LI BRIEFS

SUFFOLK/County to join Nassau fight to overturn MTA tax

Suffolk County intends to join Nassau in its lawsuit seeking to overturn the MTA's payroll mobility tax, which county officials argue is unconstitutional and overly burdensome on Long Island business owners.

Dan Aug, spokesman for Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy, said Thursday that Suffolk is "standing firm" with Nassau in opposing the tax, which charges employers in the MTA service region 34 cents for every $100 of payroll.

Nassau filed the suit against the state and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in July in what County Executive Edward Mangano has conceded is a response to the MTA's plans to pull its financial support from Long Island Bus, owned by Nassau.

Levy last week threw his support behind a similar lawsuit filed by a Long Island business owner challenging the tax. Now he is prepared to have Suffolk get in the fight.

Levy has said the tax is particularly unfair to business owners in Suffolk, which gets no MTA bus service and scarce Long Island Rail Road service, particularly on the East End. Beginning next month, the LIRR plans to eliminate weekend service to Greenport for all but the summer months.

Mangano welcomed Suffolk's involvement. "I applaud Suffolk County and every other municipality that has joined me in this fight against taxpayer abuse. The MTA has clearly been put on notice."

Several municipalities throughout the state have added their names as co-plaintiffs in Nassau's suit.

The MTA has said that while the tax is collected by the state, they support it as an essential tool in helping fund the MTA, which is facing a $900-million budget gap.

- ALFONSO A. CASTILLO

SOUTHAMPTON/Cleanup of tainted soil to start next week

A $5-million cleanup of contaminated soil at a former lumberyard in Southampton is set to begin next week, state environmental officials said.

The work will include removing soil tainted by chromium and arsenic, backfilling those areas with clean soil and installing groundwater monitoring wells to track migration of a polluted underground plume that has moved at least 4,000 feet south of the property, according to the state Department of Environmental Conservation.

The pollution dates to the early 1980s, when Best Building Supply and Lumber Co. used the 5-acre site at 1348 Speonk-Riverhead Rd. to treat and store lumber, the DEC said in a news release. Lumber was pressure-treated on site with chemical wood preservative chromated copper arsenate that the DEC said was released to the environment, tainting soil with chromium and arsenic and leaching chromium into groundwater.

While no public water wells have been impacted, nearby homes were connected to public water over the past year. The cleanup is expected to take about a year, followed by long-term monitoring.

- JENNIFER SMITH