SUFFOLK CLOSEUP - Sunrise Wind Project Key To "Transition To Clean Energy"

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

It would be the biggest offshore wind farm in New York State—more than 100 wind turbines starting 30 miles east of Montauk Point. It’s being called Sunrise Wind. 

A “cable bundle” containing two electric cables would be buried under the seabed and extend west from the turbines for 100 miles making landfall in the parking lot at Smith Point County Park in Shirley, and buried underground there. The cabling would then run for 17 miles, all underground, along William Floyd Parkway and, remaining underground, along other roads and then the Long Island Expressway, reaching the Long Island Power Authority substation just north of the LIE in Holtsville. 

Sunrise Wind would generate 880 megawatts of electricity and feed into the Long Island electric grid at Holtsville. The 880 megawatts would provide for 500,000 homes, nearly half of LIPA’s 1.1 million customer base. 

A “virtual open house” was held on the project last week.  Presentations were made and questions answered by representatives of the owners of the Sunrise Wind project, Denmark-based Orsted, the world’s largest developer of offshore wind farms, and Eversource, a product of a merger of New England utility companies that included Northeast Utilities.

Orsted, since acquiring Deepwater Wind, owns the Block Island Wind Farm, consisting of five turbines off Block Island—the first U.S. offshore wind farm, that went operational in 2016. Orsted and Eversource together own the proposed South Fork Wind Farm which is to have 15 wind turbines placed also in the Atlantic east of Montauk Point.

The number of wind turbines in the Sunrise Wind project would depend on the size of the turbines used. If eight megawatt turbines—common in new offshore wind farms—are used, the total would be 110. If the turbines would be smaller, then there would be more than 100 to produce 880 megawatts of electricity. The project is “permitted for up to” 122 turbines, a spokesperson told us. 

New York State last year awarded Orsted the contract to develop Sunrise Wind after a competitive bidding process. 

In the online “virtual open house,” representatives said the Sunrise Wind project would be a “catalyst” for clean energy.” Here are some of the other points made by the representatives:

It would be a key to the “transition to clean energy” in New York State and the goal of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the state to have “100 percent clean energy by 2040.” 

The turbines would be “barely visible” from any shore. There would be “no harmful emissions” and Sunrise Wind would “displace 2.1 million metric tons of carbon pollution” every year. The “cost to the average ratepayer” on Long Island would be “less than $1 per month” extra on her or his electric bill. “Construction work could begin as early as 2023”—after all necessary permits are obtained—and completed in 2024. There’d be a “host community benefit agreement” through which Orsted and Eversource would provide funds. Suffolk County Community College would become the “training center in Suffolk County” for offshore wind technology. It would be the “academic arm of the initiative.” Port Jefferson would become a “hub” for activities. Workers on the Sunrise Wind project would live in two-week shifts on a “service operational vessel.”

Orsted “brings unparalleled expertise” to the project with its 26 “successful offshore wind farms” and “1,500 turbines worldwide.”

Cables would be buried “the entire length of the route.” All the “construction areas” would be “fully restored.” There would be “minimal environmental impact.”

Orsted and Eversource welcome “stakeholder suggestions.” A slogan of “we listen, we learn, we adjust” was displayed. “We are totally committed to protect the environment…and work with commercial and recreational fishing interests.” 

As to why the South Fork Wind Farm and the Sunrise Wind project would have different landing points, the explanation was that the South Fork project would be sending DC electricity to Long Island and Sunrise sending AC. Also, there would be a difference in the voltage sent.

Offshore wind farms are able to harvest more wind power than onshore wind projects, said the representatives. Wind isn’t blocked and turbines can be larger, it was explained. 

They said Sunrise Wind would be a “game-changer,” the “first of many” similar “large-scale” U.S. offshore wind projects. Also, offshore wind is an excellent “complement” to the other major source of clean electricity—solar power. 

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 - Brookhaven National Lab Lawsuit 25 Years Still Unresolved

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

After nearly 25 years, a lawsuit charging that radioactive discharges from Brookhaven National Laboratory have caused cancers and other illnesses in people in nearby communities is moving forward—still slowly.

BNL after negotiations agreed to settlements of approximately $600,000 for the first two groups of plaintiffs, each with about 18 persons. However, last month a settlement was not agreed to involving the final group of 18 plaintiffs, and State Supreme Court Justice Joseph Farneti ordered that a trial be scheduled.

The class action lawsuit, begun in January 1996, charges that the “actions of the defendant were grossly, recklessly and wantonly negligent and were done with an utter disregard for the health, safety, well-being and rights of the plaintiffs.” 

It accuses BNL of “failure to observe accepted relevant industry standards in the use, storage and disposal of hazardous and toxic substances” and says BNL itself had been “improperly located” by the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission “on top of an underground aquifer which supplies drinking water to a large number of persons.”

Lead attorneys are A. Craig Purcell of Smithtown, a former president of the Suffolk County Bar Association, and Richard J. Lippes, whose Buffalo, New York law firm successfully represented residents of the Love Canal neighborhood near Niagara Falls, severely polluted by the Hooker Chemical Co.

The lawsuit’s title is Osarczuk, et. al, vs. Associated Universities. Barbara Osarczuk had lived in North Shirley, just outside the BNL boundaries, for 28 years and attributed her thyroid and breast cancer to BNL. 

Mr. Purcell complains that that BNL “delayed” movement of the lawsuit through the decades. “They appealed everything.”      

The lawsuit was originally brought for $1 billion in damages. A critical turning point came in an appeal by BNL lawyers to the Appellate Division of the New York State Supreme Court and it accepting BNL’s argument and ruling that “the nuclear radiation emitted by BNL did not exceed guidelines promulgated by the federal Nuclear Regulatory Commission.” 

That left the plaintiffs limited, said Mr. Purcell, to suing for “loss of enjoyment of life, diminution of property values and the cost of hooking up to public water.”

BNL was established in 1947 by the Atomic Energy Commission on an eight-square mile former Army base in Upton to do atomic research and develop civilian uses of nuclear technology. The AEC, however, was abolished by Congress in 1974 after criticism of it being in conflict-of-interest as being both a promoter and regulator of nuclear power, and BNL is now under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Department of Energy.

That it’s a source of contamination was confirmed in 1989 when it was designated by the federal government as a high-pollution Superfund site.    

The federal government in recent years began paying out millions of dollars to BNL employees in compensation for their getting cancer from BNL contamination, and also provided compensation to families of BNL workers who died from BNL-linked cancer. The payouts to the BNL workers and families has come under the federal Energy Employees Occupational Illness Compensation Program.

A book on radioactive pollution from BNL causing health impacts to residents of Shirley was published in 2008. Welcome to Shirley: A Memoir from an Atomic Town was authored by Kelly McMasters of Hofstra University, who grew up in Shirley. The book was the basis of the 2012 TV documentary Atomic States of America.

As Professor McMasters has related in an interview: “I do believe there was a watershed moment in 1960, after the first radioactive leaks occurred, that the federal government or the scientists themselves should have realized that Shirley was the fastest growing town in the county, with a population that doubled within ten years, and that the middle of one of the largest sole-source drinking water aquifers in the country was not the best place for a nuclear laboratory.”                  

Mr. Purcell declares that the lawsuit, “now, nearly 25 years later…has still not been resolved despite Judge Farneti’s urging that the interests of justice would be better served by a fair and final resolution.” BNL and its lawyers “continue to nickel and dime their neighbors to this very day.” He charges that BNL “continues to show almost no regard for its neighbors…Is this any way for a government-funded agency to treat its neighbors?”

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 - Election Day Results Show Clear-Cut Victories

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

Despite Democratic Party enrollment gains in Suffolk County—and Democrats now having an edge in enrollment here—many Republican candidates did well in last week’s election in Suffolk. 

According to the figures of the New York State Board of Elections, out of 1,124,295 registered voters in Suffolk, party enrollment as of November 1, 2020 was Democratic 390,128 and Republican 347,250. 

Compare that to 20 years ago. The board listed, as of November 1, 2000, 332,433 Democratic and 341,426 Republicans. Registered voters then totaled 873,074

Incidentally, regarding wording, my first newspaper editor in Suffolk, John A. Maher, when I started writing about politics here as a reporter back in 1962, emphasized that people enroll in a political party and register to vote. The words enroll or enrollment and register or registration are not interchangeable, he stressed. But this distinction has eroded and these days the words are often used interchangeably.

Well beyond nomenclature has come the flip between the Democratic and Republican Parties as to which has the most enrolled voters. The Democratic increase in Suffolk over the past 20 years: 57,695.

Meanwhile, the Working Families Party, only established in 1998, now has 4,176 Suffolk voters enrolled in it, and often endorses Democratic candidates. Other election factors: the Conservative Party has 22,729 members (about the same as the 22,420 it had in 2000) and GOP candidates often also run on the Conservative line. The Independence Party has 46,437 members in Suffolk now, up from 16,699 20 years ago. And there is a whopping number of what the state board lists as “Blank” or unaffiliated voters in Suffolk now: 308.974, a rise from 251,543 in 2000. These can easily be a “swing” factor in Suffolk County elections.

With most enrollees Democrats, does this give Democratic candidates in Suffolk an advantage? Don’t tell that to the Democratic candidates here who lost last week.

Clear-cut Republican victories include, in the lst Congressional District, three-term GOP incumbent Lee Zeldin defeating Democrat Nancy Goroff of Stony Brook. Also, Republican Anthony Palumbo of New Suffolk beat Democrat Laura Ahearn of Port Jefferson to fill the 6^th District State Senate seat of retiring Republican Kenneth LaValle of Port Jefferson. And, in the 2^nd State Assembly race for the seat now held by Mr. Palumbo, former Riverhead Town Board member Jodi Giglio of Baiting Hollow won over Democrat Laura M. Jens-Smith of Laurel. (Ms. Jens-Smith in 2017 became the first woman to be elected supervisor of Riverhead in its 226-year history.)

And there could be more GOP wins. As of this writing, among Democrats listed by the Suffolk County Board of Elections as also losing are former Babylon Town board member Jackie Gordon of Copiague in the 2^nd Congressional District; 14-termer Steven Englebright of Setauket, chair of the Assembly’s Committee on Environmental Conservation, in the 4^th Assembly District; and James Gaughran of Northport, former chairman of the Suffolk County Water Authority, in the 5^th Senatorial District.

But this is before the county board counts all absentee ballots. This wasn’t done the evening of Election Day along with the votes cast that day. The tabulation of absentee ballots, board officials have said, would only begin this week. There have been more than 140,000 absentee ballots cast in Suffolk this year, most due to the COVID-19 pandemic causing people to not want to go to polling places to vote. 

Most, according to the board, have come from voters enrolled as Democrats. The Suffolk Democratic leadership is confident that when these absentee ballots are counted, it will reverse the losing Democratic margins in many races. The Suffolk GOP leadership believes otherwise.

Also, in a clear-cut outcome, a majority of Suffolk voters said no to a ballot proposition that would have extended the terms of the 18 Suffolk County legislators from two to four years. A resolution passed by the legislature that facilitated the ballot proposition declared that the two-year term “impedes a legislator’s ability to adequately represent his or her constituents, especially when campaigning for re-election requires several months out of his or her second year in office.” And in Riverhead Town, a proposal to extend the town supervisor’s term from two to four years also was voted down. 

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 - Geoengineering And Global Warming

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

Geoengineering 

It’s a word created to describe altering the Earth and has mostly been applied to the climate crisis. The Royal Society of Great Britain, the oldest national scientific organization in the world (its roots go back to 1660) defines geoengineering as “the deliberate large-scale intervention in the Earth’s climate system, in order to moderate global warming.”

Geoengineering is being proposed widely these days.

For Suffolk, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has urged a massive steel and concrete structure which would close the mouth of Fire Island Inlet to prevent hurricane storm surges from inundating its south shore. 

The Corps has also proposed a six-mile long barrier between New Jersey and Breezy Point in Queens with swinging steel gates to protect Manhattan from a hurricane surge. But in February, the Trump administration—as The New York Times reported—“unexpectedly halted” that $119 billion, yes $119 billion, plan. President Trump called it “foolish,” said The Times. A City Hall spokesperson termed the cancellation “unacceptable” and “dangerous” calling on the federal government to “reverse course immediately.” The “Corps official in charge of the project” said “it is highly unusual for a Corps project to lose funding after more than three years of work at a cost of several million dollars.”

There’s the Venice geoengineering project.

In and near Venice, because of the climate crisis, waters have risen higher and higher. So, in 1966 engineers began to “draw up plans to build a barrier at sea to defend one of the world’s most picturesque yet fragile cities from the constant threat of high tides,” Reuters has noted. “But the project, known as Mose [for Moses and the parting of the Red Sea] has been plagued by the sort of problems that have come to characterize many Italian construction programs—corruption, cost overruns and prolonged delay.” There was a threefold increase in  cost to $6.1 billion.

“Floodgates in Venice Work in First Major Test,” was the headline last month in The Times. The Mose undertaking involves 78 steel barriers at three inlets. They had just been raised in the face of a particularly menacing tide. “Everything dry here,” tweeted Luigi Brugnaro, mayor of Venice. 

But the Moses scheme remains contested. In The Times article “Christiano Gasparetto, an architect and former provincial official who has long opposed the project” said, “With climate change, there’s a chance that the floodgates could be employed 150-180 days a year, becoming an almost fixed barrier and severing the [Venice] lagoon’s relations to the sea. If the lagoon is cut off from the sea for long periods, it dies, because the natural exchange of water stops, and all of its organic life risks decaying.” 

Last week, the PBS “Nova” series devoted an hour to many ambitious geoengineering concepts in a program titled “Can We Cool The Planet?”

Is a focus on trying to deal with the effects of global warming overshadowing getting at its cause? The climate crisis is largely caused by the burning of fossil fuels—oil, gas and coal—and the release of carbon dioxide that leads to a heat-up of the planet? Its causing glaciers to melt and seas to rise. This has resulted in unusually powerful hurricanes and in high numbers. Last week came Zeta, the World Meteorological Organization needing to reach to the Greek alphabet for the 27^th named storm of the hurricane season. The warming of seas has increased the heat in them on which hurricanes feed. And the climate crisis is also seen as being behind the massive wildfires of recent times. It has thrown nature out of whack world-wide. 

A full transition to energy sources led by solar and wind which don’t produce greenhouse gasses is required to challenge global warming—and the technology is here today to do that. 

We on Long Island with our many miles of coastline are especially vulnerable to the climate crisis and rising waters. There are the calls here—appeals that must be heeded—for “relocation” of structures in the most exposed, most vulnerable areas. But Long Island should also be a leader in challenging the cause—to be in the forefront of a transition from burning fossil fuels in cars and trucks and in the generation of electricity.

Some geoengineering schemes may work, at a massive cost, or they may not. But the cause of the climate crisis must be fully tackled. Otherwise, waters will continue to rise and other effects persist and worsen, and the Earth will move past a point of no return. Challenging the cause of global warming is an existential necessity.    

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 - Local Law To Prevent Reckless Biking Includes Impounding Bicycles

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

“Local Law to Prevent Reckless Biking in Suffolk County.”

That’s the title of a proposed law now before the Suffolk County Legislature.

Suffolk is not alone in this area in enacting such a law.

The county legislature in neighboring Nassau County voted unanimously last year for a measure involving “reckless riding” of bicycles and also e-scooters and skateboards. The office of Legislator John Ferretti, Jr., author of the Nassau measure, spoke of it addressing “a new trend that is occurring throughout Long Island where children are riding bikes and scooters recklessly, terrorizing drivers while doing wheelies and playing ‘chicken’ against traffic.” 

It allows for impounding of bicycles and a misdemeanor charge.

Complaining about the Nassau bill, the organization Long Island Streets which on its website, longislandstreets.org, says its mission is “advocating for safer streets for all people,” declared that the Nassau law is “not the answer to any problems.”

And in Suffolk County, the Village of Babylon, also last year, enacted a law permitting its code enforcement officers to confiscate bicycles from youths riding recklessly.  

At a public hearing, one Babylon resident said she encountered a group of about a dozen youths on bicycles blocking traffic, and riding head-on against traffic. She said that when she spoke to riders, they were rude, that they cursed at people who approached them. “This isn’t kids being kids,” she said, “this is risky behavior…They are children running head-on into a car.”

The Suffolk chapter of the New York Civil Liberties Union opposed the Babylon law holding it would violate riders’ due process. Long Island Streets complained saying that if Babylon officials “are genuinely concerned about traffic safety, they’d use a data-driven approach instead of listening to cranky residents who cannot understand why any person would want to do ‘bike tricks in public.’”

The proposed Suffolk law is sponsored by Legislator Rudy Sunderman and was originally prepared by Legislator Tom Muratore. Mr. Sunderman took it over after Mr. Muratore passed away recently. 

“This legislature finds that some people operating bicycles in Suffolk County are doing so in a manner that is dangerous to cars, pedestrians and the bicyclists themselves,” it declares. It continues saying “reckless bicycling has become a problem in Suffolk County which puts the safety of everyone on county roadways at risk.” It goes on that “there have been several instances of minors being seriously injured or killed in accidents associated with reckless bicycling here in Suffolk County in recent years.” Thus, “in order to prevent harm to the people operating bicycles and those around them rules must be put in place to ensure the safe operation of bicycles in Suffolk County.”

The measure requires, among other things, that “persons riding bicycles on a roadway shall ride not more than two abreast,” mandates that bicyclists have “at least one hand on the steering mechanism or handles,” prohibits “more than one person riding on a bicycle unless the bicycle is made for two or more,” makes illegal “trick riding, weaving, or zig-sagging…unless such irregular course is necessary for…safe operation.”

Penalties include a misdemeanor charge punishable by up to a $250 fine “or by imprisonment of no more than 15 days, or both, per infraction.”

Legislator Sunderman said he has been “looking at a few concerns brought up” and is open to hearing “any concerns” about the bill. The focus, he emphasized, “is safety.”

His chief-of-staff, Tim Rothang, stressed that the measure is not directed at recreational bicyclists but that Mr. Sunderman’s legislative office, and, previously Mr. Muratore’s office, received complaints about “large groups of teenagers on bikes” blocking traffic and otherwise acting recklessly.

There is a set of New York State rules covering bicycling. These include some of what’s in the Long Island measures and also regulations beyond them. The state rules ban bicyclists “clinging to vehicles” to move along. They say, “No person operating a bicycle shall carry any package, bundle, or article which prevents the driver from keeping at least one hand upon the handlebars.” They say no bicyclist shall “ride with his feet removed from the pedals.” They go on: “Every bicycle when in use during the period from one-half hour after sunset to one-half hour before sunrise shall be equipped with a lamp on the front which shall emit a white light visible during hours of darkness from a distance of at least five hundred feet.” 

Bicycling is regulated in New York State, and soon that could be more so in Suffolk. 

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.