When a clean-water plant upgrade plan is put on the table, it usually comes from the clean-water agency – because the plant is aging, needs more capacity, or is struggling to meet a new, stricter permit. Then, quite often, there is consternation about the rate increase that will result.
Here’s a case where community members say a clean-water plant needs to be improved, not just restored, after damage from Superstorm Sandy. The Bay Park Sewage Treatment Plant in Nassau County, N.Y., “has been having problems for years,” according to a report in the Long Island Business News.
During Sandy, the plant flooded, caught fire, and discharged raw and partially treated sewage that, because of the flooding, mixed with water that flowed through streets and into homes. Now, environmental and community groups say it’s not enough to restore that plant’s operations – they want the plant upgraded, as well.
“The plant treats 40 percent of Nassau County’s wastewater and discharges directly into Reynolds channel between Island Park and Long Beach,” the LIBN story states. “New science shows that these waters around the outfall pipe are experiencing degraded water quality, high ammonia levels, increased seaweed, and high nitrate contamination.”
Recently, several environmental and community groups asked the county to take steps to protect the waters. After what leaders called extensive research, the groups offers a 10-point plan for the county wastewater infrastructure that includes privatizing the plant, adding nitrogen removal technology, installing monitors at the outfall, investigating an ocean outfall pipe, and forming a public oversight committee.
Adrienne Esposito, executive director of Citizens Campaign for the Environment, told the newspaper, “Rebuilding the Bay Park Sewage Treatment Plant without transitioning and modernizing it is not recovery. 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.”
The question now is whether county residents will be willing to accept higher water and sewer rates to cover the capital and long-term operating costs of the facility. The events surrounding Sandy may add impetus to the environmental and community groups’ requests – at times it takes a calamity to drive home the necessity of doing something that should have been done long ago.
Read the article in the LIBN at http://libn.com/youngisland/2012/12/20/groups-call-for-upgrades-to-bay-park-sewage-treatment-plant/
