Fatal copter ridepart of LI couple’sanniversary giftA3

Rock and Roll Hallof Fame to inductfirst hip-hop actA11, FANFARE

NEW

SDAYPH

OTO

ILLU

STRATIO

N;N

EWSD

AYPH

OTO

/DANIELGOODRIC

H

SERIESBEGINS /A4-5SERIESBEGINS /A4-5

TRIP’STRAGIC ENDROCK

AND RAP

NEWSDAY.COM

L O N G I S L A N DL O N G I S L A N D

SUNDAY, MARCH 11, 2007 | SUFFOLK EDITION $1.50

COPYRIGHT 2007, NEWSDAY INC., LONG ISLAND, VOL. 67, NO. 189

NEW

SDAYPH

OTO

/BR

UCEGILBE

RT

Is the lack ofsewers on LongIsland hurtingthe regionaleconomy? Talkabout it onlineat newsday.com

NEWSDAY PHOTO / KAREN WILES STABILE

Patchogue Mayor Paul Pontieri stands outside the village’s sewage treatment plant, which heplans to expand using the fees paid by businesses clamoring to hook into Patchogue’s system.

Interestin sewers

First of two parts

BY ELIZABETH MOOREelizabeth.moore@newsday.com

Adisco generates 10times as much of itas a church, and anice-cream parlor fivetimes as much as a

stationery store.A doctor’s office puts out

two thirds more than a travelagency, but senior housingunits only half as much as af-fordable ones.

This is the mathematics ofsewage, and in Suffolk Countybuilders know it trumps all zon-ing. The greater their output,the less they can build on anacre of unsewered land, no mat-ter what local planners say.

That’s why a growing num-ber of local officials are start-ing to see their sewer plants astheir greatest asset.

In Patchogue, real estate mo-guls and restaurateurs havebeen flocking to Mayor PaulPontieri’s office seeking to con-nect to his system. He’ll usetheir fees to build a biggersewer plant, so he can serve yetmore new businesses, town-houses and all the shops andclubs that bring a downtown tolife. Patchogue’s mills are longgone, but its sewer systemcould bring a renaissance.

“Bellport to the east of us,they make a lot of money offtheir golf course — I have asewer plant,” Pontieri said withsatisfaction. “People stop play-ing golf. But nobody ever stopsusing a sewer.”

It is the kind of talk all but un-heard since the SouthwestSewer District corruption scan-

dal of the late 1970s outragedtaxpayers, killed political ca-reers and left one of America’smost populous counties relianton backyard septic systems tohandle the waste from morethan two thirds of its homes.For 30 years, the word “sewer”has been taboo, and the ab-sence of sewers has been aprime engine driving suburbansprawl and shaping the builtlandscape in powerful butscarcely noticed ways.

But lately, a rising public de-mand for affordable housing,clean waterways and vibrantdowntowns has compelled a re-thinking.

In Hauppauge, a $65-millioncounty project is under way fora new sewer plant in the nation’s

second-largest industrial park,most of it now served by septicsystems. With sewers, plannersenvision a gleaming office corri-dor to rival Melville’s Route 110.In Wyandanch, a place so de-pressed that even the Mc-

Donald’s just closed, Babylon of-ficials believe sewers are theirbest hope for building a viabledowntown. And officials wantthem in tidy tree-lined Smith-town, too, where the chamber ofcommerce has had it with sani-tary limits for septic systemsthat make opening so much as adeli a major bureaucratic ordeal.

This same drive for economicopportunity is behind the forma-tion of public sewer districts inYaphank, at Gabreski Airport,and in the 260-acre BrookhavenTechnology Center in Shirley.Selden’s district is expanding.There is talk of sewers for down-town Mattituck and Montauk.And in Mastic and Shirley,where dead fish drifted belly-updown the malodorous ForgeRiver last summer, a local legis-lator is polling her 82,000 work-ing-class constituents aboutwhether they are ready to thinkabout sewers, too.

The scale of most of theseprojects is modest. On the EastEnd in particular, it’s still a dan-gerous topic. But the shift intone is unmistakable.

Past sewer plans derailed“Sewers has been a dirty

word in Suffolk County eversince 1977,” said Smithtown’ssupervisor, Patrick Vecchio. “Inever heard the word useduntil the past year.”

But there has been a seachange, said his planning direc-tor, Frank DeRubeis. “Sewershave come out of the closet!”he said.

How they got into the closetin the first place is a cautionarytale of the importance of get-ting big public works projectsright. Forty years ago, Long Is-land planners were busy plan-ning sewer systems they expect-ed would extend all the wayfrom the Queens line to Mon-tauk, to accommodate an antici-pated population of 4.5 million.

The projects were backed bygenerous federal and state sub-sidies that covered 87.5 percentof the cost. The first in Suffolkwas to be the $281 million South-west Sewer District, approved

by voters after much debateand one failed referendum. Butthe project became a long anddusty parade of constructionproblems and delays, joined byan increasingly colorful streamof revelations about dangerous-ly shoddy work, rigged bids andsweetheart deals. The messreached its crescendo in 1979when the county official incharge of the project wasstabbed in the back with a fish-ing knife by his lover and killed,just as he was preparing to spillthe beans to investigators.

The Bergen Point treatmentplant, built on a prominent vistapoint on the Great South Bay,was state-prison ugly, stank,belched and failed to work rightfor years. Residents enduredhaving their streets ripped upfor years at a time, while costsescalated to more than doublewhat had been planned. Debtcosts would push the price tagto $1.4 billion.

So devastating was the politi-cal fallout that all work onother county sewer projects —Huntington was to be next —was simply abandoned. Instead,the county had its hands fullcleaning up the financial mess.

The scandal “really para-lyzed the effort to continue sew-ering in Suffolk County,” saidformer Republican County Ex-ecutive John Klein, who lost hisbid for re-election in an ugly pri-mary battle featuring unlaidsewer pipes stencilled with theslogan “Flush Klein in ’79.”

“Nobody even brought thesubject up . . . It was the kiss ofdeath.”

The generous federal subsi-dies for building public sewersystems ran out in 1990. By thattime, according to the U.S. Cen-sus, almost 80 percent of NewYork State’s and 92 percent ofNassau County’s householdswere served by public sewer sys-tems — but just 28 percent ofSuffolk’s were. In the town ofBrookhaven, all but 2 percent ofthe homes were unsewered. Suf-folk’s proportions have changedlittle since then, officials say.

As it is now, any big builderwho can’t hook up to the South-west Sewer District or one ofSuffolk’s half dozen small munic-ipal plants has had to build aplant of its own. So while Nas-sau County’s sewage waste ispiped to a dozen treatmentplants, Suffolk is dotted withsome 190 of them, most of themprivate, many aging and in ques-tionable repair. And those 190plants combined serve less thana third of the county’s homes.

The rest of the county relieson cesspools and septic tanks,most of which wind up truck-ing their liquid sludge to Ber-gen Point and other plants forfinal dewatering. In Nassau,sewage travels almost entirelyunderground.

“I think it’s rather disgustingto be dealing with cesspools inthe year 2006,” said Legis.Wayne Horsley, a Babylon law-maker who hears many com-plaints from residents sick ofseeing the sludge trucks rum-

Constructingmore publiclines inSuffolkcould playvital role incounty’sfuturegrowth

A4

NEW

SDA

Y,

SUN

DA

Y,

MA

RC

H11

,20

07

ww

w.n

ew

sd

ay

.co

m

bling down Main Street.Horsley has plenty of compa-ny in that view. With the lastlarge vacant tracts of landbeing either developed or pre-served, the builders and envi-ronmentalists who spent ca-reers dueling over them arefinding more in common. Pub-lic sewers allow more profit-able dense development on theland that remains, and they pro-tect groundwater, too.“As we reach final build-out,the focus must turn to control-ling the contamination of landthat has been developed,” saidDick Amper, executive direc-tor of the Long Island Pine Bar-rens Society.But it’s the lack of affordablehousing — a problem drivinggrowingnumbers to leave the Is-land—that hasbecome thebusi-ness community’s number-oneworry and brought sewers backlike a once disgraced uncle.

Sewers and housing densityThe workforce housing com-mission set in motion by SuffolkCounty Executive Steve Levytwo years ago had barely begunmeeting beforemembers agreed

the lack of sewers was a primaryproblem, said chairman JimMorgo, Suffolk’s economic de-velopment commissioner.“It’s a very simple equa-tion,” he said. “Land is expen-sive — you can’t build afford-able housing and pay a lot forland if you’re only going to getone home to an acre. The onlyway you can get density iswith sewers.”That’s because of an arcaneset of rules calledArticle 6 of thecounty sanitary code, which isaimed at protecting Suffolk’sgroundwater from being over-loadedwith nitrogen fromsepticsystems. It caps allowablewaste-water at 300 gallons per day peracre in sensitive areas like thePine Barrens, or 600 gallons perday on unsewered land to theirwest and on theNorth Fork.A single-family home averag-es 300 gallons per day, thecounty calculates. So no morethan one house may be built tothe acre in the Pine Barrens ortwo to the acre everywhereelse, no matter how much den-sity local zoning codes allow.And restaurants generate 30gallons per day, per seat —whichmeans unsewered Suffolk

See SEWERS on A26

Take a tour of the Bergen Pointwastewater treatment plant atnewsday.com.

KEY TO DEVELOPMENT

NOW

NEWSDAY PHOTO / DANIEL GOODRICH

Workers dig a trench for a sewer line at the intersection of Bay Shore and Skidmore roads in Bay Shore last fall.

A5

w

ww

.newsday.com

NEW

SDAY,SU

NDAY,MARCH

11,20

07

<<A sewagetreatmentplant in aresidentialsubdivision onSunriseHighway inOakdale hassiding and acupola to helpit blend in.

>>Waste-water istreated in aclarifier tankat the SuffolkCountySouthwestSewerDistrict’sBergen Pointsewagetreatmentplant in WestBabylon onthe GreatSouth Bay.

NEWSDAY PHOTO / ALAN RAIA

KEYKEYPublic sewer districtsPrivately sewered areasProposed sewer districtsSewage treatment plants

More than 90 percent of homes in Nassau County are covered by sewer lines. It's a different story in Suffolk County, where less than one-third of county homes are sewered to public districts. The map shows areas of both counties covered by municipal sewers, privately sewered areas, locations of sewage treatment plants and proposed sewer districts.

Unsewered SuffolkUnsewered Suffolk

SOURCES: SUFFOLK COUNTY DEPARTMENTS OF HEALTH, PUBLIC WORKS; NASSAU COUNTY DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC WORKS; NEW YORK STATE DEPARTMENT OF ENVIRONMENTAL CONSERVATION

restaurants can seat no morethan 30 patrons for each acre ofland they own. That’s why,when lifestyle diva B. Smithscouted the Fire Island gatewaycommunities for restaurant siteslast fall, she visited Patchogueand Bay Shore, but skipped un-sewered Sayville. Downtownswith sewers are takingonagrow-ing role as restaurant and night-lifemeccas,Morgo said.And senior housing generateshalf as much sewage as afford-able housing does, which mighthelp explain why it’s so muchmore popular with developers:They can build twice the densityon the same acreage, reapingconsiderablymore profit.Sewer capacity “enters intoevery sale and purchase of va-cant land in Suffolk County,”said developer Ron Parr.Wyandanch businessman Hi-lary Marquis believes these eco-nomics are killing downtownslike his.Over the past eight years, theNigerian-born graphic designerand his pediatrician wife havebought up three-quarters ofwhat should be a prime develop-ment block just down the streetfrom a train station. They wantto develop a mixed-use buildingwith commercial space down-stairs and four to six apartmentsabove — the kind of buildingcommon in the bustling villageof Babylon to the south, and justwhat smart-growth advocatesurge for a transportation nexis.But that buildingwould be toodense for Wyandanch, which,unlike Babylon, was excludedfrom the Southwest Sewer Dis-trict after a public referendumfailed. And building his own pri-vate sewage treatment plant isout of the question forMarquis.“Other areas have sewer sys-tems,” Marquis laments. “I don’tsee why this area shouldn’t. . . .Wedon’t have the infrastructurethatwe should have.”

Town officials agree. They’restudying what it would cost toextend a line from the South-west Sewer District up StraightPath.Theyknowitwill be expen-sive, maybe too expensive, Su-pervisor Steve Bellone said. ButBabylon has already tried everyother revitalization tool in thekit for that business district —from a “visioning plan” to colo-nial lighting, Empire Zone taxabatements, brownfields grantsand an urban renewal plan.“All these things together do

not equal the importance ofbeing able to place sewers in thedowntown area,” Bellone said.“If you don’t have sewers, every-

thing else becomes much hard-er.”

Smithtown ‘at a standstill’Nowhere is the changing cli-mate more stark than in sleepySmithtown, a town whose gov-ernment was given a DumbGrowth Award by the nonprof-it Vision Long Island last year.“We’re at a standstill,”groaned Chamber of Com-merce president Mario Ginolast fall. They have had to sendaway a dentist and a restaurantwho wanted to locate on MainStreet. The barber couldn’t addapartments over his shop. Thetown’s proudest achievement,

an award-winning mixed-usedevelopment, took 10 years tobuild, waiting for approval ofits sewage disposal system.What critics don’t seem tograsp, saidVecchio, is that Smith-townhashad smart-growthordi-nances on its books since the1980s but hasn’t been able toapply themwithout sewers.Not that he was pushing forthem. “It was out of sight, out ofmind,” he admits. Instead, townplanners were told to try cum-bersomealternatives, like “steril-izing”property, buying land else-where and transferring thedevel-opment rights to the lots wheretheywant density.

“Everyone would say, ‘Figureout something else, becausethat’s a dead issue, we’re goingto get ourselves killed,’ ”,DeRubeis said. “ . . . We’ve ex-hausted ourselves trying theother things. I just got fed up.“ . . . Half the town is zoned

quarter acre but we haven’tbuilt a quarter-acre subdivisionin 25 years. So we’ve used upland at two or three times therate originally planned. That’swhy housing costs are so high.”

SEWERS from A4

TOMORROW

COMIN

G

Algae blooms and closeddrinking-water wells are amongthe environmental impacts ofSuffolk’s reliance on cesspoolsand septic tanks for householdwaste disposal. Now the county isdoing a new water managementplan that may tighten regulations.

A26

NEW

SDAY,SU

NDAY,MARCH

11,20

07

ww

w.n

ewsd

ay.c

om