By Anthony Bottan and Stephen J. Bronner
Legislator Jeff Toback (D-Oceanside), who backs the agreement to divert the waste, dismissed the notion that the plan is bad for the Bay Park community. “The sewer consolidation is good for the environment and good for the taxpayers,” Toback said. “I think the residents of Bay Park are being fed false information, which is clouding their opinion.”
Nassau County legislators on the committee for Public Works voted 5-4 on Monday, May 18, to enter into an agreement with Cedarhurst and Lawrence to close down their two local sewage treatment facilities and divert their effluent to the county's facility in Bay Park. A pump station would be built in Lawrence, and the sewage would be sent from Lawrence to Inwood, then to the Bay Park facility, according to Commissioner of Public Works Ray Ribeiro. Gravity would take the sewage from Cedarhurst to Inwood, he said, and then it would be pumped into the Bay Park facility as well.
“In the agreement that we signed, the county will be taking over our facility either way in 2012,” said Joel Mael, a trustee on the Lawrence town board, who for years appealed to the county to close the plants. “It makes the utmost of sense for taxpayers to consolidate these plants, whether they're running our plant or we're running it.”
The Bay Park plant currently processes 60 million gallons of sewage per day, and with the addition of Cedarhurst and Lawrence, the plant will process an extra 2 million gallons daily. The Bay Park facility is permitted by the Department of Conservation to process up to 72 million gallons a day, according to Ribeiro.
There will be no construction in Bay Park, Ribeiro noted, and the cost of the diversion is $17 million, which is less than the $30 million it would cost to upgrade the treatment facilities at Cedarhurst and Lawrence. The Bay Park plant also processes sewage more efficiently than the other two plants, the Public Works commissioner said, with the county plant removing 95 percent of solids, while the local plants only removing 85 percent.
Ribeiro said that over the next five years, nearly $70 million will be used to upgrade the county facility, and the diversion of the two other plants to Bay Park would cut down on 100,000 pounds of solids dumped into Reynolds Channel, where the county facility currently dumps its sewage.
Lawrence and Cedarhurst village trustees voted last Tuesday to issue 30-year bonds to pay for the construction, but the contract between the county and two villages states that if the village falls short on paying the bond, the villages will look to the county, subject to appropriation, to cover its shortfalls. However, Ribeiro said he doesn't foresee any situation where the villages would fall short on the bond payments.
Lawrence resident Kim Kleppel said she feels the deal is not good for the village. “Anyway you look at it, the sewage plant will either be upgraded or decommissioned,” Kleppel said. “Somehow or other, Lawrence does not seem to get any benefit from financing the county plan. For the price of hooking up with the county, we could upgrade our facility and keep our sewer taxes, worth about $1.7 million a year, as opposed to giving them over to the county.”
The county plans to tap into federal stimulus money for the project, Ribeiro explained. The Environmental Facilities Corporation would issue $26 million in bonds for the diversion project, which would be supported with federal stimulus money.
Legislator Francis Becker (R-Lynbrook), who along with three fellow Republicans voted against the plan, called the process of the villages' bonding for the project an "end-around." The financing plan would not require the county to issue bonds or guarantee the village bonds, Becker said, even though it will own the pumping station in Lawrence and it will be run by county employees.
Since the county isn't bonding the project, a simple majority vote is all that's needed to pass the consolidation. A super-majority, made up of 13 or more votes out of 19, is needed for a county bond to pass. "We're doing things in a very back-door way," Becker said. "It's so disingenuous. This process has been flawed and dishonest."
About 30 Bay Park and East Rockaway residents were at the Monday meeting to voice their displeasure with the consolidation plan. Most are not against the consolidation, but want to see upgrades to the Bay Park facility happen first. Many of these residents urged Ribeiro to look into installing an outfall pipe, which would bring the treated effluent two miles out into the Atlantic Ocean, rather than in the Western Bays. Though initial estimates had the installation of an outfall pipe at $200 million, the commissioner said that price tag has nearly doubled.
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