Category: Pollution

Suffolk County Mosquito Control Takes to The Skies Again Wednesday July 19-Fri July 21st

Yes, Vector Control is back, having had their funding renewed by The Suffolk County Legislature.  So these next three days, as will be the case every two weeks throughout the summer, the copters will be flying again.   We can only hope for the sake of our marshes, that this year it is for the last time.

Please send your complaints about Vector Control copters strafing your neighborhoods and our marshes here:   Vector Control Complaints.    It’s really a county form to complain about mosquitoes, but we are taking what we can get!

Rimmer-Pickering Marsh, One of Dozens The County Plans To Dose

Mosquito spraying destroys marsh habitat and in so doing makes the mosquito problem worse.   The best defense against mosquitoes is nature — dragonflies, fish fry to eat the larvae, bats, purple martins.   Worse, this spraying is not at all connected to public health concerns:   West Nile is carried only by fresh water mosquitoes, the ones that typically hatch right in your backyard.    The spraying is in fact being done to control a nuisance — people are being bitten by salt water mosquitoes hatching in marshes close to summer homes and beaches.

Why won’t Suffolk County embrace the science on this and abandon the futile and destructive practice of mosquito spraying in favor of marsh restoration, so that we can bring back the mosquito’s natural predators?   That would also go a long way towards improving coastal resiliency, which is critical to Long Islanders.   Healthier marshes can take more energy out of storm waves, and protect those nearby.

Why is Suffolk County still using methoprene, an insecticide that is illegal now in Connecticut under most circumstances because it is an ‘arthropod growth inhibitor,’  i.e. insects, spiders, and crustaceans (think lobsters).  It kills a lot more than just mosquitoes.

Here is the press release from Suffolk County as to where the scheduled spraying is to be done.    Use the complaint option to send a message:   Please apply science to our environmental issues rather than pouring toxins on the problem.   Bring back healthy marshes!

SUFFOLK COUNTY
DEPARTMENT OF HEALTH SERVICES
NEWS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: CONTACT: Grace Kelly-McGovern 
July 10, 2017 631-854-0095

The Suffolk County Department of Public Works’ Division of Vector Control plans to treat parts of the following marshes by helicopter to control mosquito larvae. Should weather conditions prevent completion of the work, it will be continued on the next suitable day.

Time and date of the application: July 11-13, 2017, 6:00 a.m. – 8:00 p.m. 
Method of application: Low altitude, large droplet liquid application
Name of Pesticide: VectoBac 12AS Liquid Concentrate (Bti – Bacillus thuringiensis israelensis) and Altosid Liquid Larvicide Concentrate (Methoprene)
Approximate location(s):

Marshes that will be treated are marked “Yes.”

Town of Babylon Treat? Town of Brookhaven (cont.) Treat?
Sore Thumb Yes Fireplace Neck Yes
Oak Beach Yes Wertheim NWR Yes
Oak Beach North Manor of St. George
West Gilgo Yes Smith Point North Yes
Gilgo Yes Johns Neck Creek Yes
Cedar Beach Yes Mastic Beach Yes
Cedar Beach Golf Course Yes Pattersquash Island
Oak Island Yes Town of Southampton
Ox/Helicopter Island Stokes Poges Yes
Gilgo Island Jagger Lane Yes
Town of Islip Apacuck Point Yes
Robert Moses CG Station Yes Moneybogue Bay Yes
Clam Pond Yes Westhampton Dunes Yes
Captree Yes Dune Rd (Overton) Yes
Gardiner Park Yes Meadow Lane Yes
Admiralty/Isbrandtsen North Haven
Scully Yes Iron Point
Seatuck NWR Yes North Sea Yes
Islip Preserve Yes Town of East Hampton
Quintuck Creek Yes Napeague Yes
Heckscher State Park Yes Beach Hampton Yes
Timber Point Accabonac Harbor Yes
Idle Hour Pending Town of Riverhead
Pepperidge Hall Pending Indian Island Yes
Ludlows Creek Yes Overlook – Aquebogue Yes
West Oak Recreation Yes Crescent Duck Farm Yes
West Sayville GC Pending Aquebogue Farm Yes
Namkee Creek Yes Millar Farm Yes
Town of Brookhaven   Union Ave
Sayville YC Yes Pier Avenue
Stillman Creek Yes Town of Southold
Pine Neck Ave. (Swan River) Yes New Suffolk Yes
Roe Ave. (Mud Creek) Yes Great Hog Neck Yes
Abets Creek Yes Kerwin Blvd. Yes
Hedges Creek Yes Pipes Neck Creek Yes
Lyman Marsh Yes Pipes Cove Yes
Bellport Bay Yes Town of Smithtown
Beaverdam Creek Yes Sunken Meadow

The products used by Vector Control are registered by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and are applied in accordance with the required state and federal permits.

No precautions are recommended to prepare for this spraying, as the helicopter will be flying at a very low level over marsh areas and taking other precautions to control drift into inhabited areas. Human exposure from this operation is unlikely and the products involved have no significant human toxicity.

For current and future notices and/or further information:
• Suffolk County Division of Vector Control 631-852-4270
• Suffolkcountyny.gov/Depar…/PublicWorks/VectorMosquitoControl
• Vector Control and Wetlands Management Long-Term Plan

suffolkcountyny.gov 
Facebook.com/SuffolkCountyHealthServices 
Twitter.com/SuffolkCoHealth

 

Suffolk County Must End Its Destructive, Futile and Misguided Vector Control (Mosquito) Spraying Program

It’s time to trash our marshes again:

Suffolk County has had a decades long program of spraying for mosquitoes around our marshes.    We still have a lot of mosquitoes, and a lot of dying marshes.   When you take out a key element of the food chain — mosquito larvae — there are consequences for fish, insects, birds, amphibians, reptiles, whole habitats.    When those insecticides also kill dragon flies, a natural predator of mosquitoes along with butterflies and bees, you have to ask why we continue to attack our marshes.   When there is also evidence that methoprene also affects arthropods — crabs and lobsters — then why are we still spraying?

Here is what Kevin McAllister of DefendH2O had to say about Vector Spraying, an issue he has been passionately pursuing for over a decade:

It turns out, this ‘vector spraying’ is really ‘nuisance spraying’:   The mosquitoes that carry West Nile virus are fresh water and weak fliers.  Typically, they won’t range further than 80 feet from where they spawned, that is, in your gutters, bird baths, puddles on your property.    Has Suffolk County made any public effort to inform us as to the true orgins of West Nile so that we can better protect ourselves?   If West Nile is the problem they claim it is, why is the county spending all its time and effort and funds killing mosquitoes in salt water marshes, mosquitoes that DONT CARRY WEST NILE?

Our marshes of course are sprayed because those constituents living near the marshes complain that they are being bitten up, with the politicians even calling on their behalf.   In other words, our public officials continue to bow to public pressure where everyone pretends its about public safety.   Meanwhile, methoprene is raining from the sky.   Connecticut banned it out of concern for its effect on crabs and lobsters.   On Long Island, it’s still legal.   Good at killing mosquitoes, and apparently other things as well.

Are we serious about building a sustainable Long Island, about healing our waters?   Then why would we allow this practice to continue?    In trying to win this war on mosquitoes, we are destroying our marshes.   We need to be smarter than this.

What needs to happen is that people who live in the area where the county does spray need to contact the county and demand that none of this spray gets on their property.

Here’s a live map of the first place on the list to spray — Sore Thumb.   CLICK ON THE IMAGE TO SEE THE INTERACTIVE MAP:

And here’s Idle Hour:

Please Contact Us with any request to create web based map for your marsh, if listed above.

Contact Suffolk County today:

And Follow:
suffolkcountyny.gov
Facebook.com/SuffolkCountyHealth
Twitter.com/SuffolkCoHealth

Tell them that our marshes, the fish, frogs, and bugs, the crabs, are worth people having to swat at a mosquito, that maybe bat boxes and dragonflies and fish fry would work better than what we have tried for decades.   A healthy marsh is the best defense against mosquitoes, and our policy has been to spray insecticides.    All we have to show for this endless war on bugs are degraded marshes.   Let’s work with nature now.   We’ve killed their predators.  Lets bring them back!

 

Is Long Island At a Turning Point? Investing in Waste Water Infrastructure And Changing Our Lawn Care Practices

Long Island is about to replace its cesspools and septic tanks. Nassau County has 140,000, Suffolk 360,000. Suffolk intends to launch a pilot program that will deploy 400 units over the next two years. Albany is chipping in with $2 billion to address the issue at scale. Yet more will be needed, but everyone, seeing the problem, is stepping up. At the same time that we do this, we need to stop polluting our waters with lawn fertilizer and pesticides.

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Be In Babylon For Earth Day April 22nd, and Help Make History — The Creek Defender Program Launches

ATTENTION ALL BABYLONIANS!

Save The Great South Bay’s Creek Defender Program launches on Earth Day April 22nd along The Carll’s River!

Save The Great South Bay, in conjunction with local citizens, schools, civic groups, businesses, and with other local environmental groups, will be launching its Creek Defender Program.   Save The Great South Bay believes that in order to heal the bay, we need to heal the creeks first.   There are 31 of them that flow into The Great South Bay.   The launch of The Creek Defender Program in Babylon is meant as a model for all the communities on The South Shore:   Here is how you can be effective local stewards of your bays, ponds, streams and creeks.

The first creek we will address is Carll’s River, which begins well north of The Sunrise Highway.  We’ve mapped it online like all the other 30 creeks.     Clicking on the image will take you to a live map.

 

Babylon High School, The Elementary School, The PTA, The Village of Babylon, The Town of Babylon, Seatuck,The I Love Long Island Campaign, South Shore Paddle Boards, and a number of local civic groups and businesses will gather to help clean The Carll’s River.   We must defend our creeks.  We must stop polluting them with runoff, pesticides, and lawn fertilizers, and illegal dumping.   In order to heal The Great South Bay, we need to heal the 31 creeks that flow from The South Shore into The Great South Bay.

We propose to accomplish this by organizing ten person teams of volunteers to go door to door in Babylon Village and along Carll’s River with information on The Creek Defender Program, on ecosafe lawn care and using native plantings, to proper stewardship of this river.   Babylon’s efforts on Earth Day will become a model for how we address our other South Shore creeks.

9:00 -12:00 South Shore Paddle Boards will lead a clean up of the Sumpawams, starting at their store at 258 East Main Street.

12:00-1:00 Registration, Staging (DJ), Babylon Elementary School:

1:00 – 4:00 Creek Clean Up. Door-to-Door Campaign promoting , which

4:00-8:00 After Party at The Babylon Gazebo. Kick Off by Todd Shaw, Babylon’s Creek Defender (Carlls, Sumpawams, Fosters)

Beer provided by Blue Point Brewery, Brewers of a soon-to-be released beer “Drink The Bay Clean,” with proceeds going to support The Creek Defender Program and other initiatives for the bay.

Live Music

Restaurants

Local Environmental Groups

Kudos to Babylon for showing The South Shore the way, and for creating the model through which, creek by creek, we can bequeath a healthier bay to future generations!

If you’d like to participate, drop us a line!

Route It South — Bring Sewering To Low Lying Areas Near The Great South Bay, and Maybe Bring Back Oystering

DID YOU KNOW THAT THOUSANDS UPON THOUSANDS OF CESSPOOLS AND SEPTIC TANKS ARE SEEPING NITROGREN INTO OUR GREAT SOUTH BAY…?

 

THAT NITROGEN HAS ALL BUT WIPED OUT OUR SHELLFISHING INDUSTRY BY TRIGGERING MASSIVE ALGAL BLOOMS.

 

IF WE CAN REPLACE THE CESSPOOLS CLOSE TO THE BAY WITH SEWERS, WE CAN GET THE WATER CLEAN ENOUGH TO BRING BACK CLAMMING AND OYSTERING, AND REVIVE A $500 MILLION INDUSTRY.

 

GIVE THE CLAMS AND OYSTERS A CHANCE, AND, AS FILTER FEEDERS, THEY WILL HELP TO CLEAN THE WATER WHILE BRINGING PROSPERITY TO THE SOUTH SHORE, AND RESTORING A WAY OF LIFE.

 

$383 MILLION DOLLARS HAS ALREADY BEEN ALLOCATED TO SEWER ALONG FOUR MAJOR RIVERS EMPTYING INTO THE GREAT SOUTH BAY.

 

WE SAY ‘LET’S PUT THAT MONEY TO WORK SO THAT WE AND THE SHELLFISH CAN GET TO WORK.’

 

THE RONKONKOMA HUB, A LARGE SCALE PROJECT JUST NOW BREAKING GROUND, NEEDS A ROUTE TO THE BERGEN SEWAGE TREATMENT PLANT.

 

WE ARE PETITIONING THE COUNTY TO ‘ROUTE IT SOUTH’ THROUGH SAYVILLE, WEST SAYVILLE, AND OAKDALE, SO THAT WE CAN REPLACE THE LOW LYING CESSPOOLS CLOSE TO THE SHORE. YES, IT WILL COST MORE THAN WHAT WAS INITIALLY PLANNED, AROUND $24 MILLION MORE. BUT LET’S LOOK AT THE RETURN ON INVESTMENT.

 

WE COULD OPEN UP THOUSANDS OF ACRES TO SHELLFISHING AGAIN, AND WITH EVERY ACRE OF OYSTERS GENERATING UP TO $100,000 A YEAR IN REVENUES, EVERYONE WINS, ESPECIALLY THE BAY. 

 

WE URGE YOU THEN: SIGN THE PETITION.

 

VOTE YES ON THIS PLAN TO CLEAN OUR WATERS. VOTE YES ON THIS ECONOMIC INVESTMENT. YOUR LOCAL OFFICIALS NEED TO HEAR YOUR VOICE, AND THIS PLAN NEEDS A FAIR HEARING.

 

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Creating a Display For The Moratorium on Pesticides / Organic Lawn Pledge — PLUS SPECIAL OFFER FOR ALL ORGANIC LAWN PEOPLE IN THE SAYVILLE AREA

What happens when one community decides to adopt organic lawn care practices? How does it change the health of the local waters and of the marine creatures in them? That is the question Sayville is about to try and answer.

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Send A Message to Albany on Suffolk County’s Proposed Water Quality Protection Fee Referendum: Let the People of Long Island Decide

It is imperative that the Long Island delegation in Albany represents our interests and works to get the Water Quality Protection Fee Referendum on the ballot this November so that the people of Long Island can vote for their future. We deserve the right to represent our interests.

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