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The latest on the Key Bridge collapse, New York puts forth legislation to get clean energy projects on the grid and Wisconsin and other states join a federal summer food program to help feed kids across the country.

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Republicans float conspiracy theories on the collapse of Baltimore's Key Bridge, South Carolina's congressional elections will use a map ruled unconstitutional, and the Senate schedules an impeachment trial for Homeland Secretary Mayorkas.

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Historic wildfires could create housing and health issues for rural Texans, a Kentucky program helps prison parolees start a new life, and descendants of Nicodemus, Kansas celebrate the Black settlers who journeyed across the 1870s plains seeking self-governance.

LI "Coastal Resiliency" Topic of Governor's Task Force

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Wednesday, May 28, 2014   

LONG ISLAND, N.Y. - It's prime time for beach season, and a task force appointed by Gov. Andrew Cuomo is on Long Island today to talk about solutions for the area's critical water-quality issues.

Marshall Brown, founder and executive director of Save the Great South Bay, said that if someone had told him a year ago that so many people would be focused on water quality, he would not have believed it. Brown called it a relief to see the task force considering actions that local residents feel are coming just in time.

"Everybody realizes that if we don't deal with this, and now, Long Island may suffer a bill it will never come back from," he said. "All our bays and rivers are listed as impaired."

Brown said he especially likes Cuomo's proposal to make Stony Brook University a hub for wastewater solutions to which communities can turn, not only locally but around the nation and world.

According to reports in Newsday, at least $400 million in federal Housing and Urban Development funds are slated to go to Nassau and Suffolk counties for wastewater and nitrogen-reduction projects. Carl Lobue, senior marine scientist with The Nature Conservancy on Long Island, said that's especially good news because it brings the types of work that can't be outsourced.

"The solutions that we're talking about are good for human health, they're good for the economy, they're good for our quality of life and they're good for the environment," he said. "The solutions have to be done here on the island, so the people who have to do them would be Long Islanders, having jobs. It's a win-win-win."

Long Island still needs a master plan, Lobue said, but added that this year has been a real turning point in focusing attention on the issue.

"In Suffolk County, we have over 70 percent of our communities on old and aging septic systems that were never designed to treat nitrogen," he said. "You can't have a resilient community when you can't flush your toilet at high tide."

The first hearing is to start at noon at Suffolk County Community College in Brentwood.

More information is online at LongIslandCleanWaterPartnership.org.


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