Editorial The landfill election: Brookhaven voters to decide Long Island’s waste future

Long Island has an impending garbage crisis, and the Town of Brookhaven is at the center of it. As Brookhaven voters prepare to elect their next town supervisor and town council representatives, they must keep this garbage issue at the top of their minds.

Given the complexity of municipal government and the scope of its influence, a local election can never be reduced to a single issue. Still, the Brookhaven Town landfill will have an outsized role in townwide elections this year, affecting every resident in the town and citizens across Long Island.

Opened in 1974, the Brookhaven landfill is the largest on Long Island and the centerpiece of waste collection for the region. In a 2019 thesis paper, Katlin Stath wrote, “the landfill isn’t isolated from the rest of Long Island since it is an integral part of the functioning of the Island’s waste management system.”

However, the landfill is near capacity, with plans in place to close the facility to construction and demolition debris by next year, and expectations to close the site completely two years later. The impending landfill closure, therefore, represents one of the great environmental, governmental and social dilemmas of our time.

Brookhaven Deputy Supervisor Dan Panico (R-Manorville) and Village of Port Jefferson Mayor Margot Garant, a Democrat, have won their respective party’s nominations for this year’s contest for town supervisor. Six months from Election Day, it is time for both candidates to begin preparing comprehensive proposals for this facility.

Though the exact figure is difficult to pinpoint, the landfill is estimated to represent two-fifths of the town’s public revenue. How do the candidates for supervisor plan to make up for the loss of income? Will the town increase taxes on residents? Are there other ways to boost revenue without raising taxes amid this inflationary period?

While the plans are imprecise, officials across levels of government seem poised to begin shipping our trash off the Island by rail. Though garbage-by-rail occurs in other places around the country, is it the optimal solution to our problem? We remind leaders that any plan for shipping trash on train lines must be environmentally and ecologically sustainable.

Our mass transit network on Long Island is dilapidated to begin with. Many residents along the North Shore commute to Manhattan via Jamaica in railcars powered by diesel, a 19thcentury-era technology. Will our garbage crisis compel the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to electrify the Port Jefferson Branch once and for all?

How will moving garbage by rail affect other facets of our transportation network, such as our roadways, waterways and airways? It seems plausible that adding greater volume to our rails will incentivize riders to drive, potentially compounding our traffic congestion troubles.

Finally, we suspect the landfill may have harmed generations of residents of North Bellport and Yaphank, who have endured the possible detrimental health and environmental impacts of living in close proximity to this site.

We regret that the Brookhaven Town Board voted unanimously last year to gerrymander Council District 4 — which includes North Bellport and Yaphank — disempowering the most important voices in this landfill closure dialogue, potentially denying them a true champion on the Town Board to expedite the facility’s closure.

We nonetheless encourage both candidates for town supervisor to coordinate closely with the residents of that hamlet and members of the Brookhaven Landfill Action and Remediation Group, an advocacy organization that has fought for years to close this facility.

While decisions over the landfill closure are ongoing, Brookhaven citizens will have a stake in this effort. The November election for supervisor and Town Council represents a unique opportunity for the public to guide this process.

We encourage residents to start preparing their questions and for candidates to start preparing their answers. With six months until Election Day, let the landfill conversation get rolling. Permanent closure is just around the corner.

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Letters to the Editor

Sunrise Wind projections questionable

The Sunrise Wind project, as we were told in a March 23 TBR News Media article, “will use windmills to provide power to about 600,000 homes.” But what does this mean, exactly? It appears that 600,000 may have been selected as an arbitrary number, which may represent the number of homes that will derive 100% of their power requirements when all of the windmills are generating power at their maximum capacity, although this is not specifically stated in the article. But this raises the obvious question: For what percentage of the time will this be the case? We can only guess.

A much more helpful and meaningful terminology, in my opinion, would be to present these concepts in terms of energy, rather than power. Power is the rate at which energy is produced, or expended. To state that a windmill farm can produce a certain amount of power under ideal conditions, but neglect to mention the percentage of time this may be in effect, is to provide a very limited ability to understand the issue. A much more useful characterization would be to specify the total amount of energy generated in a fixed time, such as a year, compared to the total amount of energy required. For example, we might say something like, “The

Sunrise Wind project will provide 45,000 MWh per year, which is 22% of the total energy required by Suffolk County.” (These are, of course, made-up numbers.) In this way, the complex variability of the wind strength becomes included in the energy notation, making the whole issue considerably easier to understand and evaluate.

Surely this issue is well understood by Sunrise Wind, and why they would choose to muddy the waters, as they have, is a matter for speculation. As Honest Abe Lincoln would have told us, a windmill farm can provide some of the power some of the time, or possibly all of the power some of the time, but it can provide none of the power most of the time.

George Altemose Setauket

Congrats, TBR News Media

Dear Leah,

You must be very proud of your continued recognition from the New York Press Association’s Better Newspaper Contest from your team’s work by receiving 11 awards this year. This is also a testament to your success as the founder and publisher of a weekly newspaper.

I believe hometown papers are an essential means to keep residents updated on what is happening in their community as they report on local government, schools, sports, entertainment, news and other items of interest.

I join with all of your readers in congratulating you and your staff and look forward to your continued success.

Rob Trotta Suffolk County Legislator (R-Fort Salonga) 13th Legislative District

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