New York State officials have announced an initial $2.25 million in federal funding to improve the water quality of Long Island’s north shore, in addition to the finalization of a plan to help Nassau County reduce nitrogen pollution.
Th two efforts will bring added resources to efforts to restore and protect Long Island’s drinking water and bays. The efforts come under the framework of the Long Island Nitrogen Action Plan, in coordination with the Long Island Sound Study.
The $2.25 million is the first installment in a multi-year anticipated partnership with the Long Island Sound Study that will significantly increase funding available to replace outdated septic systems in Suffolk and Nassau counties. Over the course of five years, an anticipated $8 million from the federal Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) will help support state- and locally-driven water quality improvements. The Long Island Sound Study is a cooperative effort involving researchers, regulators, user groups, and other stakeholders, and is led by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), New York, and Connecticut.
"This federal funding will improve watersheds and septic systems in countless Long Island communities, furthering our commitment to ensure all New Yorkers have access to safe, clean water," says New York Governor Kathy Hochul.
The announcements will help address excess nitrogen, which leads to areas of dead zones or hypoxia in marine waters, potential fish kills, harmful algal blooms, and deterioration of storm-resilient marshlands.
In year one, the Study will provide a $2.25 million grant to the Suffolk County Reclaim Our Water Initiative and Nassau County's Septic Environmental Program to Improve Cleanliness (S.E.P.T.I.C.) program through New York State. The septic system grant programs improve water quality by encouraging and incentivizing homeowners' replacement of cesspools and failing or inadequate septic systems.
New York State will provide funds to Suffolk and Nassau counties to reimburse eligible property owners for a portion of the cost of replacing cesspools and inadequate septic systems and installing more environmentally effective systems. Homeowners can receive funds from both the state and county programs, resulting in at least $20,000 in grants to install the more environmentally effective systems that remove more nitrogen than a conventional septic system.
"Long Island Sound and its neighboring waters are essential and critical resources for millions of people living along one of the most urbanized coastlines in the country,” says U.S. Environmental Protection Agency Region 2 Administrator Lisa F. Garcia. “EPA's funding will assist with green infrastructure, streambank and shore restoration, and updating septic systems with new technologies to reduce nitrogen pollution."
Nassau Nitrogen
The state’s Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) also recently approved the Nassau County Nine Key Element Plan for Nitrogen. The plan helps advance efforts to restore and protect the water quality of the groundwater and embayments around Nassau County.
Its development was funded in part by the Long Island Sound Study and is a collaboration between Nassau County, DEC, and Stony Brook University's School of Atmospheric and Marine Sciences (SoMAS). The result is a science-driven plan to reduce the amount of nitrogen entering the waters in and around Nassau County.
The Nassau County Nine Element Plan identifies and quantifies nitrogen sources and uses tools to determine the changes in nitrogen depending on management practices put in place. It recommends a variety of best management practices and actions that can be implemented to meet the nitrogen reduction targets, including, connecting homes and businesses to public sewers, reducing fertilizer use, and replacing failing septics with innovative alternative on-site treatment systems, among other things.
Suffolk County completed a similar "Nine Element Plan" in 2021.
The plan includes two actions currently being implemented that will remove a significant amount of nitrogen from being discharged close to shore: the Bay Park Conveyance Project and the Long Beach Diversion Project.
The Bay Park Conveyance Project is a partnership between DEC and the Nassau County Department of Public Works to improve water quality and storm resiliency in Long Island's Western Bays by upgrading its existing wastewater management infrastructure. It will convey treated water from the South Shore Water Reclamation Facility (previously known as the Bay Park Sewage Treatment Plant), which currently discharges an average of 50 million gallons per day of treated water into Reynolds Channel, to the Cedar Creek Water Pollution Control Plant's (WPCP) three-mile ocean outfall pipe thus removing the discharge to Reynolds Channel.
The Long Beach Wastewater Diversion Project will convert the Long Beach wastewater treatment plant to a pump station. Wastewater will be pumped from pump station to the South Shore Water Reclamation Facility for treatment. Additionally, the South Shore Water Reclamation Facility is far-along toward a complete storm-resilient upgrade undertaken at no expense to local rate-payers or Nassau County.
Septic funding grant programs and the Nine Element Plan are part of the larger Long Island Nitrogen Action Plan, or LINAP, which is a partnership between DEC, the Long Island Regional Planning Council, and Suffolk and Nassau Counties to coordinate nitrogen reduction efforts on the island. LINAP was developed in response to documented water quality issues due to excess nitrogen entering the ground and surface waters and has made significant strides in better understanding the sources of nitrogen and how best to reduce those sources.
