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By Sara McGiff - October 31, 2023
Stony Brook University ecologist Chris Gobler completed his 2023 Assessment of Water Quality Impairments for Long Island.
A new type of harmful algal bloom was found this past summer in Long Island waters.
It spanned from the middle of the Great South Bay to the edge of the Shinnecock Bay — posing a potential public health risk for Long Island residents who eat shellfish or swim in those waters.
A 2023 Assessment of Water Quality Impairments for Long Island released Tuesday found more dead zones, toxic tides, fish kills and a record-setting season for harmful algal blooms this past summer. The demarcation line, where the new type of algal bloom flourished from August to October, began in communities home to aged septic and sewer systems.
“All of these occurrences, the blue green algal blooms, the marine toxic algal blooms, are in near shore areas that are getting heavy loads of nutrients — specifically nitrogen, and specifically nitrogen from septic systems,” said Chris Gobler, the report’s author and a coastal ecologist and conservationist at Stony Brook University.
The new type of harmful algal bloom is known as Pseudo-nitzschia. This bloom is particularly harmful to humans because it produces domoic acid which kills off synapses and neurons in the brain.
“This harmful algal bloom has a global distribution,” Gobler said. “It’s very common on the West Coast, its been seen before on the Northeast, but it's never been seen before in New York.”
Earlier this year, the Republican-controlled Suffolk County Legislature voted to backburner a hearing on the Clean Water Act, preventing it from being included on the November ballot for a vote. Their reasoning varied, but the common concern was that the revenue raised by an eighth of a cent tax wasn’t evenly split between advanced septic systems and sewer projects.
To Adrienne Esposito, the executive director of Citizens Campaign for the Environment, this decision has come at a cost to Long Island waterways.
“As scientists and environmentalists sound the alarm, the Suffolk Legislature keeps hitting the snooze button,” Esposito said. “As they gleefully sleep, the water crisis is getting worse and continues.”
The algal blooms are accelerating due to the Old New Inlet closing naturally this year.
The inlet was opened after Superstorm Sandy in 2012. Water from the Atlantic Ocean was able to flush out nitrogen pollution through Bellport and Moriches bays. Sand eventually filled up the inlet this year after a decade of the inlet acting as a natural filter.
“And that’s not going to reopen,” Gobler said. “We’re back to the pre-Sandy reality of just having the Moriches Inlet and the Fire Island Inlet and so it’s going to leave us vulnerable to further water quality impairments like this event.”