Sewer deal could be boon — or not — for the county

Nassau County’s aging sewage treatment plants –– the Bay Park plant in East Rockaway, the Cedar Creek plant in Wantagh and the Glen Cove plant –– have for years been a proverbial yoke around the county’s neck. They’re costly to run and often break down. At times when Bay Park has malfunctioned, it has released partially treated sewage into the Western Bays.

Now we’re hearing a proposal by County Executive Ed Mangano that could, if all goes well, relieve Nassau of the financial burden of running the plants and rid the county of a third of its $3 billion debt –– the highest of any county in New York state. And it might even improve service.

In what can only be described as a complicated deal, Mangano wants to lease the plants to a private company –– United Water of New Jersey –– while also bringing in a third-party financier to fund the deal long-term, giving the county a $750 million lump-sum payment that would pay down its ever-ballooning debt.

Mangano is calling the deal a public-private partnership. The county would own the infrastructure, but would pay a company to maintain and operate it. We don’t want to comment too strongly one way or another on the deal until its details have been fleshed out. Suffice it to say that it sounds promising.

The takeover of MTA Long Island Bus by a private company, Veolia Transportation, earlier this year does not appear to have hurt bus service thus far. There’s no reason to believe that sewer service would be diminished under a private entity.

There are stickier questions, however. There was earlier talk of selling off the plants, and critics of a private takeover have for months contended that average citizens would be unable to obtain the plants’ records through Freedom of Information requests if a private company owned them. But Mangano says that the county would continue to own the plants under a lease agreement, so they would be subject to the FOI Law, meaning people could still get plant records.