DEC commissioner: Tar balls in Long Beach ‘a bit of a mystery’

State Sen. Todd Kaminsky on Wednesday questioned state Department of Environmental Conservation Commissioner Basil Seggos at a joint legislative budget hearing on environmental conservation following the recent discovery of tar balls on the Lido Beach and Long Beach shoreline.

Kaminsky, a Democrat from Long Beach and chair of the Senate’s Environmental Conservation Committee, called on the agency last week to open an investigation to identify the source of the sludge.

Following a cleanup of the beaches, the DEC said that it was testing the “black, tar-like substances” that were discovered over a more than three-mile stretch, from Matlock Street in Lido Beach to Lafayette Boulevard in Long Beach.

“People are just concerned,” Kaminsky said.

As the Herald reported, the DEC began removing tar balls in Lido Beach and Long Beach, congealed black, blob-like shapes that local environmentalists say are typically associated with oil spills. The DEC said that it had completed its cleanup on Jan. 16 that included a mix of tar balls and peat and clay deposits, which look similar. Approximately a ton of both materials, the agency said, were collected over the two-day cleanup.

Seggos said that the investigation was ongoing.

“We haven’t seen any spills in the harbor,” Seggos said at the hearing. “These tar balls are a bit of a mystery. We’re doing our best on the forensic side to track down where they came from, and, from a current perspective, how they may have arrived on Long Beach.”

“Protecting our oceans and water is of utmost importance to preserving our environment and quality-of-life here on Long Island,” Kaminsky said in a news release after the hearing. “I was deeply troubled to see suspicious tar balls wash up on the shores of our beach and today, I urged the DEC to take all steps necessary to get to the bottom of this matter. I will continue to monitor this situation and advocate for solutions to ensure that toxic petroleum-based substances do not wash up ashore on our Island in the future.”

The DEC said that it was looking into the source of the tar balls with the U.S. Coast Guard — a “heavier” impact was found near Lincoln Boulevard beach — but had not received reports of any oil spills in the area. Tar balls, the DEC said, occasionally wash up in small quantities and “are usually picked up by beach maintenance crews when they rake up sea weed and other debris.” They are most often the result of shipwrecks or oil spills in the Atlantic Ocean.

“Tar balls are not regularly reported on Long Island but are found occasionally,” a spokeswoman said in an email last week. “In this case, the tar balls are old and dried out, indicating they are remnants from an old — perhaps very old — spill.

DEC officials said that the tar balls were not a result of the Army Corps of Engineers coastal protection project in Long Beach and other parts of the barrier island that involves offshore dredging.

Kaminsky also asked Seggos whether the agency would provide a report on the Army Corps project. Seggos said that the Army Corps was not subject to the recent government shutdown, but relies on other federal agencies to complete its projects.

“The Army Corps, thankfully, is not subject to the government shutdown,” Seggos said. “Unfortunately, the work that’s happening at the federal level with the Army Corps has slowed down because of some of the other dysfunction in Washington. We have the same interest that you do in ensuring that the coast is resilient and certainly as resilient as possible because we see future storms coming.”