5 Things to Know: Breaking Down the LI Sound Plan

This week a group of environmental and political leaders sailed a historic schooner into Port Jefferson to over the coming years.

The Long Island Sound Vision Action Plan is 26 pages of observations and recommendations the advocates plan to push in the short and long term,  increasing the shellfish stocks and lobbying for state cash to fund its proposals.

Here are five points from the report, though you can check out the attached media if you’d like to read the whole thing.

1. The commission says it needs $6 billion to support upgrades to wastewater treatment centers in New York City and Connecticut cities Bridgeport, New Haven and Hartford, which dump the bulk of their sewage into the Long Island sound. The motive here, as with many of the initiatives, is to lower the amount of nitrogen ending up in the Sound, which can cause conditions that kill aquatic and plant life. A short-term fix is to lower the amount sewage plants are allowed to dump daily, which has already fallen in the past decade.

2. Storm water remediation is another big focus for cleaning up the sound, the group says, and, at the short-term level, making sure new developments don’t feed runoff into the Sound is key. But when it comes to the long-term, the group says a lot hinges on further educating the public on how backyard chemicals affect the water when storms wash them into the Sound.

3. While sewage and runoff are major contributors to nitrogen levels that can create oxygen-depleted “dead zones” in the water, you may not know that nitrogen levels in the atmosphere can also contribute to the phenomenon. The study hopes a long-term fix is a national move by the Environmental Protection Agency to regulate this.

4. On Long Island, there are 27 beach areas monitored for how much runoff is affecting bacteria levels, which is why we often hear of beach closures after major rainfalls. But unlike urban areas were overflow from sewers is the culprit, Long Island runoff pollution comes from improperly maintained cesspools, agriculture, animal waste and even gardening.

5. Now that Plum Island is shutting down, the Sound Study wants to make sure no development goes unchecked there. To make sure of that, it will ask the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service to add it to its list of preserved habitats. That seems reasonable. What kind of development would you think sees a former animal disease testing center as prime real estate?