Save the Sound reaches more agreements to save the Sound

Identical versions of the Long Island Sound Restoration and Stewardship Reauthorization Act of 2023 have been introduced in the Senate and House on Capitol Hill and have spent weeks bottled up in committees with no votes scheduled as of Feb. 6. The legislation would provide continue federal funding of efforts to clean up the Long Island Sound.

Senators Chuck Schumer and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Richard Blumenthal and Chris Murphy of Connecticut were initial sponsors of the Senate bill. On the House side, Reps. Nick LaLota, Andrew Garbarino, Anthony D’Esposito and Michael Lawler of New York and Reps. Joe Courtney and Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut were the initial sponsors.

While there’s been inaction on the legislation in Washington, the nonprofit Save the Sound has managed to score agreements with four Westchester municipalities that are expected to help at least incrementally in cleaning up the Sound.

In 2006, Congress had passed the Long Island Sound Stewardship Act, which provided federal dollars for projects to restore the coastal habitat to help revitalize the Sound’s wildlife population, coastal wetlands, and plant life. In 2018, it was followed by the Long Island Sound Restoration and Stewardship Act.

The pending legislation would authorize $325 million over five years for projects that would boost the Sound’s water quality while restoring shorelines and coastal wetlands.

According to Murphy, “As of 2022 federal funding for the Long Island Sound has enabled programs to significantly reduce the amount of nitrogen entering the Long Island Sound from sewage treatment plants by 70.3% compared to the 1990s, reduce hypoxic (low oxygen level) conditions by 58% compared to the 1990s, restore at least 2,239 acres of coastal habitat, and fund 570 conservation projects.”

As good as those statistics seem, more work needs to be done and some of it is being accomplished by others.

Save the Sound, which has offices in Larchmont and New Haven, originally was founded in 1972 as the Long Island Sound Task Force. It subsequently merged with the Connecticut Fund for the Environment and also with Soundkeeper, Inc. The organization has been making incremental progress in cleaning up the Sound and addressing other environmental issues.

Since 2015, Save the Sound has operated a website that provides information on pollution levels at various beaches along the Sound, soundhealthexplorer.org. It has been anything but silent when it comes to telling the story to elected officials at all levels of why government funding and other support is needed to continue the progress that has been made in cleaning up the Sound and improving environmental conditions elsewhere.

Success in cleaning up the Sound has in large measure directly depended on reducing nitrogen levels in the water. Excess nitrogen comes from raw sewage that finds its way into the Sound. Too much nitrogen encourages bacteria and algae growth, resulting in toxic algae blooms, oxygen deficiency and contaminated water and beaches that are unsafe for humans.

According to Roger Reynolds, legal director of Save the Sound, the new settlements that have been reached with Westchester municipalities ultimately are expected to result in a reduction of raw sewage flowing into the Sound. Back in 2015, Save the Sound and Atlantic Clam Farms of Connecticut, Inc., which is based in Easton, Connecticut, filed a lawsuit against Westchester County and 11 municipalities alleging violations of the Clean Water Act. Seven of the municipalities reached settlement agreements with the plaintiffs in the intervening years. They were the cities of Rye and White Plains, the villages of Mamaroneck, Port Chester, Rye, and Scarsdale and the Town and Village of Harrison. Recently settling were the four members of the New Rochelle Sewer District: the City of New Rochelle; the Town of Mamaroneck; the Village of Pelham Manor; and the Village of Larchmont.

“In addition to the Clean Water Act claims, which is the federal Clean Water Act which requires all waters to be fishable and swimmable and prohibits pollution into those waters, we also brought a public nuisance claim,” Reynolds said.

Reynolds explained that the shellfish farming company that was a plaintiff hopes someday to be able to harvest from Long Island Sound waters off Westchester but right now because of pollution harvesting can only take place about as far west as Greenwich. He said that they were aggrieved by the contributions of the municipalities to pollution in the Sound and that’s why they were in the lawsuit.

“The municipalities own and maintain the sewage collection system meaning the pipes that collect the sewage. They’ve fallen into a state of disrepair where a couple of things happened,” Reynolds said. “Groundwater and other forms of rainwater get into the pipes. Also many sump pumps in houses are illegally connected to the sewer drains as opposed to the stormwater drains and so when it rains both the infiltration, the rain that gets through the cracked pipes, and what’s called the inflow, rain from gutters, sump pumps and such, overwhelm both the local collection systems … and the sewage treatment plants.”

Reynolds explained that the four municipalities in the New Rochelle Sewer District agreed to study and repair 170 linear miles of pipes and fix 25,000 defects. Across the 11 municipalities that settled, a total of 624.5 linear miles of sewer pipes have been or will be repaired and a total of 64,000 defects have been or will be fixed.

Reynolds said that shortly after the lawsuit was filed the municipalities all agreed that they had to upgrade their systems. Some municipalities did not immediately comply with the consent orders to which they had agreed and Save the Sound had to take enforcement action.

The members of the New Rochelle Sewer District did designate the repairs they were going to make and began to do them but at the same time filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit claiming that their actions did not violate the Clean Water Act. The judge ruled in favor of Save the Sound.

“Fortunately, New York has the Clean Water Investment Act which has made hundreds of millions of dollars available for upgrades just like these, so a lot of these repairs have been funded by those state dollars,” Reynolds said. “The way it might impact individual homeowners and businesses is if they are illegally connected to the system.”

Reynolds said that municipalities were required to have ordinances making sump pumps connected to sewer lines illegal. Property owners would be required to legalize such sump pumps.

Reynolds pointed out that there are a lot of causes of pollution and the fixes to sewer systems will not take care of everything.

“What we have to do is address each source of pollution,” Reynolds said. “Is Long Island Sound better than it was in the 70s and 80s? Absolutely. These actions do make a difference. Is it going to solve the problem tomorrow? I wish.”