Hempstead’s drinking water can’t be a political football

In government, our commitment to serve the public must transcend the political fray. In the case of the Village of Hempstead’s ongoing drinking water contamination crisis, the administration of County Executive Bruce Blakeman has thus far been unable to place residents’ basic needs before politics — a circumstance made even more galling by the potential health ramifications of that stubbornness.

This spring, village officials, led by Mayor Waylyn Hobbs, revealed that Hempstead’s wells, which provide drinking water for over 59,000 residents and countless small businesses, had three to 11 times the acceptable level of the contaminant 1,4 dioxane, a suspected carcinogen linked to liver and kidney cancers.

Hempstead has some of the county’s oldest water infrastructure, which serves Nassau’s densest population hub. On May 21, the village board voted to borrow $55 million to build a state-of-the-art water-treatment facility, and has urged federal, state and local leaders to do their part to ease the burden on village taxpayers.

For months I worked alongside my colleague Legislator Scott M. Davis to marshal county resources. This culminated with a formal request on May 3 for more than $1.75 million in federal American Rescue Plan Act funding from $15 million set aside for legislative initiatives. With the August expiration of their dioxane waiver fast approaching, these resources would equip the village to begin work on this critical project and give residents and business owners — especially restaurants, which rely on the water for cooking — some peace of mind that help was on the way.

As a breast cancer survivor, I had genetic testing that proved I was not predisposed to the disease — yet I was diagnosed, like many others in my community. I don’t want Hempstead residents to bear that potential burden.

Per the statute establishing this $15 million fund, the Legislature — not the county executive — is tasked with determining allocations. The administration’s role is to process requests from the Legislature. Yet in another erosion of the division of powers in Nassau government, the Blakeman administration has usurped control of this process.
While a joint request from two Democratic legislators for potentially life-saving resources has languished for months, similar requests for Republican districts encompassing Farmingdale, Great Neck and Hicksville have passed swiftly through the Legislature, sometimes in mere weeks. This demonstrates how the administration injects partisan politics into almost every aspect of county government — even something as vital as the delivery of safe drinking water.

To date, the Republican majority has received over $4 million in ARPA funding for legislative initiatives, more than $2 million of it for water-treatment projects. Meanwhile, the Democratic minority has requested over $3.3 million in ARPA funding — including the $1.75 million for Hempstead water — but received nothing. At a bare minimum, the approval of one legislator’s $1 million request to combat dioxane in Farmingdale has set the precedent for Davis and I to request approximately $875,000 apiece for Hempstead.

There is more than $50 million remaining in Nassau County’s ARPA allotment, which must be allocated by year’s end, and I believe that delivering additional aid from the county’s ARPA funding allotment is a matter of economic and environmental equity.

A March 2020 Newsday report exposed how 56 percent of homes in District 2 communities, including Hempstead Village, were overtaxed because of frozen tax rolls and the resulting shift in assessed value to minority communities. At the time, I represented a configuration of District 2 that encompassed almost all of Hempstead. It is also important to note that the county administration has once again frozen the tax rolls, creating avenues for a return to this state of inequity.

Given these factors, along with the looming taxpayer burden of a $55 million capital bond, and the fact that all of the village’s wells are impacted, leaving residents and business owners few alternatives other than buying bottled water for drinking and cooking, at great expense, Blakeman’s administration has the opportunity — and, I would contend, the obligation — to support Hempstead at a level proportional and commensurate with its present public health and economic challenges.

The people deserve action and immediate answers — and it will become the shameful legacy of Blakeman and his administration if they fail to rise to this most basic standard of equitable governance.

Siela A. Bynoe represents Nassau County’s 2nd Legislative District, and is the Legislature’s alternate deputy minority leader.