Representatives of environmental groups, community groups and local government officials across eastern Suffolk County turned out for a two-hour, wide-ranging conversation with state legislators Thursday morning in Riverhead.
Huizenga, Dingell, Joyce, and Kaptur Introduce Legislation to Reauthorize Key Great Lakes Funding Program
Today, U.S. Representatives Bill Huizenga (R-MI), Debbie Dingell (D-MI), Dave Joyce (R-OH), Marcy Kaptur (D-OH) and members of the bipartisan Great Lakes Task Force introduced the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative (GLRI) Act of 2024. The bipartisan bill will reauthorize the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, which is set to expire at the end of FY 2026, for another five years through FY 2031. The bill increases the current authorization level from $475 million to $500 million in FY 2026.
New Grants Advance TNC's Mission in Connecticut
Long Island environmentalists renew calls for the Birds and Bees Protection Act
Months after a mother went to court, the closure of Brookhaven Landfill is still at stake
Javien Coleman, 13, attended Frank P. Long Intermediate School when he was diagnosed with cancer. He died last year.
Outside Nacole Hutley’s home there is a shrine to her son, Javien Coleman. Decorated for each holiday, it is a place where the family can honor him with photos and his football jersey, number 21.
Inside the house, photographs of young Javien fill the walls and tables, keeping his memory and smile alive.
13-year-old Javien died in 2022, a year after being diagnosed with lymphoma. Just a year before his diagnosis, he had begun attending Frank P. Long Intermediate School, half a mile from the Brookhaven Landfill.
Long Island water quality has hit a low point, environmentalist says
“You could see the bottom of the water,” Montefusco recalled Thursday as he stood on the dock with several friends including Marty Lange, 86.
“Now, you can take a bright yellow, a chartreuse piece of line, drop it 2 inches into the water and you can’t see the line anymore,” Lange said.
Just a few feet away, Christopher Gobler, a professor at Stony Brook University’s School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences, stood with local environmentalists and unveiled troubling data that showed water quality hitting an “all-time low” on Long Island since he started monitoring it about a decade ago.
Almost 90 bills passed in the committee, with 26 passing in both houses
Albany, NY – New York State Senator Pete Harckham completed his first legislative session as chair of the Senate Environmental Conservation Committee (EnCon) recently with 89 bills passed out of committee, 44 of which passed in the Senate and 30 in both houses that now await the governor’s signature. Harckham, as committee chair, also led the budget table during the negotiations for the FY2024 Budget and ensured critical funding for a number of initiatives.
Suffolk County shelves sewer expansion plan that would use sales tax hike to pay for it
Local Focus: Water Quality on Long Island
Once Again, Legislature Kicks the Can of Litter Reduction Down Trash-Filled Road
EPR for packaging bill fails to pass in New York before legislative deadline
Dive Brief:
A high-profile EPR for packaging bill did not pass in New York before the end of the legislative session this weekend, despite last-minute updates meant to address stakeholder concerns.
Another Voice: Our waterways and communities are drowning in plastic pollution
There have been misleading messages about the legislation currently being considered by the state legislature, known as the Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act (S.4246/A.5322). The simple fact is that the proposed policy would begin to reduce plastic pollution in our Great Lakes and increase recycling, all while saving taxpayers money.
Op-Ed: Water Reuse Increasingly Important
SOURCE:
https://huntingtonnow.com/op-ed-water-reuse-increasingly-important/
By Karl Grossman - March 19, 2023
“Water reuse has been increasingly recognized as an essential component in effective
water resource management plans,” says the “Long Island Water Reuse Road Map & Action
Plan” unveiled last week. “The United Nations formally acknowledged the importance of water
reuse in 2017,” it adds.
“The benefits of water reuse have long been recognized and embraced in other parts of
the world,” it continues. And now in the United States, “approximately 2.6 billion gallons of
water is reused daily.”
But in New York State, “large-scale water reuse projects have been limited. There are a
few projects in upstate New York and one on Long Island,” the “Riverhead reuse project” which
started in 2016 “to redirect highly treated wastewater, as much as 260,000 gallons per day” from
the Riverhead Sewage Treatment Plant to “irrigate the nearby Indian Island County Golf Course”
instead of, as had been the practice, dumping it into Flanders Bay.
“Reusing water, for some other valuable purpose, provides numerous benefits,” the
“Long Island Water Reuse Road Map & Action Plan” goes on. “These include protecting public
wells and water supplies from salt water intrusion.” It calls for highly treated wastewater to be
used for a variety of purposes here with additional irrigation of golf courses but also of sod farms
and greenhouses, lawns and fields at educational and commercial sites and—highly
important—to deal with “over-pumping.”
Indeed, a lesson for all of Long Island is how Brooklyn—on Long Island’s western
end—lost its potable water supply more than a century ago: by over-pumping and consequent saltwater intrusion, along with pollution, notes John Turner, senior conservation policy advocate at the Seatuck Environmental Association.
So, Brooklyn began getting its water from reservoirs built upstate. There has been talk in
recent years of Nassau County buying water from those New York City-owned reservoirs. But
they are near capacity, says Turner, so the city “has not been welcoming Nassau County with open arms.”
For Nassau and Suffolk Counties water reuse is critical.
The “Long Island Water Reuse Road Map & Action Plan” was presented this week at an
event at the treatment facility of the Great Neck Water Pollution Control District in Nassau
County. Nassau is a case study of how the Brooklyn lesson has not been learned. In Nassau,
which is 85% sewered, its sewage treatment plants dump wastewater through outfall pipes into
nearby waterways and the Atlantic Ocean and Long Island Sound—and as a result Nassau’s
water table is dropping.
An announcement for the event said that it “serves as a kick-off for a new way of
thinking that could revolutionize the way in which our community protects its most precious
natural resource.”
The “Long Island Water Reuse Road Map & Action Plan” charting a course for Long
Island to reuse water from its underground water supply, its “sole source” of potable water, was
created by Islip-based Seatuck working with the Greentree Foundation and Cameron
Engineering & Associates, and a Water Reuse Technical Working Group of 28 members.
Suffolk County is about 25% sewered. Some water treatment plants in Suffolk recharge
treated wastewater into the ground but plants also do what Nassau has been doing, sending
wastewater out to adjacent waters or the ocean or Long Island Sound through outfall pipes.
There has been action through the years on pollutants in the water supply, on quality of
drinking water, in Nassau and Suffolk. There must be a parallel emphasis on quantity.
“Major Action Plan Recommendations” in the new plan, include: “Develop Water Reuse
Regulations/Guidelines…Convene a Long Island Water Reuse Workgroup to develop and
implement strategies…Conduct engineering studies on the most feasible projects…Engage Long
Island Golf Course Association in plan development…”
The “Water Reuse Technical Working Group” for the plan included: Anthony Caniano,
hydrologist at the Suffolk County Department of Health Services; Dr. Christopher Gobler of the
Stony Brook University School of Marine & Atmospheric Sciences; Bill Zalakar, president of
the Long Island Farm Bureau; Chris Class, marine scientist at The Nature Conservancy; Joseph
Gardner, president of the Long Island Golf Course Superintendent’s Association; Christopher
Schubert, program development specialist at the New York Water Science Center; Adrienne
Esposito, executive director of Citizens Campaign for the Environment; Suffolk County Public
Works Supervisor Madhav Sathe and Deputy Suffolk County Executive Peter Scully.
Projects for water reuse considered in the Town of Huntington in the plan include at: Kurt
Weiss Greenhouses in Melville; White Post Farms in Melville; Deckers and Van Cott Nurseries
in Greenlawn; Northport High School and Harborfields High School in Greenlawn; Holmes
Farms in Huntington; and Del Vino Vineyard in Northport.
For more information on the plan visit https://seatuck.org/water-reuse/
Nearly 100 people attend Adirondack Park Lobby Day in Albany
Commentary: Corporations, not communities, should be responsible for recycling packaging waste
The Packaging Reduction and Recycling Infrastructure Act will reduce waste and ease the burden on municipalities.
New York state generates more than 17 million tons of municipal solid waste each year, with a lackluster recycling rate below 20 percent. Instead of being recycled, much of our waste is going to landfills, being burned in incinerators, or ending up as plastic pollution in our communities and waterways. Each year companies ship billions of products, exacerbating the paper and plastic waste crisis, yet they bear no responsibility for managing the packaging waste they create.
Bill shifts reducing plastic and paper waste in New York to manufacturers
Navy won’t change stance on groundwater pollution outside the Grumman fence, despite new EPA health advisory for PFAS
Despite a dramatic reduction in a federal health advisory level for PFAS in drinking water announced in June by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the Navy will still rely on the old EPA health advisory level to rule out intervention in areas near the former Naval Weapons Reserve Plant in Calverton, where PFAS and other chemicals have been detected in private residential wells.
