What would a new Bethpage Community Park look like? One plan lays that out.

In a fenced-off area of Bethpage Community Park, a long-delayed cleanup of a former chemical dumping ground trudges along: Construction excavators have dug into the landscape in recent years, and arrays of metal pipes have drilled into the dirt.

More than a decade into the environmental remediation on a 3½-acre section of the property, the Town of Oyster Bay wants to see what the park could look like in the future.

The town has hired LiRo Engineers to come up with a conceptual design for the redevelopment of the park, which for years beginning in the 1940s was the site of Grumman Aerospace chemical dumping. The contaminants made during aircraft production leached into the soil and the groundwater below the 18-acre park, leaving behind a legacy of pollution.

LiRo was hired to redevelop the park "following remediation by Northrop Grumman,” according to resolution documents from the Oyster Bay Town Board's meeting earlier this month. It's not clear when the new park will be built. The town remains in litigation with Northrop Grumman over the thoroughness and speed of the cleanup, which has faced delays over the years. 

Two park phases planned

LiRo Engineers plans to design a park layout that would be built in two phases: one including a picnic area, a playground and a ballfield; and a second with pickleball, tennis, handball and basketball courts, along with a pool facility, the documents said.

The ice rink on the property would remain untouched, according to the plan, and the construction is estimated to cost $40 million.

The town and Northrop Grumman, the corporate successor to Grumman Aerospace, remain embroiled in costly litigation over the pace and scope of the cleanup. Experts pinned some responsibility for the next phase of the remediation on the Environmental Protection Agency, asserting that the regulator should flex its power to expedite negotiations.

Oyster Bay Supervisor Joseph Saladino suggested a settlement remains a possibility to resolve the longstanding lawsuits.

“In order for us to negotiate a settlement that gets the appropriate cleanup and the new park for a very deserving Bethpage community, we need a design that also speaks to cost because the lawsuit is about what they have to do and how much they have to pay,” Saladino said.

“The polluter should be responsible, and that is the endgame of this process,” Saladino said in a phone interview.

Northrop Grumman did not respond to a request for comment.

It was not immediately clear when LiRo will submit its final design plans to the town.

More cleanup steps ahead

The environmental cleanup at the park has continued for 13 years.

The latest phase of the cleanup — called thermal remediation — was decommissioned earlier this year after the removal of hundreds of pounds of contamination from the soil, according to John Salka, a spokesman for the state Department of Environmental Conservation.

That process uses heated rods to vaporize and remove volatile organic compounds from deep underground. 

The next phase of cleanup requires the Town of Oyster Bay and Northrop Grumman to come up with a plan to remove polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, from the soil closer to the surface. That agreement then needs to be sent to the EPA.

State and federal regulators met with the town and Northrop Grumman in 2024 and last year to discuss plans to clean up PCBs at the park, Salka said in an email. 

Brian Nevin, a town spokesman, said there has not yet been an application sent to the EPA.

Negotiations over PCB removal can stretch for prolonged periods without a rigid timeline, said Judith Enck, a former EPA regional administrator. "You need EPA to really establish a schedule and hold people to it," she said. "Otherwise this just floats into the ether for years."

Adrienne Esposito, executive director of Citizens Campaign for the Environment, said parks on Long Island are highly valued and that the continued closure of the site "actually diminishes our quality of life." The ballfield area of the park has been closed to the public since 2002.

Esposito said the dispute over the park "has dragged on long enough," adding the EPA should exert its power "to get the park cleaned up."

Stephen McBay, an EPA spokesman, said in an email the federal agency "is not involved in the negotiations between the Town of Oyster Bay and Northrop Grumman" and "does not set timelines for those discussions."

The EPA, McBay said, is responsible for ensuring the proposed cleanup meets federal standards.

Once that plan is submitted, the EPA "will review it as expeditiously as possible," McBay said.