(Ed. Note: The following letter was sent to County Executive Thomas Suozzi concerning the state of the Massapequa Water District and is printed here at the author's request.)

The Commissioners of the Massapequa Water District are compelled to write this letter to you in response to your consultants' request that we review the "preliminary draft" of their detailed cost analysis for the Massapequa Water District regarding your Nassau County Consolidation Study. It is clear that the template utilized for applying the costs to various categories has been predetermined to indicate an abnormal or astronomical cost associated with the administration and management of the Massapequa Water District. In fact, your template is specifically and artificially geared to support our allegations of a possible cost savings by consolidating water districts. This smoke and mirrors approach to supporting your misrepresented theories are something that this Water District cannot tolerate.

If any taxpayer were to apply the template you have provided to provide a cost analysis of all water districts to the special districts under your control, namely the District 2 and District 3 sewer collection and disposal districts, one would find that the management and administration of those districts would run as high as 50 percent. Therefore, if our template or array of cost categories is good for the water districts, then it is equally good for your special districts.

This water district believes that these misrepresentations are a continuance of misrepresentations that you, as Nassau County Executive, have brought upon the taxpayers of this county is an effort to justify your ends.

Beginning with your misrepresentation of the 9/11 tragedy as a cornerstone of your new Nassau County emergency cell phone network and your misrepresentation that we are obstructing the use of our water tower for that network, and your continuing statements that consolidating water districts will save taxpayers money requires that the commissioners of this water district be ever vigilant in reporting the facts to the taxpayers we serve.

The facts on the water tower are simple and have been written to you and that is that the Nassau County Police Department has been on our water tower for over 25 years and will continue to do so. The fact that the Massapequa Water District provides safe drinking water to its consumers at a less than national average price cannot be refuted by you. The fact that commissioner-run water districts in Nassau County provide safe drinking water to their consumers at a price less than the national average for drinking water in a county upon which the taxes and utilities costs run higher than the national average, is a fact.

These consolidation studies, although providing you with press releases and an appearance of wanting to save taxpayers money, defy some simple facts. How can you indicate that consolidating water districts will provide any significant cost savings to the taxpayer when approximately 1 percent of the general tax bill goes to paying for safe and adequate drinking water? While at the same time the purchase of the Glen Cove sewage treatment plant will cost the taxpayers between $30 million and $75 million depending upon how you plan to pay for that purchase. It seems there is a dichotomy here that the taxpayers should understand.

As regards shared savings, again we must discuss the facts. The Massapequa Water District utilizes any and all New York State purchase contracts whenever they are less costly, especially regarding the purchase of our vehicles and equipment. The Massapequa Water District has entered into agreements with the Town of Oyster Bay sharing savings on road restoration costs. We, along with many other water districts, have standardized items such as water meters and hydrants so that we don't have to stock many different pieces of equipment for emergencies, which is very costly.

In essence, the Massapequa Water District will continue to take to task the County Executive and Mr. Weitzman, county comptroller, when you misrepresent cost savings with consolidation of water districts. First and foremost, you owe every taxpayer your "due diligence" to those special districts that require your own scrutiny and which could save taxpayers millions of dollars. Let us not forget that the sanitary sewer systems were built to protect the drinking water supply aquifers from contamination and you have a clear responsibility in this area, as does Mr. Weitzman. Essentially, how many millions of taxpayer's dollars is it going to cost to repair the plant equipment you have failed to maintain at Cedar Creek and Bay Park? What about the sewer system?

As an aside, recent articles in Newsday regarding Mr. Weitzman, a former board member of the Water Authority of Great Neck North, accuses others of the same (according to Newsday) misdeeds he has done himself, leads us to believe that the Executive Branch and the Fiscal Oversight Branch of Local Governments need to do a lot of research within their own organizations prior to misrepresenting the public that the consolidation of water districts will save taxpayers a substantial amount of money.

Frank Flood

John F. Caruso

Vincent Guadagno

Massapequa Water District Commissioners