Port Jefferson Harbor. Proposition 2, on the general election ballot in Suffolk County this November, could help reduce nitrogen pollution in the county’s groundwater, waterways, bays, and harbors. © savethesound.org
On the Monday following the long Fourth of July weekend, New York State Assemblymember Fred Thiele took his turn at the podium, flanked by an assembly of unlikely allies. He was addressing a bill that he’d sponsored in Albany—the Suffolk County Water Quality Restoration Act—which had already passed the state and county legislatures, been signed by Governor Kathy Hochul, and minutes later would be signed into law by Suffolk County Executive Ed Romaine. It was the latest in a long series of steps that will put a decision before Suffolk County voters this Election Day.
“What brings us here today is clean water,” said Thiele, speaking in a county government building in Hauppauge, a Long Island hamlet whose name originated with the area’s native population, the Nissequogues: the land of sweet waters. “In Suffolk County, on Long Island, clean water isn’t just about the environment, it’s about the economy . . . It’s why you see this unique coalition of people that have come together for this—business and labor and the environment and local government, all coming together for the issue of clean water.”
As the diverse gathering of stakeholders who advocated for the legislation would agree, when you live on an island, water is more than a vital resource. It’s central to your identity. You’re surrounded by it (at least on three sides, as is the case in Suffolk County, bounded on the west by Nassau County). It’s essential for both occupation and recreation. It’s why so many people live in Suffolk County and many more visit every year. It provides beauty and protection and wildlife habitat and, yes, drinking water, which on Long Island is supplied by a sole-source aquifer—400 million gallons of freshwater a day for the nearly 2.9 million residents of Nassau and Suffolk counties.
And yet, as County Executive Romaine said at that bill signing, “For years, we struggled and watched as our bays, our waterways, our groundwater, have become contaminated.”
The nature of the problem has been known for years: nitrogen pollution. Nitrogen was outed as “public water enemy #1” nearly a decade ago in the executive summary of the Suffolk County Comprehensive Water Resources Management Plan. The source of the nitrogen pollution also is no mystery. “In Suffolk County,” noted the county’s 2020 Subwatersheds Wastewater Plan, “approximately 74 percent of homes are unsewered and discharge sanitary wastewater containing elevated nitrogen levels.” That means wastewater from 380,000 aging, inefficient cesspools and septic systems has been released into the groundwater that provides drinking water and flows into the rivers and streams that feed Long Island Sound, Peconic Bay, the Great South Bay, and the Atlantic Ocean.
Then there are the consequences of nitrogen pollution, which county leaders also have understood for years, including degraded water quality; the proliferation of algal blooms, which can lower oxygen in the water, creating hypoxic (low oxygen) or anoxic (no oxygen) conditions that cannot support fish or other aquatic life; and the loss of eelgrass and tidal marshlands that protect against coastal erosion, storm surge, and sea level rise.
The biggest problem, though, has not been identifying a solution. It’s been figuring out how to pay for it. Which is what the Suffolk County Water Quality Restoration Act, at long last, seeks to resolve. If approved by Suffolk County voters in a ballot referendum this November, it would create a stable and recurring revenue source to support expanded sewer coverage for homes and businesses where possible and the replacement of outdated septic systems with modern clean water systems designed to remove nitrogen from wastewater. The fund would be financed by a 0.125% increase (1/8 of a penny) to the county sales tax, then used to secure potentially billions of dollars of state and federal grants. Collectively these funds would invest in infrastructural upgrades at the scale required to meaningfully address a pollution crisis of this magnitude.
The decision to move forward with this plan now rests in the hands of the most important stakeholders of all: the voters of Suffolk County. For all the attention paid to the front of this year’s ballot, it may be Proposition 2 on the flip side that proves most directly consequential to the lives and livelihoods of the people who live on the eastern half of the country’s most populous island. ■
Save the Sound works across the Long Island Sound region to protect the Sound and its rivers, fight climate change, save endangered lands, and work with nature to restore ecosystems. More info at savethesound.org
