SUFFOLK CLOSEUP : Sewers

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

Money is pouring in—large amounts of federal and state dollars—for sewer expansion in Suffolk County. The aim is to do sewering to offset the leaching of nitrogen into groundwater and protect water quality. 

However, what about water quantity?

Most, although not all, of the sewer expansion plans—that include western and central Suffolk and the East End—involve sending wastewater through outfall pipes into surrounding bays and also out into the Atlantic Ocean.

Suffolk’s biggest outfall pipe, extending 4.2 miles into the Atlantic from the county’s Bergen Point Wastewater Treatment Plant in West Babylon, is designed to discharge 30 million gallons a day of wastewater into the ocean. It would receive additional wastewater. There are smaller outfall pipes all over Suffolk. 

But outfall causes a depletion of the quantity of water in the aquifers on which Suffolk and the rest of Long Island depends, emphasizes Long Island naturalist John Turner. Mr. Turner is conservation policy advocate for the Seatuck Environmental Association in Islip and former director of Brookhaven Town’s Department of Environmental Protection. He was legislative director of the New York State Water Resource Commission. He has championed treatment and reuse of wastewater to help preserve the underground aquifers.

Sitting between the Atlantic Ocean, bays, and Long Island Sound, the aquifers below Long Island constitute its sole source of potable water, its reservoir. 

There is an interface between the fresh water of this reservoir and saltwater that surrounds us. Lowering the level of fresh water in the aquifers through outfall can — and has — resulted in saltwater intrusion and loss of potable water and the lowering and drying up of streams, rivers and lakes.

Saltwater intrusion is a large part of how Brooklyn and Queens on the western portion of Long Island lost their potable water supply years ago. They now must rely on the system of manmade reservoirs and pipes to bring water down from upstate.

           Mr. Turner speaks of “the sandy aquifers that underlie Long Island. This layered system of water-saturated sand, silt, gravel and clay sits atop a basement of bedrock…In the middle of Suffolk County, the aquifers, replenished only by rain and snowmelt, are about 1,000 feet deep, while they are shallower in Nassau County. These tiered sets of aquifers…are our drinking water supply and the sole source for meeting all our water needs.”

“Imagine,” he says, this reservoir “to be a balloon of a certain size and due to pumping of water and coastal discharge of the wastewater the size of the balloon lessens. Some significant things happen. First, as the water table drops, the top of the balloon, the surface water bodies such as streams, lakes and rivers either dry up or are significantly diminished. Second, the salty water surrounding the island pushes landward in a process known as saltwater intrusion, contaminating the edges of the aquifer.”

Neighboring Nassau County has been hit by a lowering of its aquifers because 85 percent of the county is sewered and all its sewage treatment plants rely on outfall of wastewater into surrounding waterways. In Nassau, lakes, ponds and streams which are the “uppermost expression of the aquifer system, have dropped considerably.” Hempstead Lake “is Hempstead Pond,” relates Mr. Turner. Some 25 percent of Suffolk is presently sewered.

A model in Suffolk for reuse of wastewater and aquifer replenishment arrived in 2016 when the Riverhead Sewage Treatment Plant began sending treated effluent to the county’s adjoining Indian Island Golf Course. This has meant nitrogen-laden wastewater “no longer finding its way into the marine environment” causing algae blooms and other impacts. 

There is also a drive in Suffolk for conversions of the cesspools used in 75 percent of residences to “Innovative/Advanced Treatment Systems,” but at the current rate it will take “many decades,” says Mr. Turner, to convert a substantial number. “Water reuse can help reduce nitrogen inputs in a much shorter time frame.”

There’s national action on water reuse. An extensive article this month on the website Truthout.org details how wastewater is being turned “into a resource” in the U.S. It points to Orange County in California, “a world leader in water reuse” using “advanced treatment” that also “saves massively on the cost of pumping Colorado River water from hundreds of miles away.” And the piece includes Las Vegas, Nevada with “a 12-mile-long channel that acts as the ‘kidneys’ of the environment, cleaning the water that runs through…by filtering out any harmful residues on its way back to Lake Mead.”

What about Suffolk County moving more aggressively on reuse?

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: Horseshoe Crabs "Critical To Humanity"

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman   

For decades, Suffolk County resident John T. Tanacredi has been a crusader for the survival of horseshoe crabs. He is a world expert on the creatures. 

He was speaking last week before Long Island Metro Business Action about the plight of horseshoe crabs—concerned about their potential extinction after 455 million years. They predate dinosaurs, he noted, by more than 200 million years.

Limulus polyphemus (photo wikipedia)And they could be “on the cusp of going over the cliff of evolutionary extinction,” Dr. Tanacredi told the business group in a Zoom presentation Friday. 

Beyond being an ancient component of the natural environment, horseshoe crabs are “critical to humanity—notably for the health of people, he emphasized. Indeed, the title of his talk was “Humanity & the Horseshoe Crab.” They have been indispensable in the testing of vaccinations for COVID-19, he stressed.  “All these inoculations need to be batch sampled,” he said.

It’s the “true blue blood” of the horseshoe crab that’s key. (Its blue color derived from its copper base rather than the iron that is at the foundation of human blood, he noted.) 

The blue blood of the horseshoe crab is universally utilized for the detection of bacterial endotoxins in medical applications.

The crabs are “harvested” for medical use, bled, the blood collected—and then they are “returned to the environment,” with most of them surviving, he said.

But the horseshoe crab has been facing destruction of its habitat. “Their main habitat…is the fragile edge we call the barrier beaches,” he said. With construction and other human activities on barrier beaches, this shoreline habitat—to which they return somehow to breed in the exact location where they had been born—is being increasingly lost. 

Dr. Tanacredi told of as a boy spending summers on beaches in Babylon. “There were tons of eel grass and tons of horseshoe crabs then.” Now? No horseshoe crabs, he said. “Nothing!”

And then there is the use of horseshoe crabs for bait—for catching conch and eel—even though there are “substitute baits,” he said. In the United States, 600,000 horseshoe crabs are harvested every year “and bled” for medical use, but there is an equal number “harvested for bait,” he said. New York State, he said, allows 150,000 horseshoe crabs to be taken annually for bait.

And horseshoe crabs are not all over the U.S. but limited to the East Coast from Maine to Florida. Indeed, there are “only four species of horseshoe crabs on Earth.” The four species are on the U.S. East Coast; in the “southern portion of Japan; a portion of Korea; and the southern portion of Taiwan.” Adding further to the threat of horseshoe crab survival: they have become a food delicacy in Asia.

Dr. Tanacredi proposed last week that “we declare every beach that has horseshoe crabs off-limits—like we do for piping plovers.” And he said we should “bar bait collection” of them. 

A Melville resident, Dr. Tanacredi is director of the Center for Environmental Research and Coastal Oceans Monitoring (CERCOM) of Molloy College of Rockville Centre. CERCOM is located in West Sayville. He is a full professor of Earth and Environmental Studies at Molloy. Before that, for 13 years, he was a professor and chairman of the Earth Marine Sciences Department at Dowling College in Oakdale, which closed down in 2016—itself undergoing extinction.

Dr. Tanacredi holds a doctorate in environmental health engineering from NYU-Polytechnic Institute and has had 50 peer-reviewed scientific papers published and has authored five books. He is an editor of the book Biology and Conservation of Horseshoe Crabs. 

Dr. Tanacredi’s background also includes 24 years as a coastal research ecologist for the National Park Service. He was an environmental impact analyst for the U.S. Coast Guard. For 12 years he was deputy director of the Aquatic Research and Environmental Assessment Center at Brooklyn College. And he has been chairman of the New York Marine Sciences Consortium and also the Suffolk County Wetlands Management Work Group.

Horseshoe crabs, despite their name, are not crabs but more closely related to spiders and scorpions. They “survived five mass extinction events” that have occurred on Earth through their hundreds of millions of years of existence, said Dr. Tanacredi. But what now of their future?

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. 

Golf News From Smithtown Landing Men's Golf Association

By Jerry Gentile

On May 15-16, The Landing Cup (a two-man team event) was completed this past weekend. The sunny weather conditions made for good golf.

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The Championship Flight was won by two perennial contenders for the Club Championship, Ray Hubbs and Lefty Pat McQuade.

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The A Flight was won by Robert Brickley and Glen Downing (148) who continues to be playing phenomenal golf.

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The B Flight was won by two colorful players in Rob Martin and Ken Wolf also with a fine net (148). They both have fine swings.

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C Flight was won by Ron Hottinger (Still swinging well) and (Ageless) Dick Stevens with a super (147).

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D Flight was won by a Starke but this time it was Jim Starke with a Blind draw and an excellent (146) net total.

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Low Gross went to Ed Haliasz (75) and Low Net to SLMGA President Saul Rosenthal (67).

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Kudos go out to Vin Viggiano, Robert Brickley, Chris Shannon, Saul Rosenthal and The true ageless Octogenarian Bob Popko who has been a great athlete and competitor for many years and a joy to play with. A “Tip of the Hat” to him. They all qualified for the Masters Tournament. Another super “well done” goes to Tom McCrave for his Eagle on #6. Please do not hesitate to go to our website for SLMGA information.

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See you at The William Quinn Memorial Tournament. Best, JG PR SLMGA Board Member

Suffolk Closeup: Bridget Flemming Democratic Candidate For Congress

SUFF0LK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

Legislator Bridget FlemmingBy launching a campaign for the U.S. House of Representatives this month, Suffolk County Legislator Bridget Fleming is moving early and strongly to get the Democratic nomination to run next year. In recent years Democratic primary battles have diverted Democratic fundraising and complicated the party’s runs in the lst Congressional District.

Ms. Fleming is clearly likely to get the Democratic Party’s designation.

At a press conference on May 3 at which she announced running for the seat held since 2015 by Republican Lee Zeldin, Ms. Fleming was flanked by Suffolk Democratic Chair Rich Schaffer; the presiding officer of the Suffolk Legislature Rob Calarco; a bevy of town Democratic leaders; and John Durso, president of Local 338 of the Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union.

If Ms. Fleming ends up winning the lst C.D. post, she would be the first woman to represent Suffolk County in the U.S. House of Representatives since the seat was established and held in 1789 by Declaration of Independence signer William Floyd of Mastic.

If Ms. Fleming, a Noyac resident, wins, she as an East Ender will follow Tim Bishop, a Southampton Democrat, who held the seat from 2003 to 2015 and, earlier, Otis Pike, a Riverhead Democrat, who held it from 1961until his retirement in 1979.

Might gender figure in her run? Women have made gains in being elected to the House. Currently, of its 435 members, some 118 are women. But that’s a minority—yet more than 50 years ago when there were just 13 female House members, or 30 years ago when there were but 19. The numbers have increased in the last several years going to 72 in 2007.

The two women who ran for House seats from Suffolk last year—Nancy Goroff in the lst C.D. and Jackie Gordon in the neighboring 2^nd C.D., both Democrats—were defeated. The lst C.D. covers the five East End towns, all of Brookhaven, most of Smithtown and part of Islip. 

Also, being an East Ender could be a liability as the Brookhaven town is the political gorilla in the lst C.D. political room—the largest town in area of New York State’s 932 towns (bigger than all of Nassau County) and the second most populous town (after Hempstead) in New York State. In Suffolk, many voters traditionally vote based on their geography.

Mr. Zeldin is from Shirley in Brookhaven town where he has done well. It seems quite probable at this point that he will get the Republican designation to run for governor of New York next year, also announcing early for that run. In recent weeks he has gotten the endorsement of many Republican county committees. His run for governor would open the lst C.D. seat. Would the GOP pick another Brookhaven resident to run in his stead? That is likely.

However, Ms. Fleming’s county legislative district encompasses not only Southampton, East Hampton and Shelter Island towns but also includes a section of southeastern Brookhaven—as far as Eastport to the west. She thus has had visibility in that portion of Brookhaven.

Meanwhile, she will be on the ballot this year for re-election to the legislature.

She has an exceptional public record. Before moving to Noyac in 2001 with her husband, Bob, she was for nearly a decade an assistant DA in Manhattan. She served as a member of its Trial Bureau and also Sex Crimes Prosecution Unit and then was chief of the unit that tackled fraud in public programs. She was first elected to the Southampton Town Board in 2010 and won a seat on the Suffolk Legislature in 2015. Last year, she was edged out of being the Democratic candidate in the lst C.D. as result of a three-way Democratic primary won by Ms. Goroff.

“For too long our district has been represented by someone who cared more about his job than he did about those of his constituents, and someone who cared more about his own political future than he did about our future generations,” Ms. Fleming said in her announcement. “That changes the day I’m elected to Congress and that’s why I’m running.”

Mr. Schaffer said: “Bridget Fleming is the champion Long Island families need fighting for them in Congress in this critical moment in our nation’s history. As a tough-as-nails prosecutor, a town councilwoman, and a county legislator, Bridget has the backbone to stand up to both parties in Washington to deliver tax relief for our middle-class communities in Suffolk County.”

Ms. Fleming commented: “This is going to be an expensive race.” Indeed, these days millions of dollars are spent in campaigns for seats in the House. But, she says, it is a “flippable district,” yet a “formidable challenge.”

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: Full Circle For Suffolk County Democratic Chair Rich Schaffer

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman 

“I’ve been doing this since I was 12,” Suffolk County Democratic Chair Rich Schaffer was saying the other day about his involvement in Suffolk politics.

Now 57 years old, Mr. Schaffer has been the Suffolk Democratic chair since 2000. As county Democratic leader, “I especially love the generational stuff—getting young people into politics,” he said. It’s kind of full-circle for Rich. 

He’s a former member of the Suffolk County Legislature—elected to it at but age 22. On the legislature he charted an independent course—indeed, informed independence has been a hallmark of Mr. Schaffer’s route in Suffolk politics and government.

He’s been Babylon Town supervisor for more than 18 years. After two series of terms, he is the longest-serving supervisor in Babylon history. And this year he’s running for re-election. 

“I’m a homebody, most comfortable staying local,” says Mr. Schaffer of North Babylon. “I love doing the supervisor’s job—I kind of love doing both, being supervisor and county Democratic chair.”

And, also, he is chair of the Suffolk County Supervisor’s Association,

I’ve known Rich for decades. He’s always been—and still is—a self-effacing, open and available guy. For example, he lists not only his office phone but his cell phone number on the Town of Babylon website for constituents to call.

How many government officials do that!

He was speaking the other day by Zoom to the Suffolk-based group Reachout and Rebuild, “a grassroots group of activists,” it describes itself. Starting by explaining how he began in Suffolk politics at 12, he said it was because “Tom Downey’s brother [Jeffrey] and I were good friends.” Mr. Downey had gone on to be elected to the House of Representatives after a stint as a Suffolk County legislator. 

Mr. Schaffer subsequently worked for Babylon Town Supervisor Tom Fallon and the town’s deputy supervisor, Pat Halpin, who became supervisor, and town board member Sondra Bachety, who became a county legislator and the first woman presiding officer of the legislature. 

Mr. Schaffer graduated as a political science major from SUNY Albany—where he further learned applied politics as its student association president. He attended Brooklyn Law School. But then “in the middle of law school” he was asked to run for the Suffolk Legislature.

And he won in 1987—a victory that led to his losing his law school scholarship, he noted. He had to finish up as an evening student and thus was not entitled to a scholarship.

On the legislature, his independent bent included working closely with Legislator Fred W. Thiele, Jr. of Sag Harbor, then a Republican, both environmentally and reform-minded. 

This independent quality continues. For example, although Steve Bellone is the Democrat currently in Suffolk government’s top county job, county executive, Mr. Schaffer has firmly broken with him. This has included in recent times Mr. Schaffer corresponding with other Democratic chairs throughout New York warning them about Mr. Bellone who is seeking the Democratic gubernatorial nomination. He’s told them that Mr. Bellone is “not statewide candidate material.”

Rich left the county legislature in 1992 to be Babylon supervisor through 2001 and returned as supervisor in 2011. In recent elections he’s received 70 percent of the vote.

He sees Suffolk as a “purple” county with Donald Trump winning here in 2020 by only 232 votes compared to 51,440 in 2016, and Democrats having successes in a variety of contests over the years. He also notes changing demographics are advantageous to Democrats.

His efforts to get young people “more involved” in the Democratic Party includes promoting “Young Democrats” clubs and getting young people on the executive board of the Suffolk Democratic Committee. 

He’s encouraged minority candidates. Under his leadership, Errol Toulon, now Suffolk sheriff, became the first African-American in a countywide elected post, and DuWayne Gregory, the first African-American to be presiding officer of the legislature.

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.