EPA to release $11M for Nassau sewage plant

Just as Nassau officials disclosed plans to upgrade the Bay Park sewage treatment plant to stop a continuing sludge discharge into Reynolds Channel, Sen. Charles Schumer has found a way to pay for it.

Schumer (D-N.Y) announced Tuesday that the Environmental Protection Agency is releasing $11 million of $20 million in grant money owed the county since the mid-1980s for construction work at the Bay Park and Cedar Creek wastewater treatment plants.

Though Nassau did the required work under a now defunct EPA Sewer Infrastructure program, the agency never reimbursed the cash-strapped county.

"This is really great news for the taxpayers of Nassau County," Schumer said. "This is money the federal government owed Nassau but resisted and resisted and resisted paying. We finally broke through and the check couldn't come at a better time."

Schumer's office said the EPA is issuing a $3.1 million check "immediately" and the remaining $7.9 million will be sent as soon as the paperwork is completed. An EPA spokesman did not return a call for comment.

Schumer and Nassau County Executive Edward Mangano said the money will be used to upgrade the Bay Park plant. The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation said in October that the plant had been illegally discharging sludge into the channel since at least March. A video of the resulting brown plume was posted on YouTube.com in October.

Mangano said the funding "will allow us to improve the Bay Park Sewage Treatment Plant and other county infrastructure that crumbled due to neglect over the past decade."

But Legis. David Denenberg (D-Merrick), who had protested the discharge, said, "You can't blame the prior administration [of Democratic County Executive Thomas Suozzi] for failing to report a brown plume going into the channel this past summer and fall." He said the Suozzi administration in its capital budget allocated $50 million for plant improvements.

Mangano's Public Works Commissioner Shila Shah-Gavnoudia last week sent a mailing to residents around the plant listing planned improvements and the replacement of administrative staff. The changes, she wrote, are aimed at "reducing odors, eliminating excessive solids from being discharged in to Reynolds Channel and improving" the sewage treatment process.