By Scott Brinton
Richard Schary ducks and marches into the eerie darkness of a drainage tunnel beneath Jerusalem Avenue on the North Merrick-East Meadow border. It's a sunny Friday, and the North Bellmore environmentalist is eager to show the extent of damage that all-terrain vehicle riders and other vandals have caused to surrounding woodlands.
The tunnel, which lies due east of the Meadowbrook and just north of the Southern State parkways, floods when rain pours, Schary says. Most times, however, it and the riverbed that runs through it remain dry.
The dank, stifling tunnel provides a perfect access point for ATV riders as they race back and forth across state and county forests in the Merricks and East Meadow. The ATVers, Schary says, use the tunnel and others like it to avoid paved roads and possible detection by police. He notes, though, that the ATVers are often bold enough to venture onto paved roads when a tunnel isn't available.
With such tunnels, ATV riders have developed an intricate network of bike trails that snake through hundreds of acres of government woodlands, which start as far south as Sunrise Highway in Merrick and stretch for miles to Uniondale in the north.
Driving ATVs on government lands is illegal, according to the New York State Department of Motor Vehicles.
In recent weeks, the Herald has shown the environmental devastation that ATVers and other vandals have wrought on two government properties, one in central Merrick off Babylon Turnpike, and the other behind the Central High School District's Brookside School on Meadowbrook Road.
This week we focus on what Nassau County Legis. Norma Gonsalves (R-East Meadow) believes is Mullener Pond, which the Jerusalem Avenue tunnel leads into, and its environs.
Devastation mirrored
As with other woodlands along the parkways, determining which government agency is responsible for this forest is difficult. Schary believes that it's state owned. Gonsalves, however, says she's "pretty sure" that Nassau County controls it. A recent Hagstrom map lists it as part of the Roosevelt County Park.
There isn't one sign to say who owns the property, which is enclosed by a three-foot-tall, chain-link fence. The gate to the woodland, off West Drive in North Merrick, is unlocked.
To the north, on the East Meadow side of Jerusalem Avenue, a single, black-and-white sign, "No Trespassing NY State," is posted high in a tree, about 50 feet into the woods. Covered by branches, it's barely visible from the street.
The pond and forest on the North Merrick side are a repeat of the other properties that the Herald has recently toured. Dirt bikers have torn up trails throughout the woodland. The bikes erode soil around trees. With their roots exposed, the trees die. On this property, numerous tall oak trees were found dead and fallen to the ground.
Teenagers have dug fire pits, where they hold drinking parties. Beer cans are thrown in the woods and pond.
Young people also engage in paint-ball wars, building "forts" with
underbrush. And they set fires. One West Drive resident said a brush fire broke out last summer. Firefighters quickly extinguished it, but it smoldered underground for more than three weeks.
There are hundreds, even thousands of plastic bottles and aluminum cans washed up at the southern end of the pond. These, Schary says, are called "floatables."
People throw them from their cars along the Meadowbrook. A heavy rain easily washes them into the stream that runs beside the parkway. The floatables are then carried south, into this pond and ponds just north of the Sunrise Highway in Merrick and Freeport. Eventually, they make their way into the bays off the South Shore, where they are deposited amid saltwater wetlands, remaining indefinitely.
Schary and other activists like Robert Young of Merrick believe that the solution to the environmental devastation lies in designating government woodlands as public preserves and opening them for hiking and bicycling. In this way, people who are concerned about protecting the properties will constantly flow through them.
"This is an untapped resource," Schary says. "People could use it for good, if not for the garbage."
Right now, he says, "The only people who are using them are those who are abusing them. The public is scared. They're afraid. It's scary in there."
Gonsalves agrees with converting the woodlands into parklands. "Turn it into something very positive," she says. "The people who will use this will respect this."
Vandalism of all sorts
Schary notes that teenagers aren't the only ones destroying local woodlands. He points out where someone, likely an adult with a heavy chainsaw, has cut up an oak tree, probably for firewood, and has left the remains beside a fence on the east side of the North Merrick forest.
At a government woodland to the south, just off Meadowbrook Road in North Merrick, a contractor or homeowner has dumped a pile of wooden stockade fencing, with hundreds of rusting nails sticking out. Amid the heap lies the aging hulk of a washing machine.
Behind a nearby gas station, in a drainage canal that the county likely owns, people have left piles of bagged garbage and old mattresses.
At the Merrick woodland off Babylon Turnpike, many homeowners have thrown their yard waste, including piles of tree branches and leaves, over their fences into the forest.
It's organic matter that will eventually break down. The trouble is that it dries up, especially in the summer, and poses a serious fire hazard to the surrounding woodland, says Schary. Small vermin such as rats and mice also make their homes in the piles, because the decomposing leaves and branches provide warmth and shelter.
Several homeowners have also "encroached" on government woodlands; that is, extended their property lines into the forests, at times clearing trees to create grassy fields. Many have even built gates into their fences that line the woodlands, providing easy access to the forests, where trespassing isn't permitted.
Lisa Schary, Richard Schary's wife who is also an environmentalist, believes the first step to protecting the woodlands is simple -- post signs delineating who owns the forests and what exactly is permitted in them.
People "need to know the boundaries," she said. "They need to know what is legal."
Lisa Schary adds that civic groups have to get involved in protecting these properties. Residents, she said, "have stock in [the woodlands] because their homes are here."
