Suffolk County voters overwhelmingly approved a new water quality improvement program that will create a new one-eighth percent sales tax to fund upgrades to municipal sewer systems and the replacement of hundreds of thousands of outdated septic systems.
More than 71 percent of those who marked a vote for what was Proposition 2 on Suffolk County ballots supported the measure.
The new 0.125 percent tax will go into effect in 2025, with the funds becoming available for use in 2026. Sales tax in Suffolk will now be 8.75 percent.
The new tax is expected to generate some $47 million in its first year and likely climb from there throughout its 50-year life.
“This landmark victory for clean water will generate $4 billion to modernize wastewater infrastructure and protect Long Island’s waters from nitrogen pollution, and $2 billion to protect clean drinking water by conserving open space and wildlife habitats,” The Nature Conservancy said in an announcement celebrating the approval of the measure. “This monumental nonpartisan decision marks a turning point in the decades-long effort to restore Long Island’s beaches, bays, and harbors.”
The money will go to expanding and upgrading sewer systems in the western half of the county and to replacing obsolete and environmentally destructive cesspools and septic tanks with so-called innovative-alternative septic systems that greatly reduce the amount of nitrogen released into groundwater and bays and ponds.
Nitrogen loading, primarily from cesspools and outdated septics beneath homes built prior to the 1980s, has been identified by marine biologists as the main driver of the explosion of toxic algae blooms in local bays, tidal creeks and harbors, as well as in freshwater lakes and ponds over the last three decades. Fully addressing the problem will require extensive upgrades to wastewater systems, in particular the more than 360,000 individual homes in eastern Suffolk County that flush waste into their own septic systems and the groundwater flowing beneath their foundations — which ultimately mixes into ponds or tidal waters.
Adrienne Esposito, executive director of the Citizens Campaign for the Environment, said the approval of the bill by voters caps a decade-long effort to marshal a funding source needed to make meaningful upgrades to wastewater systems in the county.
“In an election filled with controversy, clean water has united Suffolk County,” she said in a statement released on Tuesday night by a coalition of environmental and business groups that had supported its adoption. “This is the culmination of over a decade of research and effort to craft a plan to restore our drinking and coastal waters. Today, we made history, and tomorrow will get to work to implement the clean water restoration plan.”
Peconic Baykeeper Peter Topping applauded the approval of the new tax, which will be in place for 50 years, as well as the extension of an existing quarter-percent tax for clean water projects through 2060.
“We are thrilled that the residents of Suffolk County have voiced their resounding support to fund the action needed to address wastewater pollution,” he said. “Today marks a major milestone in protecting our bays, ponds, creeks, and drinking water for generations to come.”
In the one statewide proposal on the ballot, state residents approved the Equal Rights Amendment, which nominally guaranteed equal treatment under the law to all residents regardless of race, gender or nationality, but was specifically intended to protect the right to an abortion in the state by making it harder for rights already guaranteed in the State Constitution to be legislatively dismantled in the future.
Critics of the bill had cast it as being designed to block efforts to restrict transgender children from participating in high school sports — girls sports, in particular — and expanding rights to undocumented immigrants.
The measure passed with more than 60 percent of the vote statewide, but only about 53 percent among Suffolk County voters who cast votes on the proposition.
Michael Wright on Nov 5, 2024