• County Vows To Push Forward With Consolidation Plan •
On Tuesday, April 7th, a few members of Green Bay Parkers.Org attended a meeting hosted by Operation SPLASH which featured a presentation by Nassau County DPW Commissioner Ray Ribiero about the county’s master plan for sewage treatment.
Imagine our surprise when we found out that 90% of the presentation was just about the county’s master plan for the Bay Park Sewage Treatment Plant (STP). This plan was described by Ribiero as sort of a “part 2” to the county’s original sewage system feasibility study that was jointly conducted by the consulting firms Malcolm Pirnie, Dvrika & Bartilucci JV, and Cameron Engineering LLP, all of which are big political contributors to County Executive Tom Suozzi.
The meeting opened with an introduction by Operation SPLASH president Rob Weltner, who then quickly handed the mic over to Ray Ribiero so he could begin his presentation. The other people sitting at the dais along with Ribiero and a couple of his droogs were Adrienne Esposito and an associate from Citizens Campaign for the Environment, a woman from the EPA and some guy from the NYSDEC.
Ribiero’s presentation quickly established that the county’s master plan for the Bay Park STP is basically the same plan as the one originally foisted upon us last year, with some new bells and whistles added to the plant to remove ammonia from the effluent. The ammonia would be removed through a process called “nitrification”.
When asked if adding more nitrates to the effluent because of this process could cause algae blooms that would eventually choke the life from the bay, the EPA lady chimed in “The ammonia is toxic to fish.” When pressed on this process and its future impact, the EPA lady kept repeating the mantra “Ammonia is toxic to fish.”
Ribiero then got back to his presentation. As he hemmed and hawed his way through the presentation it was amazing to watch him deftly maneuver around the word “consolidation” whenever he mentioned the plan to convert the STP’s in Cedarhurst, Lawrence and Long Beach to pump stations and have their effluent pumped into the Bay Park facility. This time around the county is calling it a “diversionary plan” instead of a consolidation plan to avoid the negative connotations that word has with residents of Bay Park/East Rockaway and the surrounding communities.
Ribiero then discussed an ocean outfall pipe for the Bay Park plant, but stated that the cost of building it would be $431 million. Wasn’t it just last year the cost was $200 mil? Ribiero stated that the high cost of constructing an ocean outfall pipe would prevent it from ever becoming a reality.
Upon hearing the audience grumble with this statement, he quickly back-peddled and offered some ways to raise funding for a pipe such as consolidating the two sewage plants in Great Neck into the Cedar Creek STP, then selling “nitrate credits” to STP’s in Westchester so they could dump more effluent into the LI Sound. There was also the obligatory “Ask the Federal Government for Funding” bullet point shown as a way to get money for the pipe. How creative!
Ribiero stated throughout his presentation that the county wants to be a good neighbor to Bay Park residents, but how can they be good neighbors by holding a meeting pertaining to the Bay Park plant at a recreation center in Freeport and then not even extend an invitation to anyone from the community? And to top it off, our supposed county representative, the legislative lunkhead Jeff Toback, was nowhere to be found during the meeting. Even better, after emailing Toback to find out why he didn't notify his constituents of this important forum, he claimed ignorance saying no one told him about it!
As the meeting ended Ribiero opened the floor to questions. When he was asked if the plant had implemented any of the processes that were promised to residents of Bay Park/East Rockaway at the meeting at East Rockaway High School last year, he denied anything was promised. Adrianne Esposito from CCE informed Ribiero that she too was at that meeting and there were things that were indeed promised, such as applying UV light to the effluent before it goes into the channel to kill bacteria. Ribiero then just shook it off and said he doesn’t think any of those upgrades had yet happened.
When Ribiero was asked how the county would get the funds to proceed with this plan when the money for the consolidation plan was removed from the budget, he stated “We’ll get the money from somewhere and we are going to do this project.”
Ribiero was then asked why the county refused to do its due diligence and research the many alternatives to sewage treatment that are available. He dismissed this by saying “Well, anyone can go on the internet and find radical solutions to sewage treatment that are done by some scientist in his basement by filtering a gallon of sewage through a magic black box that turns it into drinking water. In reality though, it wouldn’t work on a large scale.”
He was then informed of technologies in sewage treatment that have been utilized for years by huge municipalities like Boston, MA and Orange County, CA and offer proven results of cleaner effluent but he then dismissed this too simply saying, “We’ve done some of those processes in the past and stopped because they are too expensive and unnecessary.”
After the meeting ended the members of Green Bay Parkers.Org approached Ribiero and his henchmen and asked if we could get a copy of “Part 2” of the county’s sewage treatment master plan. We were told the book is not allowed to be given to the public because of security issues due to the inclusion of sensitive and confidential information contained within. They did state that the entire power-point presentation that was shown at the rec center that night would be posted on the DPW page of the county website (www.nassaucountyny.gov) by Monday, April 13th.
So where does this leave the residents of Bay Park/East Rockaway and the surrounding communities? Does the county think they can prevent our efforts to stop consolidation from happening or does they truly believe we will accept their ill-conceived consolidation plan this time around? The county may think they have the power to impose their will upon the residents, but they neglected to recall the secret weapon available to us – ELECTION DAY 2009!!!
