Letters to the Editor: East Rockaway, Lynbrook

Week of Nov. 24-30

Posted

What’s in a name? A community.

To the Editor:

The Bay Park Sewage Treatment Plant is no more. Please welcome the South Shore Water Reclamation Facility. It may be just a name change to many, but for some it means much more.

When Suez began exploring the possibility of working with Nassau County in a public-private partnership to manage the county’s vast wastewater system, the company spoke with communities surrounding the county’s two major treatment plants. What we found were dedicated, smart and vocal residents who had worked for years to improve these troubled facilities.

In the case of the Bay Park facility, many homes are no more than 100 feet from the property, which treats 50 million gallons of sewage every day. With that level of volume, there are inevitable challenges: odors, noise and heavy trucking. They can be minimized, but regrettably, they are an integral part of an industrial facility.

The complex got its name because it’s adjacent to the community of Bay Park. Once a place dotted with waterfront bungalows that offered easy access to bays and canals, it grew into a true bedroom community. The plant was built in 1950, and forever changed the landscape. It was an inconvenient reality that people accepted in their beloved neighborhood, and for many years residents lived quietly, though they were troubled by a failing plant.

After Superstorm Sandy, Bay Park garnered newfound and unwanted attention. When Sandy shut down the plant, it became an epicenter of storm coverage. For 42 hours, county employees and private technicians performed herculean tasks to restore operations. Once the plant was operational, the real work began. With more than $800 million in federal and state funds designated to rebuild and storm-harden the facility, the facility would, basically, be new.

With restoration, rehabilitation and renovation completed, there remained one more task: to break the link between Bay Park, the community, and Bay Park, the sewage treatment plant. To continue to link the two would do an enormous disservice to residents.

Accordingly, Suez worked closely with Nassau County to end the perception that Bay Park was nothing more than one large treatment facility. It’s not. It’s a place that several thousand families call home.

Eric Gernath, CEO, SUEZ North America

A painful election

To the Editor:

I’m still feeling the pain of Donald Trump’s victory, not for myself, but for my children and future grandchildren.

How do we allay our children’s fears that we may lose the rights that our parents and grandparents fought and died for? As we kiss our daughters’ tears away, how do we explain that half the country elected a president who has bragged that he can grope women, calls them pigs and makes them feel inadequate if they are overweight or flat-chested, instead of a strong, hard-working woman who has devoted her life to public service?

How do we assure our daughters that Trump will not take America back to the days when women bled to death in alleys? How do we shelter our children from bullies and teach compassion toward those with disabilities when they see their president-elect bully and ridicule those who disagree with him or may be different from him? If a male teacher uttered just one statement that Trump has made, he would be fired without question.

Millions of mothers who bravely came to a new land for a better life are hugging their children a little tighter as they put them to bed, fearing that they may be among the 11 million to be deported. Muslim families are fearing deportation, which, in some cases, may mean certain death for them and their families. Couples who have fought so hard to gain the right to marry the person they love now worry about losing that right. And African-American parents, who have faced racism for hundreds of years, worry that Trump will take America back to the days before the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

For the sake of our children and our children’s children, we must brush off our bullhorns to save our constitutional rights. We need to wipe away our tears and pick up where Clinton left off. We must stay strong for the sake of our daughters and make sure that Clinton’s fight had meaning.

Claudia Borecky

President, Bellmore-Merrick Democratic Club