You’ve Got To Be Kidding Me? Great Neck Too?
An article in Newsday tells of a recent meeting held by sewer officials from the village of Great Neck about the future of their sewer plants, the Great Neck Water Pollution Control facility, which handles sewage from several villages on the peninsula and parts of Manhasset, and the Great Neck Village Sewage Treatment Plant.
It seems that the residents of Great Neck voted in 2008 to combine the two plants and build a new state-of-the-art sewage system with tertiary treatment that would remove nitrates, chlorine, ammonia, and other contaminants from the plant’s effluent. The two Great Neck plants currently dump about 5.3 million gallons of effluent into Manhasset Bay, which is part of the Long Island Sound, every day.
North Hempstead Supervisor Jon Kaiman, however, put a halt to the project when told it would cost about $70 million to construct. District officials then had engineers develop an alternative plan that would reduce the cost to about $48 million but said it would be for a "bare bones" facility. The cuts would include reducing automation and limiting redundancies.
Kaiman then said he planned to ask Nassau County officials the feasibility of diverting Great Neck’s sewage to one of the South Shore facilities, such as the sewage treatment plant in Bay Park.
Although several mayors said they opposed diversion and wanted to keep the district's local control, Kaiman said consolidation would save Great Neck residents the cost of having to construct a new plant. The Newsday article stated the estimated cost to consolidate Great Neck’s sewage into a South Shore plant like Bay Park would be about $35 million, but an expected $15 million state grant would reduce the cost to just about $20 million.
Commissioner of Public Works Ray Ribeiro said in a recent interview that the county supports diversion as the most cost-effective and environmentally sound option for Great Neck’s two sewage treatment facilities. "The concept still makes sense to us," Ribeiro stated. "If the town is talking about re-initiating those discussions, we would certainly do that."
In a 2003 New York Times article about Great Neck possibly consolidating their sewer plants into the county facility at Cedar Creek, former Great Neck Mayor Stephen Falk said the plan to consolidate was ecologically and financially sound. He also said state environmental regulations mandated that the Great Neck sewage plants reduce their nitrogen emissions into Manhasset Bay by almost 59 percent by 2014 so the least expensive method of meeting the mandate was to divert the sewage to the existing county plant.
''The sewer diversion is actually -- when it's all studied -- is an ecological win for all parties regardless of whether it's North Shore or South Shore,'' he said. ''That's because once you close two treatment plants, you've contributed an enormous amount to the water quality of the Long Island Sound and its tributaries.''
Well, duh, Mr. Falk. But did Mr. Falk or anyone else ever stop to think, or even give a care, about how consolidation negatively impacts the waterways on the South Shore? It seems things haven't really changed all that much since 2003. Everyone still believes it is acceptable to dump on the South Shore.
On June 8th, the Nassau County Legislature voted in favor of adding the sewage from the villages of Cedarhurst and Lawrence to Bay Park despite the persistent protests of concerned citizens that the plant needs major upgrades. Now the county wants Great Neck to consolidate into our plant without performing significant upgrades or constructing an ocean outfall pipe first?
And then comes Long Beach. Then Atlantic Beach. Then Glen Cove. Then the HUB. And so on and so on until the bay is gone! We demand the county to cease and desist from diverting any sewage to our plant until they do their job and perform necessary upgrades to better treat the almost 65 million gallons of effluent that is already dumped into the bay each and every day.
If anyone knows a good lawyer willing to work pro-bono, I think we have a good case!
