Why raise the sales tax when the county is sitting on hundreds of millions in reserves?
By Steve Levy
A proposition on the ballot this November proposes to increase the Suffolk County sales tax to fund sewers on the inaccurate theory that sewer construction will provide cleaner drinking water.
However, over-sewering can do more harm than good, and, in any event, the county is flush with huge amounts of cash left over from federal COVID aid, thereby obviating the need for a sales tax increase.
While sewers may be needed in some areas with high water tables or where higher density is needed for workforce housing and industrial development, extensive sewer development to mirror that in Nassau County may be wasteful and counterproductive.
If building sewers led to cleaner drinking water, as some proponents claim, Nassau County, which is 90% sewered, would have cleaner water than Suffolk (only 27% sewered), but that is not the case. In fact, Nassau just completed a study in 2022 looking for ways to tap into New York City’s reservoir for a cleaner, more plentiful water supply.
Moreover, sewers did not improve our shellfishing harvest or prevent algae blooms. If they did, shellfish harvesting would be robust in Nassau County and absent in Suffolk. However, there is little shellfishing going on in Nassau, with the exception of the Oyster Bay area, which, ironically, is the one area of Nassau not sewered. The dropoff of shellfishing in our bays corresponds to the installation of sewers in Nassau and Western Suffolk around the 1970s.
Too much sewering leads to a depletion of the water table since sewers require a tremendous amount of groundwater to clean waste. That water is flushed out into the ocean and not replenished into our groundwater system, as is the case with septic systems. That, in turn, leaves a gap in our subsurface water, which can result in salt water intrusion, as well as nitrate contaminants on the surface being quickly sucked down into our aquifer.
Nor do street-based sewers, which are not hooked up to outflow pipes, resolve the issue of nitrogen flowing into our streams and tributaries via road runoff.
The county should not be raising the sales tax any further for these purposes when hundreds of millions of dollars are available in county reserves due to massive amounts of COVID aid that came from the federal government and can be used for environmental purposes.
Of equal concern is that the sales tax increase is tied to a provision that will further extend the present quarter-penny sales tax for another thirty years — despite the fact that this program does not expire for six more years.
The current quarter-penny sales tax is divided into three sections — property tax relief, stabilizing sewer rates, and preserving open space and other environmental purposes.
Since very little open space remains to be purchased, the formula should be changed so that some of those tens of millions of dollars can go towards sewer construction and cesspool remediation instead of raising the sales tax even further.
Sewers are indeed needed in some areas, but the idea of over-sewering elsewhere will be far more expensive and less protective than other options available.
Officials need to do more cost-benefit analysis of having to pay $20,000 to $30,000 for an upgraded cesspool compared to bringing current systems up to code, and to determine the actual impact each alternative will have on our environment. Planners should lay out the cost of the construction of tertiary treatment plants and determine if they are better than expanding hook-ups to present sewer systems or constructing new sewers that don’t replenish water into the aquifer.
Let’s get all those numbers together, do a comparison and then decide how much sewering we want and don’t want, how many new tertiary plants we prefer and how many supersized cesspools we think are worth it. Get that information in hand before we ask for billions of dollars in more revenue from our residents.
Remember that, in 1986, it was touted that, by increasing the sales tax by a quarter of a penny, we would preserve our groundwater forever. Well, $3 billion has been spent on that venture since and now we’re being told, “Oops, we have to do it all over again.”
Don’t be bullied into approving this tax increase by those with vested interests scaring you into believing you will be drinking polluted water unless you grant them billions of dollars to save you. Of Suffolk’s 600 wells, only two have ever been threatened.
We can be proactive without having our already outlandish taxes being raised once again.
Steve Levy is President of Common Sense Strategies, a political consulting firm. He served as Suffolk County Executive, as a NYS Assemblyman, and host of “The Steve Levy Radio Show.” He is the author of “Solutions to America’s Problems” and “Bias in the Media.” www.SteveLevy.info, Twitter @SteveLevyNY, steve@commonsensestrategies.com