SOURCE:
https://patch.com/new-york/northfork/officials-blast-decision-allowing-dredge-spoil-dumping-li-sound
Lisa Finn, Patch Staff - October 5, 2022
"It will have devastating effects on the ecosystem." — Southold Town Supervisor Scott Russell
NORTH FORK, NY — The decision to allow dumping of dredge spoils into the Long Island Sound has local officials and environmentalists seeing red.
The September decision by a federal appeals court to allow the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency — after a years' long battle by environmentalists and local governments alike to put the brakes on the idea — sparked ire.
New York State Assemblywoman Jodi Giglio gathered Friday with community leaders and officials to oppose the decision.
According to the CT Examiner, Connecticut Attorney General William Tong has argued that the decision is a necessity to sustain the state’s maritime economy.
Giglio fired back with concerns, shared by many over years on Long Island, over egregious environmental impacts.
“Long Island prides itself on keeping its shores clean and its beaches pristine, a job that is taxed extraneously thanks to this federal court decision,” Giglio said. “Our state, federal and local governments have invested millions upon millions into local ecological restoration and upkeep to keep the Long Island Sound a clean and healthy location to be enjoyed for generations to come."
The federal court, she said, has "condemned the Sound" — currently a stewardship site and prioritized for conservation due to its highly sensitive eel grass beds, which are protected by the 2012 Sea Grass Protection Act of New York — to pollution and degradation following the decision.
The proposed location, the Eastern Long Island Sound Disposal Site, Giglio said," is at the head of the race and has some of the strongest tidal currents on the East Coast."
"The site is in an extremely shallow part of the Sound," Giglio added. "Contaminants will be directly deposited onto the shores of Fishers Island and will have a detrimental effect on what is arguably New York State's last bastion of healthy, thriving sea grass beds. There are few locations so poorly suited as this one."
Giglio asked the EPA, the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers, and the Department of Energy and Environment Protection to reevaluate options for disposing of dredge spoils and "make decisions that are acceptable to all stakeholders and consistent with their mission to protect the environment, the economy, and the people living along the Sound.”
“The Long Island Sound should absolutely not be a dumping ground for any questionable waste dredged out of Connecticut rivers,” Rep. Lee Zeldin said.
Suffolk County Legislator Al Krupski agreed. "I would have thought in this day and age, there would have been more of a science-based decision as to how to dispose of contaminated dredge spoil, and alternatives would have been thoroughly explored before opting to dump it into the Long Island Sound. This is contrary to all the efforts to this Estuary of National Significance," he said.
Environmentalists have fought against the idea for years.
“The court’s decision to allow the dumping of dredge spoil from Connecticut’s urbanized rivers and harbors into the healthy waters of the eastern Long Island Sound is a costly and reckless step backwards in the multi-billion-dollar public investment that has been committed to restoring the Sound for decades,” said Bob DeLuca, president of the Group for the East End.
Added North Fork Environmental Counil President Mark Haubner: “This amounts to a permit to pollute our waterway and flies in the face of the EPA’s mission to protect the environment.”
Southold Town Supervisor Scott Russell has also voiced his concerns for years.
“The decision by the EPA to allow for the dumping of contaminated dredge spoils taken from private businesses into a deposit site less than two miles from Fishers Island not only poses a threat to the people of Southold Town, it will have profound negative effects on the environmental health of the Sound and those who rely on the Sound for their livelihood — and will undo years of coordinated efforts to restore this nationally recognized estuary,” he said.
He added: "This decision will lead to nearly 54 million cubic yards of contaminated dredge spoils into the Long Island Sound over the next 30 years. . . This is a nationally recognized estuary and the depositing of spoils is not only reckless, it's actually in conflict with the very laws the EPA helped create over the years. The mission of the EPA is to protect us from acts like these, not be a party to them."
Brookhaven Town Supervisor Ed Romaine also objected. “New York does not dispose of its dredge spoils in the Long Island Sound and nor should Connecticut. This dumping will affect aquamarine life and the health of the Long Island Sound and all of those who make their living from the Sound," he said.
In 2016, then-New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo commenced litigation to prevent the dumping in the eastern portion of the Long Island Sound.
In a letter signed by more than 30 federal, state and local elected officials, the governor provided notice to then President Barack Obama and EPA officials that the state would take necessary steps to prevent the EPA from issuing a rule allowing dredged materials from Connecticut to be dumped in the eastern region of the Long Island Sound.
Currently, two dredged material disposal sites exist in the Sound, where sediment has been dumped since the 1980s, including Western Long Island Sound and Central Long Island Sound. The EPA designated the Western and Central Long Island Sound as ocean disposal sites for long-term use. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has been using the eastern sites for short term disposal and the EPA had proposed to make these sites long-term permanent sites, he explained.
The EPA has claimed that the Central and Western disposal sites do not have the capacity to accept additional dredged materials.
A New York State review found that eastern Long Island sound disposal sites are not necessary because there is enough capacity at the Central and Western Long Island Sound sites to meet the needs of future dredged material disposal, Cuomo said.
Adrienne Esposito, Executive Director of Citizens Campaign for the Environment, has long supported the prevention of dumping: “Environmental and civic groups have consistently and rigorously opposed EPA’s dredge dumping scheme," she has said. "We consider the Sound as our front yard, or our backyard, but never as a junkyard. We expect the EPA to protect the Sound, not pollute the Sound."