By Adrienne Esposito, Citizens Campaign for the Environment

Here in Suffolk County, our water is intrinsically connected to our way of life. We live on Long Island for our beautiful beaches, waterways, and fisheries.

The bad news is that the health of our bays, harbors, lakes, rivers, and estuaries has been declining for decades due to excessive nitrogen pollution caused by sewage.  Each summer we see a rainbow of toxic algae blooms in nearly all of our waterways—blue green algae, rust tide, red tide, pink tide, brown tide—that grow more intense with each passing summer.

Impaired water quality, beach closures, and fish kills have become regular occurrences. This past summer was again the worst on record for water quality impairments and harmful algal blooms. This problem will not fix itself—we must act!

The good news is that we know how to solve this problem and restore the health of our waterways.  The majority of nitrogen pollution entering our groundwater and coastal waters comes from outdated sewage infrastructure and septic systems.

Long Island is, unfortunately, the septic capital of the world. Suffolk is 74 percent unsewered, with 360,000 homes relying on antiquated septic and cesspool technology to treat wastewater.

We can and will solve our nitrogen pollution problem by replacing outdated cesspools and septic systems with advanced on-site systems and, where appropriate, improving and expanding sewer systems.

Projects to improve water quality by reducing nitrogen from sewage have had great success in western Long Island Sound, Northport, and around the country.

Nitrogen-removing advanced on-site septic systems provide important improvements from the old polluting septics and cesspools.  Suffolk County’s septic change-out grants program is growing. What we still need is the money—a recurring revenue source that will allow us to fully implement the plan. 

We need Suffolk residents to vote on Prop 2 for clean water.

Prop 2 will allow for an 1/8 of a penny increase in the county sales tax, which will be dedicated to protecting water resources by installing sewers and clean water septic systems. In other words, for 12 cents on a $100 purchase, we will be able to fix our wastewater infrastructure, reverse the trend of degrading water quality, and fully restore the health of our waterways for next the generation.

The longer we wait to implement these changes, the more expensive and difficult our water quality problems will be to fix.

Clean water is not a political or partisan issue. In fact, it is the one thing we all seem to agree on. We worked with a diverse range of supporters to get this issue on the ballot, including environmentalists, labor, businesses, civics, community groups, Democratic and Republican elected leaders.

We are close to the finish line after a decade of work and have a once-in-a-generation shot at restoring our waterways. Now we need the public to come out on Nov. 5; remember to flip the ballot, and vote yes on Prop 2 for clean water.