By ANTHONY BOTTAN
New concerns were first raised in January, when the Legislature voted to combine the Lawrence and Cedarhurst sewage facilities and divert their 2 million gallons of sewage per day to the county facility in Bay Park. One of residents' and environmentalists' biggest concerns is the impact the consolidation will have on the South Shore's Western Bays, particularly Reynolds Channel, where the treated effluent from the Bay Park plant is emptied. The Western Bays extend from the Atlantic Beach Bridge to the Wantagh Parkway, and include Lawrence, Woodsburgh, Hewlett, Bay Park, Island Park, Long Beach, Baldwin, Freeport, Merrick and Bellmore.
Two local environmental advocacy groups, Citizens Campaign for the Environment and Operation SPLASH - Stop Polluting Littering And Save Harbors, a nonprofit organization dedicated to ending coastal pollution - are in favor of consolidation, as long as a Total Maximum Daily Load assessment is performed and significant upgrades are made to the Bay Park plant. A TMDL determines how much discharge a waterway can tolerate without deteriorating. It also investigates why waterways become degraded and proposes ways to return them to a healthy state.
The New York State Department of Conservation has listed the Western Bays as an impaired body of water, and the DEC's Long Island regional director, Peter Scully, recently announced that it would conduct a state-funded TMDL. The study, Scully said, will cost $1 million and take a year to complete.
Adrienne Esposito of Citizens Campaign for the Environment said the TMDL is needed to establish a standard for the amount of nitrogen that will be allowed to be pumped into the water. As of now, Esposito said, there is no nitrogen standard for the Western Bays. "Sewage treatment plants discharge nitrogen into the water and cause an excess growth of algae and marine plants and depletes oxygen levels in the water," she said. "A nitrogen cap will tell us what the standards are for this body of water." Esposito added that since the Western Bays are shallow, they are more susceptible to nitrogen damage.
A joint press release issued by the CCE and SPLASH stated that the DEC listed the Western Bays as impaired because of the 64.5 million gallons of effluent that is discharged into the water each day. According to the release, the four sewage treatment plants that discharge into the Western Bays have been issued a total of 79 violations by the DEC since 2000. For example, the Lawrence plant has been cited for exceeding of "biochemical oxygen demand," said Bill Fonda, spokesman for the DEC. "BOD limits are important because they impact the oxygen levels in a receiving body of water," Fonda said. "The less oxgen available for organisms in the receiving body of water, the more stressed they become."
Jeff Fullmer, director of the Long Island South Shore Estuary Reserve, said he has collected information from charter boat captains that fluke and crab populations are diminishing in the Western Bays. Fullmer added that these waterways are important to the health of local fisheries as well as the regional economy. "What needs to be understood are the impacts of pollutants in effluent," Fullmer said. "The main two issues are pathogens and nitrogen. You don't want to eat crabs that are infected with pollutants."
The DEC has closed parts of the Western Bays, including Reynolds Channel, to shellfish harvesting due to the presence of sewer discharges from sewage treatment plants in Bay Park, Long Beach and Hewlett. A closed safety zone is required around each plant's discharge.
According to Aphrodite Montalvo, a spokeswoman for the DEC, nitrogen levels do not directly cause the death of marine life. Rather, nitrogen in the water acts as a fertilizer, triggering blooms of marine life, like algae. When the nitrogen supply is exhausted, the algae die, and as they decay, the oxygen in the water is used up by the bacteria that break down the dead algae. This process can deplete the level of dissolved oxygen in the water to the point where marine wildlife is endangered.
Esposito said that an ocean outfall pipe, which would discharge treated effluent two miles out into the Atlantic, could help restore the Western Bays. It would be easier to lobby for such a pipe for one combined sewage treatment facility than for several, she said. "The objective is to clean up and restore the Western Bays," Esposito said. "In order to achieve that goal, we need an ocean outfall pipe or a dramatic upgrade at the Bay Park facility. Either one of those actions will have a tremendous positive impact on the Western Bays."
The DEC supports the sewage consolidation for two reasons. The Lawrence and Cedarhurst plants are approaching the end of their useful lives, Montalvo said, and it would be more cost-effective to upgrade one plant rather than three. Secondly, she said, the DEC anticipates that by combining the flow from Lawrence and Cedarhurst to Bay Park, the biochemical oxygen demand - the amount of oxygen used by microorganisms as they decompose - in the Western Bays would be reduced by 80 pounds per day.
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