Capital Improvements for the Bay Park sewage treatment plant

The Nassau County Department of Public Works has mapped out detailed capital improvement projects for the Bay Park Sewage Treatment Plant, which had been discharging illegal levels of sewage effluent into Reynolds Channel for the last several months, according to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation.

More than $3 million in contracts were approved by the county legislature on Jan. 10 for upgrades and new equipment to fix the near East Rockaway facility – a move that local officials said could get the plant moving back in the right direction.

“We are really watching this Bay Park plant,” said county legislator Howard Kopel (R-Lawrence). “Things deteriorated so badly and the maintenance at the plant was bad. But we are really committed in making the plant state of the art and the upgrades will help to do that.”

The Department of Environmental Conservation, known as the DEC, said the facility’s equipment had been malfunctioning since March, issuing several violations for the brown sledge being pumped from the facility. As reported in the Herald, DEC officials looked into discharge incidents involving excess amounts of suspended solids that created cloud plumes in the partially treated sewage released into Reynolds Channel in October. William Spitz, the DEC’s regional water manager, said that the solids released were more than 30 miligrams per litter, which is more than allowed by environmental law.

Malfunctioning with the facility’s tanks, which DEC and county officials said were “aging,” played a role in the solids’ accumulation in the plant’s discharge. The county began working on immediate corrective measures including adding a chemical coagulant to the plant’s primary treatment system to cause the solids to settle regularly. The DPW also began trucking up to 80,000 gallons of sewage to a pumping station in Merrick, before it was piped to the Cedar Creek treatment plant in Wantagh for processing in December.