Oil spill threatens Middle Bay, environmental activist says

Environmental activist Rob Weltner said he was concerned about the marine life in Baldwin and beyond after a Jiffy Lube at 598 Merrick Road allegedly dumped oil into storm drains that lead into lakes connected to the Middle Bay, according to state officials.

“What Jiffy Lube did is a disaster for the estuary,” said Weltner, president of Freeport-based Operation SPLASH (Stop Polluting, Littering and Save Harbors). “They essentially just threw a giant harpoon into the water.”

That’s because oil can coagulate in colder water and sink to the bottom, while normally it floats on the surface. At the bottom, the oil can kill microorganisms — including plankton — that aquatic animals such as crabs, clams, fish and more depend on for survival. Without that food, Weltner said, those creatures could be in short supply this fishing season. “Those animals are a big chunk of what the bay is about,” he said. “It’s going to hurt our local economy.”

According to a New York State Department of Environmental Conservation spokesman, the agency received a call about an oil spill at Baldwin’s Caroline Lake on March 17, and on March 18 discovered that the spill had moved south to Silver Lake. Both Caroline and Silver lakes connect to Middle Bay via a canal to the south.

DEC investigators later noticed a sheen on the driveway of the Jiffy Lube, located across the street from Silver Lake, and found that three nearby storm drains were full of oil. Jiffy Lube workers cleaned the interior of the shop and washed the oil down the driveway, according to the DEC.

The business and its manager were each issued four tickets by the DEC for polluting the waters of the marine district, polluting waters in violation of standards, depositing a noxious substance on a highway and depositing a noxious substance into a stream.

Rob Calderin, a spokesman for the business, denied any wrongdoing and blamed water buildup in the shop’s service bay for the spill. “While the cause of the sheen on Silver Park Lake is under evaluation, we will cooperate fully with the DEC and its contractor,” Calderin said in an email. AB Oil, a Bohemia-based waste disposal company, was hired by the state to remove the oil from Silver Lake, the storm drains and an area near Atlantic Avenue and Yale Place where oil had pooled. AB Oil also placed absorbent materials in the storm drains to deal with any remaining oil, the DEC spokesman said.

Nassau County Legislator Debra Mulé, a Democrat from Freeport, said the county Department of Public Works was also on the scene during the cleanup. “I will continue to work closely with both agencies as they remediate the damage,” Mulé said in a statement.

Many wild creatures, Weltner said, will soon come to Middle Bay and its surrounding wetlands to lay their eggs. “The bay is a nautical nursery where the animals come to spawn,” he said, “and it was just poisoned.”

The extent of the damage is not yet known. According to Weltner, one pint of oil can poison up to 8,000 gallons of water. According to the DEC, 10 to 15 gallons of oil were removed from Silver Lake.

Weltner said the cleanup does not mean that the animals in the bay are safe from danger. “That oil just doesn’t disappear overnight,” he said. “It will sink to the bottom, where it’s going to have all sorts of effects on the life down there.”

Weltner said he wants to believe the Jiffy Lube workers were unaware that the storm drains were connected to the lakes and bay. “Hopefully, they just didn’t understand what the ramifications were,” he said. “If they knew what they were doing, I’d like to think they might have taken a different course of action.”