Stop the Flow

Suffolk County prides itself on being an environmentally progressive place, with a strong emphasis on water quality. But it must take ownership of a pretty sizable environmental mess it is being forced to clean up after a federal lawsuit by the Environmental Protection Agency — and it’s startling that county officials didn’t see the magnitude of the problem, and act sooner to address it.

To settle the lawsuit, the county has agreed to eliminate nearly four dozen cesspools located in county parks, replacing them with innovative alternative systems that will remove much of the nitrogen currently being discharged. In addition to that $7 million investment, the county will pay the EPA a $200,000 fine.

The large-capacity cesspools — essentially just holes in the ground where waste is poured — can be found locally in Montauk, at Cedar Point, at Sears Bellows County Park and the Shinnecock Canal marina in Hampton Bays, and at Indian Island. They had supposed to have been replaced in 2005, when the Safe Drinking Water Act took effect.

Peter Scully, the deputy county executive and the county’s “water czar,” deftly tried to spin the resolution of “legacy issues” and turn attention to the county’s track record on water issues. But there’s no sugarcoating it: In Northwest Woods, for example, at Cedar Point Park, campers pumped out waste from the holding tanks of their RVs into cesspools, which essentially means they were unknowingly dumping straight into the ground and the nearby waters. But the county knew.

There were dump stations in Montauk and Hampton Bays as well, and at Indian Island in Riverhead. As the news organization Riverhead Local noted in an editorial last week, the cesspools at Indian Island are not far from the edge of Saw Mill Creek, a tributary of the Peconic River, and part of the Peconic Estuary. With no small amount of outrage, Riverhead Local noted, “Campers might just as well be invited to dump their wastes directly into the water.”

The towns, years ago, began offering pump-out boats to operators of watercraft, to discourage them from simply emptying their vessels’ waste holds into the bays. It’s outrageous that the county, at the same time, was woefully inattentive to this ongoing pollution by design. Perhaps similar “pump-out” stations — with the appropriate holding tanks and disposal — is something the county needs at its parks.

The county says it will finish its work on the cesspools by 2025, but this requires more decisive action. In several of the parks, the cesspools also capture the wastewater generated on site, by kitchens and showers, which might be unavoidable for now. But if the county wants to be a “recognized leader” in eliminating waste from the environment, it’s time to stop allowing sewage to be dumped straight into the ground at its parks. Immediately.