Hailed as a "Sewer Summit," politicians or their representatives from local, state and federal levels, engineers, operators of wastewater treatment facilities and a couple of stray citizens gathered to hear a proposal from Nassau County Executive Tom Suozzi to divert sewage from Port Washington and Great Neck plants to the county's Cedar Creek facility on the South Shore instead of moving ahead to upgrade their facilities to meet state and federal requirements to reduce their output of nitrogen into Long Island Sound by 2012.

The Village of Great Neck plant and the Water Pollution Control District plant conducted a lengthy study that was funded by a $3 million grant from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation to determine the feasibility of diversion. Together, the village and the district concluded that it would be less costly to upgrade than to divert sewage to Cedar Creek, even with the promised $18 million grant from the DEC to be used only for diversion, looming on the horizon. The calculations of the engineers who conducted the study were based on many factors, chief among them, the long-term costs for sewage treatment by Nassau County to the taxpayers.

With Great Neck facing a two-week deadline to formally either accept the $18 million grant or reject it, Mr. Suozzi has suddenly made what he called an "informal conceptual proposal" that would change all their previous calculations. Here are the terms he offered:

The county would lay claim to the $18 million grant and assume the additional cost of diversion which would involve laying a 30-inch diameter sewer line that would run from East Shore Road in Great Neck, up Northern Boulevard turning at Shelter Rock Road to join up with the Roslyn interceptor that is already connected to Cedar Creek. The county would also pay for the cost of the demolition of both sewage treatment plants. For the first time, county engineers stated that holding tanks for overflow sewage in the event of an emergency would not be needed, as had previously been reported.

The county would take over all assets and liabilities of the plants.

Great Neck and Port Washington residents would pay the same sewage tax they currently pay for five years. There was no hint of what would come in year 6 after the rate freeze ended.

Under the proposal, the county would sell off land currently owned by the plants, keeping half the money and providing the rest for rate stabilization. While the Village of Great Neck owns a relatively small parcel, the Water Pollution Control District owns 2.9 acres at their pumping station on Bayview Avenue adjacent to the Main library and 5.75 acres on Manhasset Bay. The Port Washington district owns some extra land that is used by local groups for various athletic activities. The Belgrave Sewer District is sited on Little Neck Bay with a beautiful view and has 4 well-maintained acres.

It is estimated that finalization of a diversion project would take 5 years.

Mr. Suozzi stated that current employees would not lose their jobs, but that there would be reductions in staff through attrition and retirement.

State Senator Craig Johnson asked whether the county executive had the votes to carry such a proposal in the Nassau County Legislature and whether the legislators from the South Shore near the Cedar Creek facility were on board. The meeting, held on the morning of August 6 and facilitated by Town of North Hempstead Supervisor Jon Kaiman, coincided with budget hearings at the county legislature.

Senator Johnson added that he doubted whether the residents of Port Washington would be willing to give up land used for recreation currently and to have a major disruption through residential neighborhoods that would occur with laying sewer lines. Mr. Suozzi bristled at some of his questions saying, "Craig, are you opposed?" Senator Johnson said, "I just have questions.... Asking questions shouldn't be seen as being adversarial."

While Mr. Suozzi stated that the county was not "bullying" any entity to take him up on the offer that he referred to as a "no-brainer," it appears as we go to press that there were no takers. The Water Pollution Control District will continue to pursue upgrading their facility. Deena Lesser, commission chairperson, stated "Even with the grant from the DEC, it is still cheaper in the long run to upgrade our plant." The Village of Great Neck which operates a sewer treatment plant which is smaller than the district's and does not have the economy of scale that the larger plant has, indicated that they might be interested in diversion, but such a project would only be feasible if both plants signed on. The cost for upgrades at both plants comes to $47 million.

Belgrave Sewer District, located in the Village of Great Neck Estates, also received the offer even though they are deep into the process of an upgrade funded by the state.

Port Washington has just completed lengthy plans and financing applications for an upgrade and would not be willing to suddenly switch gears for a proposal that, according to many of the sewage experts present, contained faulty cost estimates. Many of the in-the-know people the Record spoke with after the meeting said that they chose not to embarrass the county executive by challenging his numbers.

No one present has received hard copies of the PowerPoint presentation given by Mr. Suozzi although many of those present, including the Great Neck Record, asked for copies.

Robert Breslin, superintendent of the Port Washington Water Pollution Control District flatly stated, "We have learned through our investigations into upgrades and construction costs that conceptual estimates and real-deal numbers are widely different...by at least 50 percent." Their state grant for upgrade is $11 million, but in the time that has gone by since it was awarded, costs have escalated.

He also went on to add that the promised freeze in treatment rates would save the average Port Washington resident $150 over a 5-year period... "hardly an inducement to make the switch."

Further underlining the haziness of long-range cost estimates, in 1998, the EPA estimated that it would cost $650 million to upgrade the 5 NYC plants that discharge into Long Island Sound. Today, the estimate is a cool $1 billion.

After the meeting, we called Christine Marzigliano, who chairs the Cedar Creek Health Risk Assessment Committee and who had attended hearings in Great Neck when the East Shore Road re-zoning was being debated. Ms. Marzigliano warns that the debt obligations and the liabilities at Cedar Creek are probably the factors in this last-minute offer by the county to get Great Neck taxpayers "into the pool." She and her committee constantly monitor the situation at Cedar Creek and report that the facility operates on a crisis-to-crisis mode instead of using a preventative maintenance approach, not because the workers are negligent but because they are understaffed and do not have replacement equipment in stock. She said, "The people of Great Neck would be better off if they had total control over their debt."

When the commissioner of the county's public works department, Raymond Ribeiro, was asked pointedly about the conditions and maintenance at the plant, he stated that there were no problems on that score, that routine maintenance was being done. He added that the county legislature appropriates $25 million a year for capital improvements there.

In 2005, the county legislature held hearings on the conditions at Cedar Creek and learned that there were serious health and safety violations for the workers. According to Jerry Laricchiuta, president of the Civil Service Employees Association Local 830, many of those conditions have been corrected and "the county is working hard to get other issues resolved," but he too reiterated that the facility is understaffed and "missing some supervisors."

State Assemblywoman Michelle Schimel raised questions about the environmental impact of diversion and stated that she would have difficulty supporting such a move without a full study. She and WPCD commissioner Jane Rebhuhn raised a question no one could answer: What happens if, in 10 years from now, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency rules that releasing nitrogen into the ocean is not as harmless as now perceived? Cedar Creek does not treat its effluent to eliminate nitrogen. Already scientists from Stanford University have raised alarms about the growing "dead zones" in the Gulf of Mexico, which they believe is a result of run-off laden with nitrogen.

Local activist and hydrogeologist Julian Kane said, "Diversion would be an environmental atrocity - a traffic horror and a commercial disaster for years for residents of Great Neck, Kensington, Thomaston, Manhasset and Kings Point...and to the school buses crawling along East Shore Road, Northern Blvd. and Shelter Rock Road."

Prior to the meeting, Nassau County, as part of their drive to consolidate or "wed" special districts, had sent a detailed questionnaire to all the sewer plants asking for information about their operations, equipment, staffing, certifications and so forth. The plants had dutifully complied, but knowing that there might be a push from the county to divert to Cedar Creek, the plant commissioners sent questions to the county about the details of the Cedar Creek operation. So far, they have not received any answers to their questions. Assemblywoman Michelle Schimel quipped, "That's like getting married without a pre-nup."