Makeshift catch basins direct flowing rainwater through battered, crumbling ceilings. Workers trudge through moats of raw and semi-treated sewage to repair damaged equipment. Water rises around high-voltage electrical boxes. There’s mold. Disease. Flooded tunnels. Open manholes. Chemical spills. Exposed wiring. Human waste.
“Looks like New Orleans,” says Christine Marzigliano, aghast at the scene unfolding before her eyes.
But it is not New Orleans. It’s right here in Wantagh, at the Cedar Creek Water Pollution Control Plant, as revealed in shocking undercover videotapes obtained by the Long Island Press. Marzigliano, chairperson of the Cedar Creek Health Risk Assessment Committee, a grassroots watchdog for the sewage treatment plant, was responding to room after room of abject disrepair and decay of the most unsavory nature.
After the Long Island Press showed him the tapes, which were shot clandestinely by workers, Jerry Laricchiuta, president of the Civil Service Employees Association (CSEA) Local 830 of Nassau County, said: “This is unacceptable,” and immediately demanded access to the plant for himself and a handful of deputies and county officials, including the union’s industrial hygienist. On Wednesday, Sept. 21, they toured the plant, which opened in 1973, and were even more horrified. “We went to one room where there was dried up sewage on the floor, then there was bugs and spider webs all over the wall,” Laricchiuta says. “It was disgusting.”
According to the video and eyewitnesses, there is severe decay of the ordinary kind: peeling paint, chipped plaster, insects, mold and mildew. There are signs of institutional carelessness: shoddy electrical work, open manholes and grates, garden hoses draped to and fro and jerry-rigged catch basins to contain dripping water and chemicals.
Then there is the sewage. All over the place. It covers the floor in some of the highly tracked tunnels that run throughout the expansive facility. It touches 2,000-volt electric panels. Some of it has solidified and blocks drains, creating stagnant cesspools.
Irony of ironies, staff toilets have no water, and are clogged with dried and aged human feces.
“It’s a disaster,” says a plant worker. “Every day we cannot believe that this place still runs.”
Conditions inside the 32-year-old plant are, according to union officials and other knowledgeable witnesses, in gross violation of local, state and federal regulations.
“You have water around electrical devices, so someone can be electrocuted,” explains Tim Corr, a CSEA administrative assistant in charge of member health and safety, who toured the plant Wednesday after the Press showed him the tapes. “You certainly have a slip-and-fall hazard. You have confined space areas. You have mold problems.”
Workers and others say that the deteriorating facility, which treats about 60 million gallons of the South Shore’s wastewater every day, is at a breaking point. Indeed, on two separate occasions in recent weeks the plant has spilled sewage into the Atlantic waters off Jones Beach, according to a handful of current workers, all of whom requested anonymity for fear of retaliation.
“It’s going to come to the point where we’re not going to be able to treat sewage anymore,” says one employee, “If something goes wrong in the lead building where all the sewage comes into the plant and it can’t be fixed right away, you’re going to flush your toilets and you’re going to have all your sewage backing up.”
OUR CUP RUNNETH OVER
On Sept. 9, the state Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) received an anonymous call reporting sewage washing up on Jones Beach, according to DEC spokesman Bill Fonda. The DEC notified Hempstead bay constables and the Jones Beach State Park police, who investigated the following day and reported finding nothing, Fonda says. But the bay constables say they have no record of the incident or any investigation on their part.
That’s not the type of issue bay constables deal with, a spokeswoman explained.
But plant employees tell a different story. They say that a mechanical breakdown occurred while they were cleaning the massive, overloaded final tanks in the week after Labor Day.
“The pins all sheared, and the pumps kept pumping,” explains an insider. “And instead of filtering the stuff that was going out, it all went through, out to the pipe.” The pipe in question runs beneath Jones Beach and another 2.5 miles out into the Atlantic Ocean. The outflow is normally the water that results from the sewage treatment.
So it’s perhaps no surprise that earlier this week, on Sept. 20, a DEC inspector dropped in at Cedar Creek for a “reconnaissance inspection” (routine inspections are once a year). According to the DEC’s Fonda, the inspector did find overflow spilling from the final tanks, as well as seal leaks on some sludge treatment pumps. But as near as the inspector could determine, the sewage had been contained inside the facility.
“There are some issues at the plant,” Fonda says, adding that the agency will issue a report and give the plant a schedule for fixing the problem. The maximum fine for a sewage spill would be $37,500 per violation per day, but Fonda explains that the agency often gives warnings and lets the facilities use money to fix their problems rather than pay government fines—after all, it’s taxpayers who eventually foot the bill.
Evidence of the second potential spill was first noted by officers with the Nassau County Police Marine/Aviation Bureau, who were patrolling the sea around the 6-mile pipe in a helicopter—part of their regular duties, since the pipe can’t be seen from shore. According to Nassau County Police Officer Vincent Garcia, an unusual flow coming from the pipe induced the cops to call a supervisor at the plant, who, according to Garcia, said that a “diffuser at the end of the pipe was off ” and that no spillage occurred. There was no further investigation.
But in this case, too, plant workers tell a different story. Inside the plant after the police called in, workers rushed around taking samples, trying to find the problem.
“We knew things weren’t looking good,” says one. “You can see that sh*t is floating where it’s not supposed to be. It was at the end of the treatment and it looked like the beginning of the treatment, that’s how bad it was.”
HEALTH IN THE TOILET
If the spills are unproven, however, the conditions inside the plant are not. Cedar Creek insiders may joke about the “Cedar Creek trots,” diarrhea that all workers can expect to get, but the risks to their health are no laughing matter. Robert Campo, Local 830’s union president for the Department of Public Works (DPW), says sore throats are among many known health problems shared by plant workers.
“This is terrible. Certainly you have hepatitis problems,” grimaces Corr, of the CSEA, while viewing one of the videotapes. “Hopefully these guys have their shots.”
In fact, according to Campo, workers’ vaccination shots were put on hold by plant management. Workers allege that this is typical; they say they are regularly denied basic safety equipment, such as protective masks for when they’re working with deadly chemicals.