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"I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve."

WWII Japanese Navy Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto

Yes, Bay Park Still Stinks!

(So Why Aren't We Yelling?)

After hearing about Nassau County’s Sewer Consolidation Plan back in January of 2008, a group of Bay Park/East Rockaway residents approached the County Legislature to tell them that the Bay Park Sewage Treatment Plant (STP) was in disrepair and causing major damage to the local marine environment and was in dire need of major upgrades before consolidation of the sewer treatment plants in Lawrence and Cedarhurst could become a reality.

The County responded by attacking our requests to fix the Bay Park plant and help restore the health of the bay as the simplistic, uninformed ramblings of a bunch of “NIMBYs”, or even worse, considered us nothing more than Republican party shills, sent to cause a ruckus in the Democrat controlled Legislature and ruffle the feathers of former County Executive Tom Suozzi.

The then-Majority members of the Nassau County Legislature completely ignored our concern that the plant was already the cause of many environmental issues affecting the health of the bay and adding more sewage to the Bay Park facility would only exacerbate these myriad problems and, despite our passionate requests to hold off their consolidation plan at least until a real, comprehensive study of the Western Bays could be completed to see what impact it would have, voted “YES” along party lines to pass the plan through.

Unwilling to allow the County to bully the residents of Bay Park/East Rockaway, a group of concerned citizens joined together under the banner of the Green Bay Parkers and vowed to stop the County from ramming the sewer consolidation plan down our throats, while fighting for plant upgrades that would help to save our bay from complete environmental destruction.

The Green Bay Parkers fought with the County for many years as we tried to get them to understand our main concern – How could the County add more sewage to the Bay Park facility when it was already incapable of properly treating the current sewage inflow?

After countless trips to County Legislative meetings, environmental group meetings, a community rally in the park, a public forum at the high school, a “Save the Bay” rally at the Legislative building in Mineola, and even proposals offering alternative and environmentally friendly methods of sewage treatment, the County still refused to budge on their consolidation plan.

Making matters worse, as the Green Bay Parkers pushed to get this story heard, our group, and our community as a whole, were ignored by the media except for a few articles in the local Herald newspaper or a small story tucked away deep in Newsday now and again. Completely missing the point, the media figured we were just being NIMBY’s and that a story about a sewage treatment plant on the South Shore would be met with apathy and was not deemed newsworthy.

Even our elected officials at State government level, who were elected to represent us, failed to recognize the gravity of the impending environmental disaster looming on the horizon and ignored our repeated attempts to reach out to them for help in stopping the County from pushing this ill-conceived sewer consolidation plan through.

The biggest insult, however, was that several Long Island environmental advocacy groups ignored our concerns, calling them unfounded and irrational. Some of these groups then backed the County and stated on public record that their respective organizations believed consolidating the sewage from Lawrence and Cedarhurst into the Bay Park STP would be best to help to clean up the western bays!

After the 2009 elections two of the Green Bay Parkers biggest opponents, Tom Suozzi & Legislator Jeff Toback, were unelected and the new administration under County Executive Ed Mangano promised to make our concerns about fixing the problems of the Bay Park plant and saving the bay a top priority.

The residents of Bay Park got even more great news in 2009 when the NYS Department of Budget finally released the much needed funding for Stony Brook University to begin work on an essential research study that will paint a comprehensive picture of the state of the Western Bays when completed.

By 2010 the brown tide turned in our favor once more and things got even better. Suddenly our concerns about the environmental damage caused by the Bay Park STP began to spread far and wide like sewage from the outfall pipe in Reynolds Channel. People from all across Nassau County began to realize - WE GOT A PROBLEM!

First, several videos from a concerned citizen in Long Beach showing the brown plume of crap flowing out of the Bay Park STP outfall pipe in Reynolds Channel surfaced on You Tube, giving visual evidence to our claims that the plant is not working properly and is causing major damage to the bay. To see one of the videos, click here: www.youtube.com/

After that the Long Island Press got hold of the story and ran a multi-page expose in December of 2010 collaborating what the Green Bay Parkers have been saying for years about the environmental damage being done to the bay by the sewer plant. To see the LI Press story go here: http://www.longislandpress.com/2010/12/16/bay-park-sewage-plant-dumping-waste-in-fishing-waters/

Even the environmental groups that championed the sewer consolidation plan, were now screaming that the Bay Park STP must stop dumping sludge into the bay before the damage becomes irreversible and the western bays and estuaries of the South Shore are declared dead.

Finally, the best evidence that we were right all along came out recently when the preliminary results of ongoing research by The School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences at Stony Brook University and the US Coast Guard were released during a recent meeting of the Western Bays Collaborative Working Group. To see the results of this presentation go here: Preliminary Stony Brook research presented to the Working Group, 2/11 or here: Preliminary USGS research presented to the Working Group, 2/11

It's only a matter of time before these studies are completed and the bay is declared as an impared waterway, or worse. After that, the NYSDEC will impose mandatory upgrades upon the Bay Park facility and declare the plant can no longer continue dumping sewage into the bay under penalty of being cited and fined. Hopefully that will mean the County can tap into Federal money to overhaul the current sewage infrastructure and upgrade the Bay Park plant to a more eco-friendly design that reduces the negative impact to the marine environment, and that would truly benefit us all.

Until that happens, however, the sewer effluent continues to flow into Reynolds Channel, dumping nearly 60 million gallons of treated sewage effluent into the bay on a daily basis. The shoreline of our bay is still lined with a slick, oily brown foam. And yes, the plant still stinks!

Yet, in spite of it all, it’s nice to know we were right all along. And that is why we are no longer yelling.

This is an unaltered photo of Hewlett Point Beach taken June 7, 2009

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