Save the Great South Bay joins International Waterkeeper Alliance

Nonprofit Save the Great South Bay (SGSB) held the “Guardians of the Water: Long Island’s Waterkeepers” event at the View in Oakdale on March 27. Organized in celebration of SGSB joining the International Waterkeeper Alliance, many of Long Island’s leading figures all came out to support the nonprofit’s accomplishment.

Suffolk County executive Ed Romaine opened by giving his own vision for Long Island’s environment, with a greater lens on local sewage.

“As county executive, I am committed to planning out, on a regional basis, sewage, to address the effort. And I want to do tertiary sewage, sewage that recharge the aquifer, not like southwest [sewage system], which sends it a mile out into the ocean. Because I know all you have to do, we have a test case,” he explained. “It’s called our neighbors to the west, Nassau County. You look at Nassau County, and you will see, particularly in southwestern Nassau, saltwater intrusion, because they pumped all their effluent from their sewage treatment plant out to bodies of water. So, I want to make sure we not only [don’t] have a water-quality problem, but we don’t have a water quantity problem—that we maintain on aquifers.”

Romaine also highlighted how the results of the passed referendum to add one-eighth of a cent to the sales tax. The goal of the tax was, and is, to half support I/A systems (nitrogen-reducing cesspool systems to protect our waters) and half support sewer systems. In just one year, the tax has raised close to $50 million.

Tom Shaw, board president of Save the Great South Bay, thanked attendees and the panel organized for the event. A discussion then followed, where ongoing efforts to target the issues affecting Long Island waters were elaborated upon.

Andy Mirchel, director and chairperson of the SGSB’s Oyster Project, served a key role on the panel as the official Long Island South Shore waterkeeper. Bill Lucey and Allison Rugila, Long Island soundkeeper and associate soundkeeper, respectively, gave their own perspectives as well. Additionally, baykeeper and executive director of Peconic Baykeeper Pete Topping aided the discussion.

Finally, NY/NJ Baykeeper executive director and baykeeper Greg Remaud gave some insight into neighboring waters as well. Dave Fatizzo of the Long Island Association moderated the discussion.

As South Shore waterkeeper, Mirchel aims to address several problems.

“My concerns are not only going to be on the South Shore bays, the water that we see, the water that we play in, the water that we live in practically in the summer, but it’s also gonna be on land. I’m gonna have a really large focus on the aquifer. I am going to push as much as I can to help speed along the process of I/A conversions,” he said. Echoing Romaine, Mirchel simply wants to see the bay clear once again, free of pollution.

Remaud continued the conversation through his own example of how NY/NJ has tackled one particular problem the Great South Bay currently faces: the dwindling oyster population. Through collaboration with Stony Brook University as well as other additional universities and even the Navy, they were able to see the impacts of different oyster formations and oyster reefs and even which were best at breaking water through putting out different oyster shells in areas of contamination, with the goal being that these oyster gardens could help clean the waters.

Lobsters are another population that’s been impacted in Long Island’s waters.

“The biggest example [of climate change] is the loss of the lobster fishery, which is directly tied to warming waters. And now we’re in a situation where the commercial fleets are fishing down the food chain, but you see this around the world: as these systems get stressed, and we have large human populations, high extracted rates, you put a lot of stress on the ecosystems,” Lucey said. “And the way they respond is productive rainforest turns in bracken ferns. We got lobster fishermen now fishing snails at Long Island Sound. We’ve overfished our forage fish.

We hardly have any river herring left. So, all of that is a stress of human activity in the face of stressful environmental factors.”

Delving further into the ripple effect of climate change, Rugila explained how worsening storms are impacting local bays and shorelines.

“What we also like to say at Save the Sound is when it rains, it pours. And when it pours with more frequent and intense storms with climate change, we see our systems that have already been struggling to accommodate the amount of people in our area in terms of wastewater and stormwater worsening. So, it’s exacerbated by our increasing storms and intensity and frequency.

And so now more than ever, it’s becoming important to really focus on our infrastructure, because it’s only gonna become more challenging to cope with water-quality problems,” she emphasized.

She also drew attention to the toxic algal blooms overrunning the local waters.

Educating surrounding communities has become a priority for these different groups, to mobilize even more individuals into action as well as increase general awareness of the environment.

“What I think is the most rewarding aspect of the job is when you do have time to get kids out on the water or get their feet wet, and it might be something you took for granted or thought was really simple, and for them, it’s the most exciting thing ever. So, we do a lot of education.

In particular, I try and work with different groups. There’s an organization called the Latino Advocacy Organization, or OLA, the East End, an organization under heavy scrutiny right now. And I work with their summer camp. They provide a free summer camp. We provide a couple days of marine science education with them. I also work with an organization called the Butterfly Effect Project, which works with underserved girls primarily around the Riverhead area,” Topping said.

Following this discussion, the panel briefly answered some audience questions concerning their work.