LIPW’s goals are centered around two key concepts: ensuring all Long Island residents have access to clean, pure, drinking water and encouraging the sustainable use and longevity of Long Island’s sole source aquifer and surface water bodies.
Current Initiative
Seeking Sources for Alternative Drinking Water
There are tens of thousands of toxic chemicals used in our environment and industry today. The impacts of these chemicals, alone and in the aggregate, on drinking water supplies and public health, is largely unstudied. While 1,4-dioxane’s disproportionate impacts to Long Island’s aquifer has recently made headlines, our aquifer is contaminated with many more unregulated contaminants. The unregulated contaminants that have been found to be wide spread in Long Island’s aquifer include 1,1-Dichloroethane (possible human carcinogen), 1,2,3-Trichloropropane (likely to be carcinogenic to humans), Chlorate (damages the nervous system, the thyroid and may cause anemia), HCFC-22 (damages the nervous system, heart, liver, kidney, reproductive system, brain and blood), Hexavalent Chromium (the Erin Brockovich chemical), Cobalt (damages the heart, liver, kidneys, blood, and lungs), and perchlorate (damages the thyroid).[1] Regulators have not quantified the risk of the “toxic cocktail” leaving three million Long Islanders to serve as guinea pigs while regulators continue their process to regulate one contaminant at a time.
Most recently, New York enacted stringent and enforceable standards to reduce New York State residents’ exposure to 1,4-dioxane. The regulation will cost Long Island $1 billion to treat only this contaminant by installing novel and unproven treatment systems that generate dangerous chemical byproducts in the drinking water that is served to Long Islanders. This all begs the question:
Wouldn’t you rather drink water that was pure from the start?
LIPW is seeking a more permanent, more effective, solution. Incredibly, pure drinking water alternatives exist for Long Island. Yet, regulators have ignored them. LIPW seeks the implementation of clean, pure drinking water from two nearby locations: Central Pine Barrens in Suffolk County and New York City. Both have been found to be preliminarily feasible.
LIPW believes that Long Islanders have a fundamental right to pure drinking water. We will tirelessly fight until these alternatives are implemented for the benefit of the health of current and future generations as well as the Long Island economy.
Prior Initiatives
Radioactive Materials in the Navy/Grumman Plume
LIPW’s pioneer initiative began in 2017 and involved the remediation of the Navy/Grumman plume emanating from former industrial facilities in Bethpage. LIPW’s focus was primarily on the radioactive materials discovered in the plume. The extent of the radioactive contamination had not been investigated, despite the detection of levels exceeding drinking water standards leading to the closure of a nearby public supply well. LIPW filed suit in the Eastern District of New York against Governor Cuomo, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC) and the United States Navy seeking, among other things, an independent and complete investigation of the radioactive materials in the plume.
LIPW held several public meetings and engaged hundreds of residents, met with local politicians, and participated in various legal proceedings. LIPW’s suit placed an enormous amount of political pressure on the State which ultimately resulted in the State’s $550 million plan to completely cleanup the nine (9) square mile plume and address the unstudied radioactive material.
[1] https://www.osc.state.ny.us/sites/default/files/state-audits/documents/pdf/2019-01/sga-2018-17s45.pdf