Here is another reason to oppose the referendum on the ballot this November 5 to raise the sales tax to purportedly build more sewers.
Check out this Newsday article that sounded the alarm about salt water infiltrating our aquifer. https://www.newsday.com/long-island/salt-nassau-aquifer-oshgm2jg#
The article mentions a number of reasons for such infiltration, but fails to even touch upon what is one of the most significant factors — the impact that sewers have in increasing the salinity in our groundwater.
Politicians on both sides of the aisle (with a few exceptions) are pushing residents to vote to increase the sales tax by another one-eighth of a percent. We have been adamant that there is no need to do this since the county is sitting on hundreds of millions of dollars in reserves left over from Covid.
But here’s another reason to vote against it: Sewers don’t necessarily improve water quality. In some ways, they can make it worse.
That’s because it takes a tremendous amount of groundwater to be pumped out of the aquifer to clean the effluent that goes into the sewers. That water is then flushed out into the ocean. That’s much different than the natural method whereby groundwater is replenished when the rain hits the ground and percolates into the aquifer.
When all of that groundwater is siphoned out of the aquifer without being replenished, it leaves a giant hole in the aquifer, which makes it easier for saltwater to intrude. It also makes it easier for nitrates that accumulate at the surface to get sucked down into the aquifer quickly without going through the natural filtering process where water would seep through long stretches of sand and rocks.
We believe that more sewers are needed in a limited fashion. They’ll be very helpful in areas with very high water tables, such as Mastic Beach, Oakdale and similar areas. They will also be helpful to allow for needed economic development, where high density is preferred, such as in our downtowns or in an industrial corridor, such as Hauppauge Industrial Park.
But just building out sewers throughout Suffolk and making it 90% sewer like Nassau will not necessarily result in cleaner water. If it did, Nassau would have much cleaner drinking water than Suffolk, which is only 27% sewered. Spoiler alert: Nassau’s water quality is not better.
We say, slow down before we raise the sales tax, which will never be lowered again. We first recommend that a long-term plan be established as to how many sewers we would want and where they’d be located.
Another obvious reason to oppose this bill is because the legislature snuck in a second provision that would extend the current quarter-penny sales tax out for another 30 years, despite the fact that it doesn’t expire for another seven years.
Why the rush?
Perhaps so that there would be little discussion as to whether we even need to keep this quarter-penny sales tax on the books. We may indeed conclude that it is a good idea to extend the tax, but why not look to see if some of the older provisions are now moot? For instance, scores of millions of dollars go into the open space component of this program. That made sense when there was a plethora of open space back in the 1980s and 1990s. Those days are gone. There is very little, low-hanging fruit remaining anymore for purchase.
So why keep accumulating money and taxing the people for this purpose? Why not consider taking at least some of that money for the sewers and cesspool improvements that the legislature is seeking by increasing our sales?
Some legislators have confided in us that they appreciate our concerns and agree with them in many ways, but felt pressured to have voted for this bad legislation for fear that they would be labeled “anti-environment.”
This is being sold as an environmental bill, but, remember, more sewers do not necessarily get you a better environment. They will get you more development which puts more pressure on our aquifer. Sewers will also suck out a tremendous amount of groundwater that will not be replenished into our aquifer.
We conclude by noting that we are in favor of building more sewers in the appropriate locations, but giving a blank check of tens of billions of dollars as this referendum does is foolish. Let’s reject it and tell our legislators to go back to the drawing board and give us a sensible plan that’s affordable and actually does clean our groundwater.