Village officials warn of garbage discarded on ‘pipeline’ property

For as long as Steve Acquavella, the supervisor of Valley Stream’s Department of Public Works, can remember, people have illegally dumped trash along a roughly two-mile stretch of empty public property near the Queens border, on the north side of the Long Island Rail Road tracks.

Acquavella and a long line of village workers, he said, have found everything from mattresses and construction debris to, about six months ago, a car missing wheels on the plot of land informally known as “the pipeline.” But over the past three months, he and code enforcement inspector Nick Cassano agreed, it has been worse than ever.

“Call it the pandemic effect,” Mayor Ed Fare said, noting the increase in debris coincided with the spread of the coronavirus and subsequent lockdown restrictions.

The county owns the property, while the village maintains it, and the land, which stretches from South Central Avenue west to Broadway, is a former watershed property, a holdover from when an increasingly thirsty New York City once used Long Island’s water supply at the turn of the 20th century. Underneath lies a cast iron aqueduct that once transported water from wells drilled across Nassau, including a handful in Valley Stream.

“This was a pile of dirt” that someone had dumped, Acquavella said, as he pointed to a roughly three-foot-high mound along a path on the property. It was enveloped by grass and undergrowth.

Beyond were bits of broken concrete left, in various stages of fading into the landscape. An assortment of wood construction debris was left there, as well as scattered piles of branches and leaves. “The biggest thing is agriculture,” Acquavella said, noting that crews routinely remove large piles of rotted grass dumped by landscapers. “Most of it we clean up,” he said, “but it’s a losing battle.”

The issue, he said, is the property’s remoteness, which makes enforcement nearly impossible. Without electricity, the village cannot install cameras or lights.

“They could dump anything they want,” he said. “It’s pitch black.”

The fine for dumping on the property is $5,000, but only one culprit — a man from Rosedale — has been caught in recent memory, after a village worker spotted the license plate of a truck as it drove off the property. Before that, Acquavella and Cassano said, it had likely been more than a decade since someone was caught in the act.

“Ninety-nine percent of the time they get away with it,” Acquavella said.

Mainly, he asked residents living north along the land to lend a hand, and call the police or write down a license plate number if they hear or see people drive onto the property, particularly at night, when, he said, “Nobody should be here.”

“We need the neighbors to help us,” he said. “They’re our eyes and ears.”

Crews diverted to remove the garbage, he said, are often pulled from other jobs, such as street repair and tree maintenance.

“All these things that have to be done on a daily basis have to be slowed down” as a result, he said. 

Other concerns include the dumping of toxic chemicals in storm drains on the site, which feed into the neighborhood’s various streams.

Village engineer Joe Accarino said the drains all lead into natural waterways, and “it all eventually goes out into the bay,” adding that the water is untreated.

Remarking on the importance of keeping the waterways clean, Fare said, “It’s called Valley Stream for a reason.”