What's Happening on Peninsula Boulevard?

Nassau County risked losing out on millions of federal dollars if it didn’t go ahead with a project to connect the Inwood sewage pump station to the Bay Park facility, according to county officials.

Five Towners have had to deal with slow moving traffic on Peninsula Boulevard for several weeks as the Department of Public Works worked on connecting a force main pipe from the pump station located south of Costco in Lawrence to another pipe near the intersection of Harris Avenue and Peninsula.

The project will make the transferring of waste more proficient and better for the environment, a DPW official said, but it also leaves the door open for the proposed consolidation of the Lawrence and Cedarhurst sewage plants, which would have the villages’ waste sent to Bay Park and the two facilities shuttered. The plan had been cast aside when Republicans, led by County Executive Ed Mangano, took over.

“The county executive has stated during several meetings with community groups that those treatment plants will not go to Bay Park unless that facility is at its peak,” said Department of Public Works Deputy Commissioner Richard Millet.

The new force pipe is bigger than the current one, and will serve as the main avenue for waste when complete, Millet said. “We would choose to switch over to the new one whether Cedarhurst or Lawrence come on or not.” Connecting Lawrence and Cedarhurst’s plants to the pipe is a “pretty easy hookup,” he added.

The county’s approximate $27 million project, half of which was paid for with American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds, is about 50 percent complete, Millet said. Work on Peninsula Boulevard will be done around June, and the whole project will be finished in September. The repaving of Peninsula could start in June, he said.

The project was at the center of a political spitfire on Thursday at the Five Towns Democratic Club meeting, where Legislator Wayne Wink (D-Roslyn) said that the consolidation was used as a campaign issue against former 7th District Legislator Jeff Toback.

“The [Bay Park] neighborhood made it clear that they did not want the consolidation to go forward. Any talk of it was heresy,” said Wink, a ranking member on the finance committee who has dealt with the sewage plant issue for years, in an interview on Monday. “[Hempstead Councilman] Tony Santino and [7th District Legislator Howard] Kopel ran on the concept that this was bad for the neighborhood and they wouldn’t have it.”

He added, “People tapped into the resentment of the possibility of the consolidation.”

Kopel (R-Lawrence), however, disputed this narrative. “I campaigned for fixing the Bay Park plant,” he said. “They don’t want anymore of other people’s stuff shipped there unless the plant is in superb shape.” He alleged that the plant deteriorated into “appalling shape” under former Executive Tom Suozzi.

James Trantel, a member of the Green Bay Parkers, a group of concerned residents in the area surrounding the sewage plant that is credited with helping Kopel and Mangano take office, supported the legislator’s argument. “We never said we were against consolidation — that plant has to be brought up to grade ‘A’ quality before you can talk of consolidation,” he said. Trantel said he believes the Mangano administration will do what’s necessary, but he pointed out, “the county is broke and they’re screwed.”

The Mangano administration may even choose to keep the Lawrence and Cedarhurst facilities open and send treated sewage to Bay Park to keep the area residents happy, Toback alleged. “They have huge deficits and they’re paying off a political debt with taxpayer money,” he said.

But that plan doesn’t sit well with Trantel, who called it “absolutely wasteful.” “If you made the decision to keep the plants up and running, they need to be independent,” he said.

Either way, the consolidation of Lawrence and Cedarhurst’s sewage facilities, if it is approved, won’t happen for a long time because of the condition of the Bay Park facility, Kopel said.

“Unfortunately, that project has not moved forward as fast as we would have hoped,” said Village of Lawrence Trustee Michael Fragin. “From what I understand, it’s still moving forward.”

But no one seems to know exactly what will happen with the consolidation project, Wink said. “The whole concept seems to be pretty vague at this point.”

Although the future of the consolidation is uncertain, Kopel is sure of one thing: traffic should never get as bad as it was on Peninsula Boulevard. “It’s been a horror. It took an hour to go down two blocks,” Kopel said, adding that at one point he threatened a DPW commissioner that he would put a stop to the work. “They’ve learned the lesson with traffic getting out of hand. I’m hopeful and I’m watching.”

He added, “Infrastructure has to be built, but it can’t destroy lives and businesses.”