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Partly Cloudy Dumping disaster
Officials say Reynolds Channel, connected to Baldwin’s bays, is heavily polluted
“You just smelled it again,” said Legislator Dave Denenberg (D-Merrick), who stood at West Bay Drive in Long Beach last month with several West Pine Street residents. Denenberg was observing a brown plume moving across Reynolds Channel — a waterway adjoining a system of bays including Baldwin Bay, Middle Bay, Randal Bay and Parsonage Cove. “That is [from the] sewage treatment plant,” he said. “You shouldn’t be smelling it from here.”
Denenberg said the repugnant odor and sight, which came from a discharge pipe in the channel, were the result of illegal sewage discharged from the Bay Park Sewage Treatment Plant — a plant owned and operated by Nassau County that treats about half of the county’s sewage. The effluent spewing from the pipe has alarmed residents who live near the channel recently, and is described by many as not only as a quality-of-life issue, but an environmental hazard to every town bordering
the bays.
As resident Jim Hangley said, the county’s “toilets are flushing out right behind my house.”
At a press conference on Nov. 23 at the pier off West Bay Drive, a group of local environmentalists, Long Beach officials and residents joined Denenberg to demand that Nassau County officials take immediate action to stop the “sludge” from being illegally discharged into the bay.
“The violations have become repeated and excessive,” said Denenberg, who called for legislative hearings and an immediate investigation into the treatment plant.
Since March, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation has issued numerous violations in response to the discharge. William Spitz, the DEC’s regional water manager, explained that the agency is conducting an investigation, after it discovered in October that the plant was discharging more sewage than allowed by environmental law.
Spitz said the excessive amounts have created cloud plumes in the effluent released into Reynolds Channel.
“There shouldn’t be a brown plume,” he said. “This is an egregious violation. We will be levying fines and insisting on whatever other measures are required to bring about compliance at the plant.”
