County can't explain why sewage plant is understaffed

Nassau County officials said Thursday that understaffing led to a lack of preventive maintenance at the Cedar Creek sewage treatment plant in Seaford, but they were unable to explain why more workers had not been hired.

The officials told a county legislative hearing in Mineola that the operating budget for the plant calls for 100 workers, but only 81 are on staff, and they had no target date to hire more.

Joseph Davenport, the deputy commissioner for public works, and Richard Cotugno, the superintendent of sewage plants, did not dispute that some of the same plant operation shortfalls identified at a 2005 legislative hearing still existed.

However, they said there had been some improvement after that hearing. Then, an early retirement program last summer to reduce the county budget resulted in as many as 15 senior workers leaving last fall.

Both officials said they had put in paperwork to hire new workers, but never got authorization. Shila Shah-Gavnoudias, who has been commissioner of public works for seven weeks, sat in the front row of the room during most of the three-hour hearing, but was not asked any questions.

A spokesman for County Executive Edward Mangano could not say when the workers would be hired.

The Cedar Creek plant has been cited by the state Labor Department for 26 safety violations, including 22 categorized as serious.

The Republican majority in the legislature called for the fact-finding hearing over various violations that include puddles of water in operating areas, uncovered floor drains, missing guardrails, restricted exits, overburdened electrical outlets and a nonfunctioning emergency-stop tripwire on the hopper of a sewage compactor.

Both Republicans and Democrats said there was no pollution threat.

The plant has been cited five times in five years for violating state treatment standards, according to Davenport.

"That's less than any other treatment plant in the metropolitan area, including New York City," Legis. David Denenberg of Merrick, the ranking Democrat on the Public Works Committee, said.

The committee chairman, Republican Vincent Muscarella of West Hempstead, said later that, "to our knowledge, there has been, and is, no danger that the effluent is in violation of any environmental laws or regulations."

He said the concern was the operation within the plant. "The system has a number of redundancies to make sure what is produced is clean, and it is clean," Muscarella said. "Our concern was the way we get from Point A to Point B."