The Environment

County's pipe dream moving forward

Nassau to study sending treated sewage from Bay Park into the ocean

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Nassau County is looking to divert tens of millions of gallons of treated sewage from the Bay Park treatment plant in East Rockaway to the ocean outfall pipe at the Cedar Creek plant on the Wantagh-Seaford border.

First, though, the county must study whether a century-old, 72-inch pipe that runs for 10 miles underneath Sunrise Highway, from Lynbrook to Wantagh, could be repurposed to send the effluent from one end of the county to the other.

In the coming weeks, the County Department of Public Works will issue a Request for Proposals for the study. “A feasibility study will determine if existing infrastructure can support a connection to Cedar Creek ocean outfall pipe,” said County Executive Ed Mangano during a news conference in Mineola on Friday. “To strengthen our shoreline, protect our marine life and improve our environment for decades to come, it’s critically important to connect Bay Park to an ocean outfall pipe.”

In addition, Mangano said, pumping stations along Sunrise Highway that are no longer in use would be looked at in the study, though he said they aren’t expected to be necessary. By bypassing the need to tunnel under the Long Beach barrier island to build a new outfall pipe from Bay Park 3.5 miles into the Atlantic Ocean, the project’s cost would be cut nearly in half. The estimated price to build a new outfall pipe ranges from $450 million to $600 million, while the aqueduct plan would cost $200 million to $300 million.

Dying bays
Since the late 1940s, the Bay Park plant has sent treated sewage into Reynolds Channel, from a cement pipe that lets out just north of the Long Beach fishing pier. That effluent, loaded with nitrogen, accelerates seaweed growth in the bays. The seaweed, called Ulva lactuca, reaches unnatural lengths, breaks apart in the tides and rots. As it does, it robs the saltwater of dissolved oxygen, killing marine life. Many of sections of the Western Bays are now considered “dead zones,” according to environmental experts.

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