardens to help reduce storm water runoff; and  
• Native and adaptive plants and trees to promote the health of the local ecosystem.  

DEC plays a crucial role in the management of commercial and recreational fisheries, such as striped bass, black sea bass, summer flounder, and blue crabs, among others.  DEC remains committed to protecting vulnerable and encroached marine habitats that include tidal wetlands, bays, estuaries, the Hudson River, Long Island Sound, and Atlantic Ocean. Maintaining healthy marine environments helps to support Long Island’s coastal communities and industries that rely on sustainable and productive marine resources. New York’s marine resources are critical to the State’s economy - supporting nearly 350,000 jobs and generating billions of dollars through tourism, fishing, and other industries. The region’s growing marine economy accounts for approximately 9.7 percent of Long Island’s total gross domestic product. 

DEC oversees the management of shellfish and aquaculture to ensure productive, healthy, and safe shellfish are harvested for consumption from New York’s waters. The new headquarters operates the state’s only U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)-certified shellfish microbiology laboratory to ensure that the more than one million acres of shellfish growing areas throughout New York’s marine waters meet the stringent requirements of the National Shellfish Sanitation Program (NSSP). The lab must complete FDA-approved proficiency testing twice per year to maintain its FDA certification and is evaluated by the FDA every three years for NSSP compliance and recertification.   

“On behalf of the of the Nissequogue River State Park Foundation, I welcome the DEC to the park and look forward to working with the DEC to build a meaningful long-term partnership that will help to create value for all the park constituents,” said John McQuaid, President, Nissequogue River State Park Foundation.   

Nissequogue River State Park connects to Sunken Meadow State Park, allowing visitors to explore 521 riverfront acres of trails, saltwater wetlands, and wildlife habitats. Located on the north shore of Long Island, the park overlooks the Nissequogue River and provides scenic views of the river and the Long Island Sound and provides valuable habitat to a variety of shore birds, reptiles, and amphibians. The park offers a canoe and kayak launch, fishing, birdwatching, interpretive signs, guided tours, and group tours by reservation. In addition to green building features, the new facility offers improved meeting spaces, staff workspaces, and laboratories. The facility also provides opportunities to expand DEC’s environmental education and I FISH NY programs, while enhancing joint initiatives with State Parks, such as I Love My Park Day, First Day Hikes, and Outdoors Day.   

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP - Did The DOD Weaponize Ticks With Lyme Disease

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

The U.S. House of Representatives has just passed a measure calling for a federal investigation into any link between the “possible weaponization of ticks” by the U.S. military and Lyme disease.

Several books and articles have found that there is such a link and have pointed to activities on Plum Island, a mile-and-a-half off Long Island’s Orient Point. Lyme disease is named for Old Lyme, Connecticut, 10 miles from Plum Island, where it was first identified.

The sponsor of the measure is Representative Chris Smith, a Republican in his 21^st term in the House and considered the dean of the New Jersey delegation in the House. Lyme disease has long been a focus; he is co-chair of the bipartisan Congressional Lyme Disease Caucus.

His bill, in the form of an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act, was part of a package of amendments to the annual National Defense Authorization Act which passed the House by a vote of 360 to 66 on September 23. It has been sent to the U.S. Senate for its consideration.

This is the third year in a row such a measure introduced by Mr. Smith has passed in the House. But neither, in 2019 and 2020, received Senate approval. 

“Americans deserve the Truth: Did DOD Weaponize Ticks with Lyme Disease?” was the headline on September 22 in the Congressional Record as the Smith measure came before the House. The Congressional Record is the official account published by Congress of its proceedings.

The piece started with comments made by Mr. Smith: “Mr. Speaker, in the spirit of transparency and accountability my amendment directs the General Accountability Office, GAO, to probe whether the Department of Defense ever weaponized ticks with Lyme disease or any other dangerous pathogen.”

“For years,” it went on, “books and articles have been written credibly asserting that significant research at Fort Detrick,” an Army facility in Maryland, long headquarters for U.S. biological warfare activities, and “Plum Island, and elsewhere, was conducted to turn ticks into bioweapons.”

Mr. Smith cited a 2019 book, Bitten: The Secret History of Lyme Disease and Biological Weapons by Stanford University science writer Kris Newby. The book “includes interviews with Dr. Willy Burgdorfer, the researcher who is credited with discovering Lyme disease,” he says. “It turns out that Dr. Burgdorfer was a bioweapons specialist. The interviews, combined with access to Dr. Burgdorfer’s file, reveal that he and other bioweapons specialists stuffed ticks with pathogens in a quest to cause severe disability, disease and death.”

“If the investigation concludes our government’s bioweapons program did not contribute to the proliferation of Lyme, we turn the page,” Mr. Smith’s speech concluded. “And if it did, hopefully this investigation and research will contribute to a cure.”

A 1982 book linking Plum Island to experiments with ticks and Lyme disease was The Belarus Secret: The Nazi Connection in America by John Loftus, an attorney who specialized in pursuing Nazis for the Office of Special Investigations of the U.S. Department of Justice. 

A 2004 book about the Plum Island Animal Disease Center—which became a national best-seller—Lab 257: The Disturbing Story of the Government’s Secret Germ Laboratory was authored by Michael Carroll, also an attorney, and made a similar connection. 

In 1993, Newsday ran an extensive article by investigative reporter John McDonald saying documents it obtained through the U.S. Freedom of Information Act declared the mission of the laboratory originally set up by the Army on Plum Island was to work on biological warfare to be directed against animals. The Newsday story began: “A 1950s military plan to cripple the Soviet economy by killing horses, cattle and swine called for making biological warfare weapons out of exotic animal diseases at a Plum Island laboratory, now-declassified Army records reveal.”

In 1995, then U.S. Representative Michael Forbes of Quogue made a surprise visit to the Plum Island Animal Disease Center to demand all records on experiments with ticks. He was accompanied by Mr. McDonald and me. Mr. Forbes represented Suffolk’s lst Congressional District. (He was a Republican later to switch to the Democratic Party.) The center’s then director, Dr. Harley Moon, under intensive questioning by Mr. Forbes, said that “we don’t have any paperwork on that.” Back in Washington, Mr. Forbes continued his pursuit but without success.

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 - Suffolk Needs More Affordable Housing

By Karl Grossman

A key to dealing with the affordable housing crisis in Suffolk County is having a variety of housing: such as accessory dwelling units, multifamily housing, shared housing, duplexes, small and medium apartment communities. But an obstacle in having diversity in housing types are zoning rules that heavily favor single-family homes. 

Suffolk is largely zoned for single-family homes, notes Michael Daly, founder and leader of East End YIMBY—for Yes In My Backyard—the group working for affordable housing. Zoning in some areas of Suffolk, “especially on the East End, is limited nearly exclusively to single-family homes and is one of the biggest contributing factors to the high cost of a house here and the availability of affordable housing,” he says.

“Zoning rules strangling Long Island,” was the title of a 2019 essay by Professor Michael Lewyn, associate director of the Institute on Land Use and Sustainable Development at the Touro Law Center. “Why isn’t Long Island building more housing? As in many other places, local zoning codes treat housing as a scary thing that must be strictly limited.” 

The issue has been bubbling here for years.

“Why Is It So Hard to Build Multifamily Housing on Long Island?” was the title of a 2016 essay by Nancy Rauch Douzinas, president of the Rauch Foundation. “Long Island—world-renown for single-family homes—has fewer multifamily housing options than other suburb near New York City,” she wrote. She cited a foundation-commissioned study which found that “land zoned for apartments is vanishingly scarce on Long Island.” She said “enlightened leadership” is necessary to “enable our children and grandchildren, once grown, to live nearby” and also to “attract younger workers if we want the businesses that we need to locate here. The key is to develop multifamily housing that young people can afford.”

The situation isn’t limited to Long Island.

“The Zombie That Is Single-Family Zoning—Destroy It Before It Destroys Us,” was an essay by Atticus LeBlanc in August on www.forbes.com  He wrote that “we’re in a situation where we need much more housing supply. We’ve needed it for a long time, and we still need the ability to create more housing much faster. Single-family zoning remains the biggest obstacle standing in the way.” He said “affordable housing advocates” have sought a change for years “knowing full well that systemic racism runs deep in local housing ordinances, and that more multi-family and shared housing increases inventory, i.e., supply, which allows for more options for those who need it most. With the housing shortage now at all-time highs, affordable housing advocates are no longer the only ones decrying policies that favor only nuclear families. Rather policymakers on both sides of the aisle and at every jurisdiction are paying attention.”

Consider California where decades ago housing prices hit the roof nationally—and where large numbers of people are now living in tents along streets in many areas.

As New York Times reporter Conor Dougherty wrote in August: “California needs more housing. More condominiums, more townhouses near mass transit…There is no other solution to the state’s desperate homelessness problem and a deepening housing affordability crisis, according to a broad collection of economists and housing experts.” Earlier that week the California Legislature “took a big step” toward “advancing a bill that would allow two-unit buildings on lots that for generations have been reserved exclusively for single-family homes.” In September, California Governor Gavin Newsom signed a package of housing legislation. “California’s New Housing Laws: Here’s What to Know” was the headline of a follow-up New York Times story. Reporting that the “state’s median home price has crept above $800,000,” it said California’s “housing crisis has a seemingly simple solution, according to the laws of supply and demand: Build more housing.” The measures Mr. Newsom signed will allow for the wide construction of duplexes and accessory development units—small dwellings on the same grounds or attached to single-family homes—and other multi-family housing in California.

“The suite of bills,” said a press release from the governor, “will help address” the affordable housing problem. It quoted Mr. Newsom saying: “The housing affordability crisis is undermining the California Dream for families across the state, and threatens our long-term growth and prosperity.”

In Suffolk, Jim Morgo knows a lot about housing—he’s former deputy county executive for housing. For many years his family lived in a single-family home in Bayport. Now, he and his wife reside in a 40-unit condominium, in Bayport, too. Although on five acres, “it doesn’t seem overly dense or overcrowded,” says Mr. Morgo. That’s because “density is not a number, it’s design: the placement of buildings, landscaping, building in harmony with nature.” In contrast, a megamansion on several acres can be “hideous.” 

Of condominium life for his wife and him, Mr. Morgo said last week: “It’s wonderful.” 

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. 

Shampoo Not Doing The Job? May Be A Knockoff

By Stacey Altherr

Beware: Your favorite make-up or shampoo brand may not be what you think it is.

For years, federal authorities have been trying to wrangle counterfeit beauty products off the shelves of national chain stores. These products are deceivingly similar in packaging, sometimes with a simple extra sticker as the only clue that it may not be a direct shipment from its legitimate producer to even a national drug and beauty chain.

“About 90 percent of these counterfeit items come from China, where manufacturing is cheaper and there’s a copycat culture,” Bob Barchiesi, president of the International Anticounterfeiting Coalition, a D.C.-based trade organization,” said in a 2015 article in Cosmopolitan Magazine.

Diversion of products is the unauthorized sale of products, which can be diluted, have a different formula, or expired.

These counterfeit products are not just a loss of money for the famous brands, but can have health and safety for the users. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigations, in conjunction with the National Intellectual Property Rights Center, testing of these knock-off products has shown dangerous ingredients such as arsenic, beryllium and cadmium, all known carcinogens not permitted in U.S. products, as well as high levels of aluminum and bacteria. In perfumes and colognes, even urine has been found.

The counterfeit products have become a real problem for the famous brands most likely to be ripped off.

In the same article , Gregg Marrazzo, senior vice president of Long Island cosmetic giant, Estée Lauder called cosmetics counterfeiting, a “global epidemic.”  

For years, fake makes of popular brands were usually found in flea markets, but because of supply chains and more sophisticated internet marketing of products, they are showing up in drug stores and third-party shipping sites like Amazon, despite these national companies best intentions to keep them off the shelves.

Many companies, such as Redken, only sell their products through authorized retailers, and not in drug stores, yet Redken shampoo can be found on some CVS store shelves and can be found in their advertisements.

Patricia Biancaniello, publisher and editor of Smithtown Matters had a recent experience and asked Redken for some guidance,

“We do not authorize the sale of our products in CVS… It is our business decision to sell our products only through distributors and salons by professionals who can offer advice on selecting the best products to meet your needs. These professionals also help to ensure that the customer receives fresh product that meets our quality standards. Unfortunately, some products are diverted outside our normal distribution channels. We take this diversion issue very seriously,” said the response from Redken.

How to know if you are buying the real product? It isn’t easy, but here are some things to look out for:

•  The packaging may look slightly different, including the colors or lettering. Unfortunately, counterfeiters have been getting better at this.
• A separate bar code sticker may be placed over the originally packaged bar code. 
• It smells differently than what you know about that particular product. The texture may also be off.
• There may not be typical information on the packaging, such as batch numbers.
• The price is either slightly or drastically lower.

Smithtown Matters was unable to reach CVS for comment

LTE: The Time Is Now For Sewers In Kings Park

Dear Editor:

The time is now for sewers in Kings Park!

Back in 2009, as part of the county’s ongoing efforts to protect our ground and surface waters and facilitate economic growth, Suffolk County expanded the Kings Park sewage treatment plant and shortly thereafter spent four million dollars on the engineering and design of the Kings Park Sewer District extension.

With a plan firmly in place, a treatment plant operating at half capacity and a sewer pipe already running across Main Street, the extension of the sewer district appeared to be well on its way, yet seemingly, little progress was being made in funding and advancing the expansion efforts. Then, in 2017, the State of New York made $20 million available for the project. Finally, it appeared the largest hurdles had been cleared, yet, four-plus years later, still no sewers.

I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised, since as part of the process, it took state lawmakers two years to approve the alienation of a piece of town park maintenance property the size of a two-car garage (that wasn’t even being used as park land) for a pump station critical to the sewer extension. However, even with all required legislative actions in place, the Bellone administration still failed to reach the finish line. During this time, the Town of Smithtown was able to put a sewer pipe in St. James and that community doesn’t even have a sewage treatment plant yet.

However, now, at long last, there is an opportunity to make sewers in Kings Park a reality through a vote by district residents. Only current sewer district residents will take part in the vote; property and business owners who will also be impacted by the expansion will not be able to participate in the voting. While the circumstance is far from ideal, it still represents a chance for this project to finally be realized.

This vote on December 14 has nothing to do with politics, it is a vote for the future of Kings Park and our environment and I will continue to work diligently to try to ensure the proposition’s passage. Then I will do the same for both Smithtown and St. James to ensure these downtowns get hooked into sewer systems as well. This investment in our downtowns is vitally important for our businesses as well as our home values.

Sincerely,
Rob Trotta, Suffolk County Legislator, 13thLD