Letters

The old adage “If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is” still holds meaning today — and it would behoove our municipalities to keep that in mind when considering “quick fixes” being shopped around by salesmen promising to solve complex ecological problems.

At a May 8 Southampton Village Board meeting, the board unanimously approved undergoing the State Environmental Quality Review Process to pursue a potential “quick fix” to addressing the accumulation of sediment in Old Town Pond [“Southampton Village Board Approves Environmental Review of Old Town Pond Bioaugmentation Plan,” 27east.com, May 13].

Up for consideration is the application of bacterial microbes (Bacillus sp.), which are being touted as the solution to this issue, with an estimated price tag to village taxpayers of $377,000, in addition to the money spent by the village to hire a consulting firm for review to determine if this project should even be considered to begin with.

Salesmen at EnBiorganics tout “promising results” from a pilot study farther west, at the Sands Point Preserve in Nassau County. No validating third-party data is offered, nor is focus on the fact that the pond at Sands Point Preserve is an estimated 1/20th the size of Old Town Pond (Google Earth) in surface area. Sands Point Preserve is also entirely private property where there is little cause for public concern and none for the accountability of public funding.

The Southampton Town Trustees, custodians of Southampton Town’s waters, were not present at the village meeting, nor have they offered formal approval of the potential project to date.

While Peconic Baykeeper supports Southampton Village’s endeavors to work toward addressing the myriad issues that plague its ponds and other water bodies, the organization and many of our members who reside in Southampton Village do not support the use of public funds to be a guinea pig for locally unproven technologies that may prove to be detrimental to the pond’s ecosystem and, in a best-case scenario, be wasted money and time in a misguided effort to implement long-term solutions.

These could include extending bioswales and vegetative buffers along the entirety of roadways around Old Town Pond; working with homeowners around the pond and especially near its adjacent roadway to eliminate pesticide, herbicide and fertilizer use; and promoting reductions in irrigation that result in contaminated runoff. Broader strokes include sewering Southampton Village and installing onsite I/A systems where sewering is unfeasible.

If Southampton Village does pursue the applied bacteria treatment technology in question, this should be part of a publicly approved management plan for the water body and derived from outside water quality grant funding, where nonbiased restoration experts have the opportunity to review and approve the proposal.

Peter Topping

Peconic Baykeeper