So Newsday finally conceded that our warning that sewers siphoning ground water and dumping it into the ocean has been leading to salt intrusion of our aquifer. https://paper.newsday.com/html5/reader/production/default.aspx?edid=551aba41-de6b-4677-bde4-8a6164177574&pnum=8
Isn’t it interesting, however, that they buried this story and refused to make this concession until well after the people went to the ballot box and voted in favor of increasing the sales tax to build more sewers?
The findings we published were first posted in a white paper issued by the Center for Cost Effective Government this past fall, well before the November referendum. We made announcements of these findings in Long Island Life & Politics’ editorials and stories.
The Center also sent an op-ed to Newsday highlighting the sewer/salt intrusion problem. The op-ed was rebuffed.
The majority of the media joined forces with self-interested contractors, overzealous environmental groups and publicity-seeking politicians, declaring that our drinking water was polluted from toilet water (a mostly inaccurate assertion) and that the only way to save it was by raising our sales tax and building sewers throughout Suffolk County.
We cautioned that, while there was a need to address groundwater quality, we did not need to raise the sales tax again, since hundreds of millions of dollars were already available in county surpluses, and that the quest to sewer over Suffolk County would actually be dangerous and counterproductive. This was especially so if they continued down this same path of sucking up groundwater to cleanse the effluent in sewers and thereafter discharge it into the Bay and Ocean.
Newsday wrote a number of articles talking about salt intrusion, but it seems they deliberately refused to link the intrusion to the existing sewers that were sucking up the groundwater. (Here are some of those articles, each making no mention, despite our warnings, of sewers being a root cause of salinization.) They were instead citing politicians and environmentalists who were putting the blame on other less significant factors, such as golf course irrigation.
We believe they did this because they had an agenda to get this sales tax increase passed at all costs and not inject any counter information that would distract it from its preconceived narrative.
Did they deliberately omit any link to sewers back in August because they didn’t want people voting against the referendum?
Another article in September blamed the depletion on climate change, but, again, not a single reference to the fact that it is the sewer systems that were a culprit in siphoning so much water from the aquifers.
Omitting the connection to sewers in one article can be chalked up to a mistake, but twice? Seems deliberate to us. But now that the referendum has passed, we suddenly see articles conceding the link between sewers and aquifer depletion was there all along.
Sounds eerily similar to the mainstream media covering up Joe Biden’s dementia when he was still a viable candidate, but suddenly conceding this obvious fact once Biden was no longer running.
Here are some of the quotes from the white paper the Center published (primarily from the findings of sewer scholar Mark Romaine — no relation to the politician) prior to the vote that Newsday should have included in its pre-referendum coverage.
The misleading narrative being floated is that constructing sewers will lead to cleaner drinking water. If that were the case, Nassau County, which has been almost completely sewered since the 1980s, would have better water quality than Suffolk County, which is almost 75% unsewered. But that’s not the case. Nassau is now looking to the New York City reservoirs to get clean, potable water, as highlighted in the USGS/NYSDEC reports that salt water intrusion and overall aquifer depletion has occurred there.
The reason for this is that ocean outfall sewering does not return water to the ground. Instead, the water gets flushed out into the ocean. This leaves a gaping hole in the aquifer where groundwater previously existed. This causes nitrogen which is normally cycled and recycled along the surface of the aquifer, to be drawn down into the aquifer as water suppliers continue to pump new water out. It also increases the odds of salt intrusion into the water supply.
An alternative way to preserve our drinking water is to create tertiary treatment plants that cleanse our water to a potable standard, and then redeposit the water back into the aquifer to maintain historic water table heights. This prevents the nitrates just below the surface from being sucked down into the aquifer. This process already exists at some sewage treatment plants throughout Suffolk, such as in Selden, where they treat 2.6 million gallons per day (gpd) to a tertiary standard and return the water to the ground.
So, the irony here is that sewers, which are being touted as cleansing our water supply, are actually reducing the overall volume and compromising the quality and quantity of the water within the aquifer.
It’s only now, months after the sales tax referendum that Newsday highlights this phenomenon we warned about. The Newsday article from December 24 stated in part:
Studies have shown that sewer projects with outfall pipes that direct treated water to the ocean and bays are leading to saltwater intrusion in the aquifers, impacting Long Island’s only source of clean water.
A 2024 federal report found that widespread pumping from aquifers under Long Island without equivalent recharging is increasing saltwater intrusion in parts of Nassau County.
That’s all fine and good, but why weren’t these words in those earlier articles so the public could have made a more well-informed decision of the referendum?
We believe, indeed, that some new sewers are needed, especially in downtown areas to promote more next-generation housing and a greater sense of vibrancy via restaurants and nightlife. They would also be helpful in areas with very high water tables such as Oakdale and Mastic/Shirley. But to just spend billions of dollars to cut up all of Suffolk County, as many contracts wish to do for profit, would be a major mistake. It would be counterproductive if we continued down the old path of building sewers that sucked up all the groundwater, and then left the void to be filled by the salt water.
We specifically said that where sewers were going to be built, it was essential to have a tertiary plant that cleanses the water to a degree that it would be safe to return it back into the ground from which it came to avoid the salt water intrusion. Well, Newsday now indirectly admits that we were right. (And fortunately, present County Executive Ed Romaine has agreed with our contention that all new sewers must be tertiary plants that recharge the depleted aquifer. At least someone was reading our white paper suggestions.)
If only they had published the statements and articles before the vote, we could have slowed things down and moved forward with a more coherent plan that didn’t include yet another increase in our sales tax, which is now at one of the highest levels in the nation.