By:Doug Miller
As Nassau County struggles to achieve solvency, environmental groups are petitioning for the funding to allow the United States Geological Survey (USGS) to include the area in its research.
The problem was highlighted last Friday, when the New York State Assembly's Environmental Conservation Committee met in a special public hearing at Long Beach's City Hall. The USGS keeps track of the nation's groundwater supplies and their health, but officials from the service told the committee they could provide no data on Long Island's drinking water, because the funding each county provides has been absent from Nassau County since 1999.
Ronald Busciolano, a USGS hydrologist appearing before the committee -- which was chaired by Great Neck Assemblyman Thomas DiNapoli and included Long Beach Assemblyman Harvey Weisenberg -- testified that the problem became obvious as map after map in his PowerPoint presentation showed western Long Island without data.
In fact, much of Busciolano's testimony pointed up the county's absence from his research. He estimated that Nassau would need to come up with less than $300,000 per year to fund his research, which covers water issues on Long Island and in New York City.
The Nassau County Department of Public Works conducts its own research, but USGS officials said it did not meet federal standards and was therefore unusable.
That is an important distinction, said one expert. "Think about it," said environmentalist Morris Kramer, an Atlantic Beach resident. "Would you put tires on your car that did not meet federal standards?"
Funding was one theme for the day; the other was the threat of salt-water intrusion into the Lloyd aquifer, the best and oldest source of Long Island drinking water. The Lloyd, which sits several hundred meters beneath Long Island, is protected by several meters of ancient clay, which for centuries has protected it. The water in one part of the Lloyd meets the ocean, and although that exact point has never been discovered, it is believed to be about a mile off the shore of Atlantic Beach. Scientists believe that once seawater seeps into the Lloyd, all its water will be undrinkable.
To date, the seawater and the fresh water in the Lloyd have not intermingled, but this delicate balancing act may have met its match in the humans above. While the aquifer is constantly revitalized by the area's ample rainfall, global warming slowly but steadily swells the Atlantic Ocean, by melting the polar icecaps and warming and expanding the water, which has raised sea level by several feet over the last century, according to Sarah Meyland, executive director of the Citizens Campaign for the Environment.
As the sea level rises, she said, the ocean puts more pressure on the Lloyd, and threatens to mix its water into it.
"The height of the water table is a factor in determining the ability of the fresh water supply beneath Long Island to hold back the ocean," Meyland testified. "If the ocean is rising, then it is logical to expect that to stop wholesale saltwater intrusion, the volume of water in the aquifer must be sufficient to stop the advance."
She also hammered county officials for not participating in the USGS program, but offered a solution. "If we put a one-penny charge on each bottle of water sold in Nassau County," she said, "we could fund the program with money to spare."
Meanwhile, Meyland insisted, the priority is to conserve water and to protect the Lloyd at any cost.
But Busciolano's group said there was a more proactive approach available. If scientists were to drill into the Lloyd and pump fresh water into it, he said, that would go a long way toward keeping the sea at bay. Whether it will work, or merely weaken the clay protection layer, is not known, so it's an experiment Weisenberg said he was against. "Please, come to Long Beach and swim in our ocean," he told the USGS officials. "But don't disturb our water."
The committee also heard from Long Beach's commissioner of public works, Robert L. Raab, who declared protection of the water supply -- from both environmental and geopolitical hazards -- to be among the city's top quality-of-life issues.
The Lloyd is the city's primary source of water, providing 4 million gallons each day to the city's 35,000 residents. "Unfortunately, the city has no control of the aquifer's quality or quantity," Raab said. "Recharge areas [on the north shore] for the Lloyd are well beyond city borders. For this reason, the city finds itself in a precarious situation, relying on its regional officials to institute the proper management practices to protect this vital resource.
"Saltwater intrusion is the predator that lurks in the shadows, Long Beach the helpless prey," said Raab. "Even maintaining current pumping conditions, it is conceivable that within a century the Lloyd Aquifer may become unusable. Increased pumping of this aquifer could only serve to accelerate this time schedule."
