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Mostly Cloudy State lawmakers pass ‘spill bill’
Legislation calls for notifying residents about sewage discharge
In an effort to keep Nassau County families safe from water pollutants, New York state lawmakers passed the Sewage Pollution Right to Know Act on June 21, legislation that would provide immediate public notice when discharges of untreated or partially treated sewage enter local waterways.
“Families need to know that the water they are swimming or fishing in is not going to pose a health risk,” Assemblyman Weisenberg (D-Long Beach), who sponsored the bill, said in a statement. “Currently, there is no way for a family to know if water is polluted unless the county health department has closed a beach.”
Weisenberg said that the legislation awaits Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s signature.
The bill comes on the heels of a push by local environmentalists and state and local officials, after the state’s Department of Environmental Conservation discovered that from August 2010 to January 2011, the Bay Park Sewage Treatment Plant in East Rockaway was discharging more sewage, or suspended solids, than allowed by environmental law. Environmentalists and local officials say that the treatment plant failed to notify the public when it dumped millions of gallons of sewage that created cloud plumes in the effluent released into Reynolds Channel.
West Pine Street resident Scott Bochner, co-founder of Sludge Stoppers Task Force, who posted videos on YouTube documenting the sewage being dumped into the bay, lauded state lawmakers after an initiative on the county level stalled in the Nassau County Legislature.
Although the county launched a new email notification system last October to inform residents about incidents at the county’s sewer treatment facilities the same day they occur, Bochner said he didn’t feel the email notification system went far enough to notify the public.
He cited a bill that County Legislator Dave Denenberg (D-Merrick) sponsored that called for a larger notification effort requiring agencies to inform the public and the media when raw or partially treated sewage is discharged into local waterways.
