JANUARY 2020 • LONGISLANDPRESS.COM 15
POINT OF VIEW
WATER WORRIES
QUANTITY AT ISSUE
BY KARL GROSSMAN
Investigative reporter and professor
of journalism
On Long Island there’s been “a lot of
focus on water quality but not enough
on water quantity,” says John Turner,
a leading local environmentalist long
involved in water issues.
“It’s a constant challenge to inform
people on how they get their water —
where it comes from,” he says. Long
Islanders “don’t see” the “groundwater
reservoir” below, their sole source
of potable water.
There’s been increasing concern
about chemical contaminants in the
island’s water supply, he notes. But
quantity is an equivalent problem.
Nassau County has been hit by a
lowering of its water table because
85 percent of the county is sewered
and all these sewage treatment plants
rely on outfall of wastewater into
surrounding waterways.
In Suffolk, 30 percent sewered, the
Southwest Sewer District’s Bergen
Point Sewage Treatment Plant sends
millions of gallons a day of wastewater
through an outfall pipe into the
Atlantic Ocean, and smaller sewage
plants send wastewater into bays and
Long Island Sound.
In Nassau, lakes, ponds, and streams,
which are the “uppermost expression
of the aquifer system, have dropped
considerably,” says Turner. Hempstead
Lake “is Hempstead Pond.”
There’s no longer a Valley Stream in
Valley Stream.
It doesn’t have to be this way, he emphasizes.
In Suffolk, starting in 2016,
the Riverhead Sewage Treatment
Plant began sending treated effluent
to the county’s adjoining Indian Island
Golf Course. This has provided
irrigation nitrogen and fertilization,
and wastewater is no longer causing
algae blooms.
The key, says Turner, is water
"reuse." He's been calling on local
lawmakers to enact "an islandwide
water reuse roadmap."
If Nassau and Suffolk destroy their
underground water supply — as
Brooklyn and Queens did years ago
from over pumping and entry into the
water table of saltwater — there’ll be
no rescue from New York City, he says.
The city gets its water from upstate
reservoirs. There’s been talk recently
of Nassau buying water from the city.
But its reservoirs are near capacity.
Another alternative is desalinization
but that’s “incredibly energy intense
and expensive.”
Water reuse is a Long Island essential.
“Water reuse is a Long Island essential.”
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