Northport Receives County Grant to Clean Up Waterways

Legis. William Spencer, D-Centerport, recently presented Northport with a $1.5 million check to supplement an upgrade to its sewer treatment plant that would help clean up area waterways.

The EPA mandated the $9 million upgrade as part of an intitiative to reduce nitrogren emissions by 2014 in order to mitigate toxic algal blooms such as red tide. Northport has since scrambled to find funding and avoid burdening taxpayers with a sharp tax increase to pay for the plant upgrades, which nearly equals the small village's annual budget.

Spencer made the hunt for funds a campaign promise prior to his election and has since made good, saying he will continue to seek funds to cover the remaining $6 million. 

"This is not a problem that you should be facing alone. We need to work together. You need the support of the town, the county, the state, and the federal government," he said to the village board Tuesday.

The $1.5 million was diverted from earmarked state funds for infrastructure projects. Spencer worked with County Executive Steve Bellone, Assemb. Andrew Raia, Assemb. Chad Lupinacci, Assemb. Bob Sweeney, and Senators Flanagan and Marcellino to intercept the funds before they expired and bounced back to the state.

Meanwhile, the village has been betting on funds from the Suffolk County Sewer Infrastructure Fund for over a year and recently submitted an application for $7.5 million. They are competing for a piece of the $48 million pot with 12 other infrastructure projects totaling roughly $150 million; not everyone will get a cut.

At a press conference on Thursday, the Town of Huntington and the Northport Harbor Water Quality Protection Committee announced they would fight to make Northport's application a priority for the County.

"The bays and harbors are at the heart of the Huntington and Northport community. They're also at the heart of the economies of those communities. So their restoration is critical to our quality of life," said Adrienne Esposito, Executive Director of Citizens Campaign for the Environment. Esposito co-Chairs the Water Quality Protection Committee with Town Supervisor Frank Petrone.

"As someone who works all over the County, I feel I can tell you this in an unbaised manner: There is no greater responsibility of government than proecting the health and safety of the community," Esposito said. "Upgrading this sewage treatment facility will protect public health, it wil help grow our economy and it will bring back our quality of life here on the North Shore."

The Huntington and Northport Harbor complex was called the epicenter of red tide on Long Island by Stony Brook university scientist Dr. Chris Gobler. The algae responsible for red tide cause paralytic shellfish poisoning in humans who ingest contaminated shellfish. The resultant shellfishing bans and recreational advisories  stymie waterfront economies.

Gobler attributed the high concentration of toxic algae in Northport Harbor to a number of factors at a 2012 Town Hall presentation, including inadequate "flush" of stagnant water, high nitrogen loads, and a recently discovered cyst bed that holds dormant concentrations of algae which erupt in spring.

Dredging is needed to mitigate the inadequate flush of the harbor and could also remove some of the cyst beds if done properly, according to Gobler, though it is an expensive process that could take years of planning.

High nitrogen loads that Gobler said are "almost identical with wastewater-based nitrogen," are the primary reason the toxic organisms thrive in Northport Harbor. Gobler said the nutrients originate largely from Northport's sewage treatment plant and homes with septic tanks, though pinpointing sources is a very complex undertaking.

Gobler said at the time that he hopes to get funding for a "Nitrogen Budget" to quantitatively assess exactly how many pounds of nitrogen are coming through the system per day from various sources: tidal exchange, atmosphere, surface runoff, groundwater, the sewage treatment plant, and sediment fluxes.