Bay Park Sewage Plant - Destroying the Western Bays

[MBILL]

This is a press release from Splash and several other groups regarding the Bay Park sewage plant. I think it's important for members to know how badly this plant is impacting our bays!

HEARD AT YESTERDAY'S PRESS CONFERENCE:

New 10 Point Plan for Bay Park Sewage Treatment Plant

Environmentalists and Community Organizations Support Privatization of Bay Park Sewage Treatment Plant and Urge Critical Upgrades

December 19, 2012, Freeport, NY -- During Superstorm Sandy, the Bay Park Sewage Treatment Plant (STP) completely failed, discharging raw and partially treated sewage into bays, homes, and throughout streets. The STP needs to be rebuilt and modernized.

Today, Environmentalists released 10 key objectives for Nassau County to implement to ensure protection of public health and the Western Bays, including: supporting privatization of the plant, modernizing the plant to treat nitrogen, installing monitors at the outfall pipe, and creating a public oversight committee.

"Rebuilding Bay Park STP without transitioning and modernizing it, is not recovery," stated Adrienne Esposito, Executive Director, Citizens Campaign for the Environment. "We need the County to be aggressive in upgrading this plant to provide for a safer, clearer future. Merely, fixing the facility is not enough."

"This is an opportunity we must not pass up. Our chance to go from destruction to reconstruction and finally get our bays healthy again is here now," stated Rob Weltner, president, Operation SPLASH.

"The effluent from the Bay Park Sewage Treatment Plant has been having egregious impacts to the environment and quality of life in the western bays for a long time. Failure of the aging sewage system infrastructure during and since Hurricane Sandy is now contributing to the most serious of the storm-induced impacts to Long Island's environment. The best way to mitigate impacts from the failure of the plant is to modernize it, upgrade treatment, and appropriately relocate a new outfall," stated Carl LoBue, Senior Marine Scientist, The Nature Conservancy on Long Island.

Stakeholder organizations have spent hours researching options and meeting with experts to assess and outline a new path forward for managing Nassau County's sewage infrastructure.

"Sandy revealed just how vulnerable our sewage treatment infrastructure is. The position paper we offer [here today] is a solid blueprint for elevating the Bay Park plant to top grade working order. It is imperative and incumbent upon those responsible for County infrastructure to proactively implement the paper's 10 objectives. Effectuating them will serve to reverse the degradation currently imperiling our Western Bays and restore them to clean and healthful status - critical for saving Nassau County's threatened south shore," stated Gerald Ottavino, Co-chair Point Lookout Civic Association Environmental Committee.

"The Bay Park Sewage Treatment Plant has been overlooked and in disrepair for more than a decade. Accepting polluting our environment and quality of life daily in the Western Bays has to stop. Sandy proved how fragile the Bay Park Sewage Treatment Plant is. With such devastation we urge the Federal Government to fund the rebuilding, upgrade and modernization of the Bay Park Sewer Treatment Plant," stated Scott Bochner, Sludge Stoppers Taskforce.

The Bay Park STP discharges between 58-65 million gallons of treated sewage a day into the bays. New science now documents that this treated sewage effluent stays in the bays and sloshes back and forth between tides, but very rarely reaching the ocean as original plans indicated. As a result, these south shore waters are experiencing degraded water quality, high ammonia levels, increased ulva seaweed, and high nitrate contamination.

The position paper released today is the end results of six months of stakeholder organizations researching options and meeting with experts to assess and outline a new path forward for managing Nassau County's sewage infrastructure

The Western Bays are home to the largest concentration of salt marshes in the South Shore Estuary Reserve. This system of bays and marshes provide critical habitat for birds and marine species, and offer abundant recreational opportunities for residents and tourists. The bays were once productive fishing and shellfishing grounds, serving as an economic engine and recreational haven for Nassau County.

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To read the Positioning Paper and the 10 Steps for Rebuilding Bay Park, please click here.
http://library.constantcontact.com/down ... +paper.pdf



To donate or become a member of OperationSPLASH,
please click here or call (516) 378-4770
http://operationsplash.com/membership_n ... dium=email


Sewage from Bay Park still spills, unfiltered, toward Long Beach and Island Park.

[MBILL]

There's a chart in the link that's pretty interesting. It shows that the expected flushing action of the tides out the inlet(s) really isn't happening and never did.
Basically, Reynolds Channel is just an open sewer pipe with crap sloshing back and forth.
Anybody wonder why the western bays are dead/declining?