SUFFOLK CLOSEUP: Concerns About Suffolk's Water Table Are Real

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

A just-released 83-page hydrology report done by the U.S. Geological Survey in cooperation with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation ignores the proverbial “elephant in the room” when it comes to saltwater intrusion in the groundwater to Suffolk County’s west.

A major cause in Nassau County of saltwater intrusion and the lowering of its water table—the freshwater aquifers below ground—has been its sewers which discharge effluent into the ocean and surrounding bays and other coastal waters.

That’s the key reason that John Turner, senior conservation policy advocate at Islip-based Seatuck Environmental Association, has long pointed to as to why in Nassau—which is 85% sewered—lakes, ponds and streams, the “uppermost expression of the aquifer system,” have lowered and there has been saltwater intrusion in the aquifers on which Nassau depends as its “sole source” of potable water. Hempstead Lake, he notes for example, now “is Hempstead Pond.”

All of Nassau County’s sewage treatment plants discharge their effluent rather than, as Turner and Seatuck have been in the forefront in calling for, recharging highly treated wastewater back into the underground water table. 

Says Turner, former legislative director of the New York State Water Resource Commission, of the USGS-DEC report: “There’s no mentioning of sewering and ocean or coastal water discharge. They really just focus on the phenomenon itself and discuss the magnitude of saltwater intrusion and the trend, but they don’t really explain, discuss the causes.”

“But clearly a major reason for the saltwater intrusion is because of the diminishment in the size of the freshwater aquifer. You have less freshwater and the saltwater pinches in.”

“And so,” says Turner, “Nassau County adopting a policy of extensive sewering with a decision to dump the water along the coast is the reason why saltwater intrusion is occurring even though they don’t mention it in their study.”

As to why the role of sewage treatment plants in Nassau is not included in the report, telephone calls made to the USGS were not returned. Initially, DEC emailed: “Unfortunately, we are unable to facilitate an interview at this time.” However, when I noted that I would have a focus in my column about the report ignoring the “elephant in the room”—Nassau’s sewage treatment plants discharging effluent—DEC informed me:  

“Thank you for the additional information and the chance to respond. Please note that Phase 1 focused on the aquifer system beneath Kings, Queens, and Nassau counties and provides valuable information about how the aquifer reacts under various scenarios, including sea level rise, drought, pumping, and more….DEC anticipates more detailed analysis of the phase 1 scenario results and future phase 2 and 3 results will lead to more understanding of areas and issues of concern. DEC will use this tool to predict the outcomes of various water withdrawal management strategies. Based on current and future model scenario outcomes, DEC will work with partners to develop policies and best management practices to protect Long Island’s groundwater resources.”

For Suffolk, the sewage treatment plant omission is very important, for on Election Day in November there will be a referendum raising the current county’s sales tax of 8.625% by 1/8^th of a cent to raise money for sewers and high-tech septic systems. If the referendum passes, a fund would be set up and it is estimated that $3 billion to $4 billion would be raised in coming decades, half for sewering, half for the high-tech Innovative/Advanced septic systems.

But will these sewers be like those operating in Nassau, discharging effluent into the ocean, surrounding bays and other coastal waters—and putting our water table in jeopardy, causing saltwater intrusion in our sole source of potable water, too?

Suffolk County is 25% sewered and many of the sewage treatment plants here also discharge effluent. Indeed, the largest sewage treatment plant in Suffolk County is the Bergen Point Wastewater Treatment Plant in West Babylon built to dump 30 million gallons of wastewater a day through an outfall pipe into the Atlantic Ocean.

In doing investigative reporting for the daily Long Island Press back when this plant was built 50 years ago, I wrote articles in which opponents of it warned of impacts to the water table in western Suffolk by its discharging of wastewater. Decades have gone by and I am glad to say that Suffolk County now has a county executive very concerned about this. Recently, Turner and Enrico Nardone, executive director of Seatuck, met with that county executive—Ed Romaine—along with top members of his new administration.

Romaine as a county legislator and Brookhaven Town supervisor, was critical of discharge of wastewater from sewage treatment plants and instead was for recharging highly treated wastewater back into the underground water table. He continued that at the meeting. And at it he directed that the county explore sending effluent from the Bergen Point plant to irrigate the adjacent county-owned Bergen Point Golf Course. There is precedent. In 2016, the “Riverhead reuse project” began sending wastewater from the Riverhead Sewage Treatment Plant to irrigate the nearby Indian Island County Golf Course. 

The USGS-DEC report is to be followed next year by one about Suffolk alone. It must address the consequences in Suffolk County of dumping rather than reusing wastewater.

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: Rat Poison Impacts All Wild Life Even Eagles

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

 This spring, wildlife biologist Mike Bottini was working on his ongoing survey of the presence of river otters on Long Island when at Montauk County Park beneath an eagle’s nest he came upon a dead adult bald eagle. 

“The carcass was perfectly intact with no scavenger marks,” relates Bottini. It had likely
“perished earlier that day.” 

He sent it for examination by the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation’s Wildlife Pathology Unit. Recently, he received the necropsy report. (Necropsy is a post-mortem examination of an animal’s body to determine the cause of death, similar to an autopsy performed on humans.)

The report, he noted, “found extensive hemorrhaging and high levels of brodifacoum, an anticoagulant [blood thinning] rodenticide. Brodifacoum is one of several ‘second generation’ anticoagulant rodenticides.”

In other words, the eagle had died from a pesticide used to kill rodents and which is commonly referred to as “rat poison.” However, squirrels, woodchucks, chipmunks and other animals also will die as a result of consuming a rodenticide. 

A main characteristic of a “second generation” rodenticide, explains Bottini, is that the poisoned animal does “not die immediately. The poison may take several days to kill the animal. During that time the animal is not behaving normally and is an easy target for rodent predators: owls, hawks, foxes and eagles.” 

“I’ve since learned that the attempt by the EPA to regulate the use of these rodenticides was opposed by the manufacturers of these poisons, and the resulting regulations imposed were a compromise that is ineffective in addressing the problem,” Bottini wrote me.

The situation goes well beyond that dead eagle in Montauk.

Mike sent me a variety of scientific reports, and I Googled others.

Last week, I began a course that I have been teaching for decades at the State University of New York at Old Westbury, Environmental Journalism. I start it by having the students read and write essays on Silent Spring by Rachel Carson. The disclosures in that landmark 1962 book resulted in a ban on the use of DDT and the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency, the EPA. 

However, there are still many pesticides and other chemical poisons still in use that have deadly impacts on not only what they are designed to kill but, like DDT, broad consequences.

In doing research that resulted in Silent Spring, Carson made use of testimony in a lawsuit brought against the Suffolk County Mosquito Control Commission for its wanton spraying of DDT here. DDT almost made extinct Long Island’s signature bird, the osprey, by causing the shells of its eggs to be so thin that when an osprey sat on them they shattered. 

Clearly, rodenticides are also having broad impacts far and wide.

For example, research at Tufts University in Massachusetts has found that “100% of tested red-tailed hawks at Tufts Wildlife Clinic to be exposed to anticoagulant rodenticides.” Tufts reported: “Maureen Murray, director of Tufts Wildlife Center and clinical associate professor at Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine has been studying exposure in birds of prey for over a decade. Exposure of rodenticides occur when people use these chemicals to kill unwanted pests. Mice or rats, or possibly other animals, eat the poison, and then the birds eat the poisoned prey.”

Or as a study reported in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, rodenticide exposure in fishers is extensive “across the northeastern United States,” and not only are these weasel-like mammals affected but “studies in parts of Europe, New Zealand and North Aerica indicate uptake of anticoagulant rodenticides by predatory mammals to be widespread and common.”

Research at the University of California Davis looked at dead fishers, northern spotted owls and also bobcats with anticoagulant rodenticides in their systems. A report on this begins: “Rodents often get a bad rap—and for good reason. They leave droppings in our homes and attics that may spread disease. They chew through electrical wire….They raid tomato gardens and fruit trees. That’s why people use rodenticide to poison them. The problem is that anticoagulant rodenticides have a ripple effect in the environment. Not only do they kill mice and rats, they also result in death or serious disease of…other wildlife that feed on the rodents or come into direct contact with the poison.”

As a study in Environmental Chemistry Letters reported, rodenticides are also having an impact “in the aquatic environment”—on fish.  And “anticoagulants accumulating in aquatic wildlife are likely to be transferred in the food chain, causing potentially serious consequences for the health of wildlife and humans alike.”

As to what to do about mice and rats, Bottini, a resident of Springs in East Hampton and a wildlife biologist at Islip-based Seatuck Environmental Association, suggests mouse traps.

“In my experience, the most effective non-toxic method of reducing mouse and rat numbers is the old-fashioned trap,” says Mike.

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: Dr. Georgette Grier-Key Suffolk's Renaissance Woman

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

She’s a renaissance woman in Suffolk County and the broader region.

Dr. Georgette Grier-Key is the president of the Brookhaven Town branch of the NAACP; executive director and chief curator of the Eastville Community Historical Society of Sag Harbor; professor at the City University of New York’s Medgar Evers College; president of the Museum Association of New York; vice president of the Preservation League of New York State; a commissioner of the New York State 250^th Commemoration Commission; special projects coordinator at the Southampton African American Museum; and the list goes on and on.

She identifies herself as “an activist” dedicated to “advocating for voices not often heard.” A title on her website: “Preserve and Protect the Past for the Future.”

On it under “Research Interests,” she says: “Reconstructing the Black experience, the historic life and patterns of Africa Diasporas of North America (particularly of Long Island, New York), with a focus on pre through post Northern slavery and Free Black communes.”

As Guild Hall in East Hampton—an institution at which she has worked along with the Huntington Arts Council and Parrish Art Museum in Southampton—said in its description of Dr. Grier-Key: “She is one of the most outspoken advocates for the preservation and celebration of Long Island history with an emphasis on African American, Native American and mixed-heritage historical reconstruction.”

At 49 years old, Dr. Grier-Key has been—and is—deeply involved in so many activities as an historian, educator, curator, administrator, artist, scholar, and yes, an activist. 

Earlier this summer, Dr. Grier-Key, who resides in Bellport, was honored at a benefit gala at Bay Street Theatre in Sag Harbor. Tracy Mitchell, the theatre’s executive director, commented that she is one of the “unseen heroes that really make our community wonderful.”

Dr. Grier-Key was raised in Uniondale in Nassau County. A key influence was her maternal grandfather, Rev. Dr. Dodenhuff Green, who founded Christ Temple Church of God in Christ in Uniondale and became an underbishop with 145 Black churches under his jurisdiction—from Brooklyn to the East End. With her grandfather, she would travel and get to know the island beyond Uniondale.

Her father, George W. Grier, is an electronics engineer who worked at Grumman and other industries on Long Island. He is a proud Army veteran, a former military police officer.

Dr. Grier-Key attended Nassau County Community College from which she 

received an Associate Degree in marketing, and then went to the State University of New York at Old Westbury.

I’ve been a journalism professor for 46 years at SUNY Old Westbury which for its nearly 60 years has been committed to diversity and social justice “I loved it,” she told me last week about going to SUNY Old Westbury. “I had a great experience.” She graduated in 2002 with a Bachelor’s Degree in Visual Arts with a focus on electronic media. On the 50^th anniversary of the school’s founding, she was cited by it as among 50 people of distinction. 

She went on to the Ruth S. Ammon School of Education at Adelphi University in Garden City and received a Master’s in Education with a concentration on art education. She then attended Dowling College in Oakdale from which she received a doctorate in arts education.

At CUNY Medgar Evers College Dr. Grier-Key teaches history courses including African American History, Women Leaders in the African American Civil Rights Movement in the U.S., and History of the United States.

“Long Island is still highly segregated,” she was saying last week, and there is a great need to “do something about it.” She cited a variety of studies including those of the Syosset-based organization Erase Racism that determined that the island is among the “most segregated” areas in the United States, notably in housing patterns.

As to becoming executive director and chief curator of Eastville Community Historical Society, Dr. Grier-Key relates that she joined it in 2009 at the suggestion of her godmother, Audrey Gaul, who had a home in Azurest. In 2011 she accepted the executive director and chief curator positions. Azurest is part of the historic SANS (Sag Harbor Hills, Azurest, and Ninevah Subdivisions) district . “I work,” she has said, “to protect and preserve what was a haven for 19^th century African American and Native American artists like Olivia Ward Bush Banks….and Nathan Cuffee, a Native American author who co-wrote Lord of the Soil. Part of my job is to highlight their art but also protect it and teach it. How do we fit their stories into the story of the East End and how do we continue to add to that story thinking of [contemporary] artists like Stanford Biggers and [author] Colson Whitehead is our challenge.”

In recent days, the Eastville Community Historical Society joined with the Southampton African American Museum and Montauk Historical Society in the visit to Montauk of a replica of the slave ship Amistad, and a commemoration, tour and celebration. Some 49 enslaved Africans rose against their captors in 1839 and took control of the Amistad. It was seized by a Navy ship off Montauk. After a protracted legal battle, the U.S. Supreme Court freed the Amistad Africans. 

This is the kind of history Dr. Grier-Key thinks people need to know. 

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 : 1st CD Voters Have A Record Of Swinging Politically

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

Primaries on June 25^th will set who will run for the House of Representatives in Suffolk’s lst Congressional District. The district includes Smithtown, the northern half of Brookhaven, much of Huntington and the five East End towns. 

 It’s a “swing” district, one that could go Democrat or Republican, unusual these days for a House district most of which are dominated by voters of one party due to politically manipulated reapportionment.

I’ve covered races in the lst C.D. since becoming a journalist in Suffolk in 1962 when Otis G. Pike held the seat. He typified the independence of district voters. When I started, my editor at the Babylon Town Leader explained that on the East End, town Democratic committees considered themselves “Wilsonian Democrats.” They “reject the New Deal” of Franklin D. Roosevelt, John A. Maher said, and were still on the political path of President Woodrow Wilson.

But Pike, from the East End, from Riverhead, saw himself as a “Stevensonian Democrat”—an admirer of liberal Adlai Stevenson. Yet, for nearly two decades he won over and over again in the lst C.D. before retiring from the House in 1979.

Pike was followed by William Carney, a Conservative Party member, a Suffolk County legislator from Hauppauge who got the Republican nod in the lst C.D. in a deal in 1978 by which the Conservative Party endorsed GOPer Perry Duryea of Montauk for governor that year. 

Carney was defeated for re-election in 1986 largely because of his ardent support of the then under-construction Shoreham nuclear power plant. He then took a job as a lobbyist for the nuclear power industry. Still, although a staunch conservative, Carney had previously been re-elected three times in the lst C.D. 

Yes, voters in the lst C.D. have a record of swinging politically.

The incumbent now in the lst C.D., in his first term, is Republican Nick LaLota of Amityville, a former chief of staff of the Suffolk County Legislature and an ex-commissioner of the Suffolk County Board of Elections. 

George Santos has announced he will take on LaLota in the June GOP primary. He came to the presidential “State of the Union” address this month and at the same time proclaimed on X that he was running against LaLota to be the Republican candidate in the lst C.D. The preposterous Santos was expelled from the House by an overwhelming vote of its members last year following an investigation by its Ethics Committee which found he broke federal laws, stole from his campaign and delivered a “constant series of lies” to voters and donors. He faces trial in U.S. District Court in Central Islip in September on a 23 felony count indictment. He said he will run against LaLota because LaLota was among the “empty suits” in the House kicking him out.

LaLota responded saying that “to hold a pathological liar who stole an election accountable, I led the charge to expel George Santos. If finishing the job requires beating him in a primary, count me in.”

However, to be eligible to run in the primary to be the GOP candidate in the lst C.D., some 1,250 signatures of enrolled Republicans in it are required. It’s very doubtful that Santos, who had represented the 3^rd C.D. then made up of Nassau County and part of Queens, and with his last known address in Queens, can collect that number of signatures.

Santos has just announced, again on X, that he won’t seek the GOP line to run in the primary but will run in the general election for the lst C.D. position as an independent. However, to get on the general election ballot as an independent would, according to the Suffolk County Board of Elections, require the signatures of 3,500 voters in the lst C.D. — yet another Santos fantasy.

On the Democratic side, primary rivals this year for the lst C.D. position are John Avlon of Sag Harbor, an author and CNN analyst and anchor who left CNN to run for it, and Nancy Goroff, a retired Stony Brook University chemistry professor who lives in Stony Brook.

Avlon has been endorsed by Democratic figures including State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele, Jr. of Sag Harbor; Southampton Councilman Tommy John Schiavoni; Suffolk Legislator Ann Welker; and former Southampton Town Supervisor Jay Schneiderman, who all addressed well over 100 people at a recent kick-off in Sag Harbor of his campaign. Southampton Town Democratic Chair Gordon Herr and East Hampton Town Democratic Chair Anna Skrenton, whose town committees have endorsed Avlon, spoke as well.

Thiele declared that this is “the most important election in our lifetime.” Avlon, he said, “listens, he communicates, he understands how politics works and he can win.”

Avlon said this year’s election is “about freedom and democracy in a fundamental way like we’ve never faced.” He described former President Donald Trump who “praises dictators at every stop” as a threat to democracy. Earlier, Avlon and Goroff debated in East Hampton with both scoring LaLota and Trump. 

Goroff has experience running in the lst C.D. having been the Democratic candidate in 2020 against then incumbent Representative Lee Zeldin, a Shirley Republican, but losing by 10 percent.
LaLota has affirmed his wanting Trump to regain the presidency saying on X that “as a Navy veteran…I understand America needs a Commander-in-Chief who will keep us safe.”

Will LaLota’s advocacy of Trump help or hurt him? Voters in the lst C.D. in 2016 balloted 54 percent for Republican Trump and 42 percent for Democrat Hillary Clinton for president, and in 2020 some 51 percent went for Trump and 47 percent for Democrat Joe Biden. Yet in 2012 they went 50 percent for Democrat Barack Obama and 49 percent for Republican Mitt Romney, and in 2008 52 percent for Obama and 48 percent for Republican John McCain. In 2004 both Republican George W. Bush and Democrat John Kerry received 49 percent. And in 2000 some 52 percent of voters balloted for Democrat Al Gore and 44 percent for Bush in the independent-minded lst C.D. 

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 : NYS's Bail Reform

By Karl Grossman

My first beat as a reporter at the daily Long Island Press was covering cops-and-courts in Suffolk County. Back then, the bail issue was a vexing one in Suffolk—as it is today here and elsewhere in New York State, notably in the wake of what is known as “reform” of the bail system in the state.

It was obvious back in the middle 1960s that if a person had the money, or property to put up as security, he or she was released on bail. If not, the person was sent to jail—to wait, sometimes for months, to be tried. More than a few defendants who ended up being judged innocent thus served jail time anyway. 

There has been great controversy in recent weeks over the release in Suffolk—without bail—of four suspects arrested in connection with human body parts found strewn in parks on Long Island including in Babylon. The charges were: concealment of a human corpse, tampering with physical evidence and hindering prosecution, all felonies.

Suffolk District Attorney Ray Tierney issued a press release on March 6th declaring: “It is our understanding that the Suffolk County Police Department is still investigating these murders. Unfortunately, due to ‘Bail Reform’ passed by the New York State Legislature in 2019, charges relating to the mutilation and disposal of murdered corpses is no longer bail-eligible, meaning my prosecutors cannot ask for bail. This is yet another absurd result thanks to ‘Bail Reform’ and a system where the Legislature in Albany substitutes their judgment for the judgment of our judges and the litigants in court,”

The DA, a Republican, went on: “We will work with the SCPD to resolve this investigation as soon as possible and implore our [State] Legislature to make common sense fixes to this law.”

His statement was followed by one from Kevin McCaffrey of Lindenhurst, presiding officer of the Suffolk County Legislature, also a Republican, scoring “the focus of progressive liberal controlled Albany.”

The Democratic majorities in the State Legislature “through the adoption of misguided and irresponsible legislation” moved “to take the handcuffs off of criminals and put them on law enforcement by making it harder, if not impossible in certain instances, for them to do their job,” he said. “The state’s adoption of irresponsible so-called ‘Bail Reform’ legislation has created a revolving door justice system where numerous violent criminals are released almost immediately after arrest, free to walk our streets.” 

McCaffrey, also a Teamsters Union leader, continued that the “release of four people charged with the mutilation and disposal of murdered corpses which was mandated by this ‘reform’ legislation may be the most egregious example of how these ‘reforms’ have tied the hands of our law enforcement and our district attorney, putting the public’s safety at risks. The law must be changed now. We are once again calling upon Albany to repeal these laws to protect the welfare of our citizens.”

Meanwhile, Governor Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, said in a TV interview: “Maybe the DA should have done a more thorough investigation and brought murder charges—or conspiracy to commit murder—even assault charges because all of them are bail-eligible.” Hochul, a lawyer, said, “Maybe they brought [the case] a little early.” She said: “I encourage the DA’s office to glo back and build your case.” 

Tierney responded by saying Hochul is “either absolutely clueless or being deceitful about how the criminal justice system works.” He said: “Prosecutors have a duty to bring only charges that are supported by evidence. Anything else would be unethical. When law enforcement had enough evidence to arrest those defendants for serious felonies, they did the right thing and made those arrests.” 

And in the State Legislature, measures are now being introduced to add “concealing a human corpse” to bail-eligible crimes. Senator Monica Martinez and Assemblyman Steve Stern of Huntington, both Democrats, are moving on a bill. Senator Anthony Palumbo of New Suffolk is among a group of Republican sponsoring another bill. Palumbo, a former Suffolk assistant DA, says: “I don’t think anyone would argue that a world where people charged with the crime of body dismemberment can walk back out onto the streets is a good place, yet here in New York that is the world in which we are living thanks to Democrat’s failed criminal justice policies.”

As for bail for the other felonies and the host of misdemeanors eliminated in the 2019 changes, Hochul is saying it is “very clear that changes need to be made” and “judges should have more authority to set bail and detain dangerous defendants.”

The New York Civil Liberties Union in a web posting titled “The Facts on Bail Reform” says: “In 2019, New York lawmakers passed legislation that eliminated the use of cash bail for most misdemeanors and some nonviolent felony charges in an overdue recognition that a person’s wealth should not determine liberty.” However, “in 2020 prosecutors and police departments led a misinformation campaign that resulted in roll backs of the 2019 reforms. Now opponents of the bail law are determined to spread more misinformation and fear, threatening due process and push New York even further backward.” 

Has the State Legislature gone too far in altering bail laws? My view: Yes.

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.