Keeler: Lowly sewer has noble job

Bob Keeler is a member of the Newsday editorial board.

Republican candidates for president dropping like flies. Turmoil in the Middle East. Sexual assault charges against an International Monetary Fund executive. An arrest warrant against Moammar Gadhafi.

All boring.

Let's change the subject to something that will give your day a little lift: human waste. Really, no time is a bad time to talk about sewers, at least for a strange subset of humanity that includes such people as Suffolk County Executive Steve Levy, Legis. Wayne Horsley (D-Babylon) -- and, sadly, me. But sewers really do matter, not just for waste wonks, but for all of us. And here's why:

In Suffolk, our drinking water comes from the aquifers that lie beneath our feet. So we have to treat our waste before it goes into the groundwater -- or before we discharge it in the ocean.

Suffolk has one big example of the ocean approach: the Southwest Sewer District, which serves one corner of the county. But we'll never see a huge sewer project like it again, because it was mired in scandal, and because the federal government no longer reimburses sewer construction as bountifully as it used to.

Another approach is to make the house-by-house sewage treatment options do a better job of treating waste. More than 70 percent of the homes in Suffolk are not connected to sewers. They rely on septic tanks and cesspools, in-ground devices that get clogged up periodically and need pumping out. But even when they're working, they aren't doing a great job.

Nitrogen pollution from these systems is a danger to the health of our waters -- the Great South Bay and others. So some environmentalists and legislators are pushing for stricter standards. They want more efficient in-ground systems, like those in use in New Jersey, Connecticut and elsewhere, to be required here.

Suffolk's Department of Health Services is studying whether those systems remove nitrogen as well as some environmentalists believe. That study probably won't be done until the end of this year. Whether it finds the advanced devices efficient or not, this approach is going to run into the very real problem that public officials will be reluctant to impose this requirement on homeowners.

"When I heard from our experts that it would cost $20,000 to $30,000 a household, I said I would not implement that," Levy said. "So I said, 'Find me systems around the nation that can help improve water quality in a more financially realistic fashion.' "

So, as sensible as the better- in-ground-systems solution appears, it may take a while before we get there. Meanwhile, we'd better not count on the dollar-spigot from Washington opening again soon.

"We're going to have to start looking inward," Horsley said.

An example of that is taking place today in the Village of Patchogue: a ribbon-cutting to mark the expanded capacity of its sewage-treatment plant, from 500,000 gallons a day to 800,000. That will enable further economic development in the village and just beyond, in East Patchogue. The Island's future depends on channeling a lot of growth into downtowns, and that won't be possible without sewers.

As Patchogue Mayor Paul Pontieri Jr. points out, there are other plants of about the same age and size. Expanding them is one of the solutions we'll have to pursue.

Sewers are not sexy. Nor is the matter of dealing with our growing mounds of household garbage. But if we want life on our Island to remain workable, these are problems we have to keep thinking about and arguing about, until we figure out how to solve them.

Now, back to your regularly scheduled global mayhem.