An interview with Legislator Debra Mulé

There's always something that can be done and I learn from my constituents all the time.”

Debra Mulé, Nassau County Legislator

The Herald asked Nassau County Legislator Debra Mulé (D-Freeport, L.D. 5), “Talk about what you see as your vision for things you’re going to do, such as infrastructure, especially as touching on Freeport.” Her answers are recorded below.

I’m entering my third term as a county legislator. I continue to be excited by this job, and I love it. There's always something that can be done and I learn from my constituents all the time. My job is to make sure that what they believe is important is what’s happening.

You mention talking about infrastructure projects. I’m going to talk about one that’s in Baldwin, the Baldwin Complete Streets, and it will tangentially affect Freeport because Freeporters do use Grand Avenue. This is something that truly was grassroots and came out of the community.

This project will reach from Merrick Road up to Stanton Avenue, which is just north of Baldwin HIgh School. It’s going to be a complete re-do of Grand Avenue, from curb to curb. It’s going to include decorative lighting and new curbs, synchronized timing for the lights to make the traffic flow more smoothly, and dedicated turning lanes. We’re fixing all the drainage.

It’s all been approved, the money’s been approved, the contractor’s been signed, so we’re really set to go. It’s a roughly $8 million project, and most of that money is coming from the federal government, but that’s a really good example of a project that came from the community.

The largest infrastructure project that’s going to affect Freeport is the Bay Park Conveyance. It has been described as the most transformative environmental project on Long Island in decades, and is a partnership between the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and the Nassau County Department of Public Works.

The plant and marine life in back bays here on the South Shore have been depleted by the introduction of nitrogen from the effluent that had been let out by the Bay Park Sewage Treatment Plant (now the South Shore Water Reclamation Facility).

Effluent is not raw sewage, but is treated wastewater that is high in nitrogen, which has particularly depleted the salt marshes. Salt marshes do best when they have really deep root systems. They look for nitrogen, so when it is too readily available in the water, the plants no longer have to go deep into the ground. The roots become thin and easy to break, so the salt marshes have been disappearing, which has effects on the fishing and marine life, and takes away the natural buffer against flooding during storms – salt marshes are really critical for that.

The thing was, how do we get the treated effluent out further out into the ocean? You have to get it past the barrier island of Long Beach.

Some genius noticed there was an old unused aqueduct running along Sunrise Highway. So the plan that’s happening now is that they are micro tunneling 40 to 60 feet under the ground from the sewage treatment plant up to Sunrise Highway. They are slip lining the hundred-year-old aqueduct to make sure it is viable, so it can take the water over to Wantagh. Then they are micro tunneling from Sunrise Highway in Wantagh down to the Cedar Creek treatment plant, where they already have the infrastructure to go out several miles into the ocean. Out there, the wastewater becomes so diffuse that it has minimal impact.

The construction of the project will have minimal impact on the average person because a lot of the work will be going on at night. People can get more information about it from https://www.bayparkconveyance.org/about.

The other thing that I am really focused on is affordable housing. Here on the island, we have such a dearth of it. Young people just getting started have a difficult time. How do we move forward if we don’t have our millennials staying here, or if all the seniors decide to pack up and leave because it’s more affordable someplace else? If seniors leave, whatever money they would spend locally is gone. We’ve got to keep people here, and we’ve got to figure out how to do it.

There’s some affordable housing in the works in LD 5. There’s one nice-looking senior housing project by the Freeport library that is nearly finished, but the slots have been filled for years. It fills a need, but it’s a drop in the bucket.

On Main Street, a piece of land by the Roosevelt border was sold by the county to a developer. Affordable housing will be built there, but again, it’s a drop in the bucket because there’s such an incredible need. A lot of people moved out here from the city during the pandemic, and the cost of living in Nassau County is high.

None of this is an easy fix. None of it.We need to keep in mind density issues, school capacity issues, infrastructure issues. But it’s something that we all have to work together to come up with the best solutions, because it's just – necessary.