A public rally in support of rebuilding Bay Park Sewage Treatment Plant in a way that is good for the environment and for Long Island’s economy and safety, is being held at The Theodore Roosevelt 1550 Franklin Avenue, Mineola at 11AM on February 11th.

The keynote speaker will be Nassau County Executive Ed Mangano.

Environmental scientists have been studying for years how The Bay Park Sewage Treatment Plant, originally constructed in 1949, and expanded in the ’70’s and ’80s as Nassau County’s population exploded, has been affecting water quality in the Western Bays. It was found that 85% of the nitrogenous waste in those waters was coming from the effluent from the Bay Park plant. This was destroying marsh, shellfish and fish habitats.

Sandy flooded the plant, and here was the result:

An estimated 2.2 billion gallons of partially treated sewage flowed into Rockaway Channel between when the plant failed the day of the Oct. 29 storm and Dec. 21 when the plant become fully operational again 44 days later, according to Climate Central, a New Jersey-based nonprofit research group. They estimated another 104 million gallons of raw sewage was sent into the bay from the beleaguered plant that was ranked the worst on Long Island two years ago.

Here’s a link to that full article:
http://www.longislandpress.com/2013/04/30/bay-park-sewage-plant-sandy-spill-ranks-worst-in-ny/

Sandy Relief money as been approved for building a new Bay Park Sewage Treatment Plant. The first question is, though, will it be state of the art? The public needs to weigh in. We have but one chance to do this right:

The re-engineering of the Bay Park STP provides a unique opportunity to employ modern treatment techniques that will improve the quality of effluent; abate plant noise and odor in the adjacent communities; and recover and/or utilize waste resources. For instance, ultraviolet technology should be installed to disinfect pathogens, rather than chlorine, which will save in chronic chemical costs and be safer for our environment. In addition, recovery of latent heat from generators has the potential to accelerate biological nitrogen reactions in winter; and methane gas can be used as a fuel.

Beyond that, in order to assist in the recovery of the marsh lands around Bay Park so that we can again shellfish there, so that the restored marshes could help protect our coast from future flooding, so that this area is a place where future generations would want to live, this new sewage treatment plant needs with it an ocean outfall pipe where the high quality effluent would dissipate into the ocean. Admittedly not ideal, but having the effluent just poured back into the Western Bay would be a great mistake. The bay flushes poorly and that nitrogen rich water would continue to destroy what’s left.

Here’s a flyer on the rally and the issue.