State, County Seeking Design-Builders For Bay Park Conveyance

Pushing the Bay Park Conveyance Project forward, the state and Nassau County announced that they are now seeking requests for qualifications from design-build teams.

With the $830 million rebuild of the Bay Park Wastewater Treatment Plant almost completed, this next step brings the plan to revitalize the Western Bays one step closer to reality. The projects will also protect the area from future storm damage.

"This innovative project is showing the world the power of investing in building stronger, more resilient infrastructure systems," said Gov. Andrew Cuomo. "Our partnership with Nassau County on the Bay Park Conveyance Project will help transform, restore and revive Long Island's Western Bays, while helping ensure this vital resource is protected from future extreme weather events."

The Bay Park Conveyance Project would stop the discharge of treated sewage into Reynolds Channel, and instead divert it into the ocean. The Bay Park plant will be rebuilt and then used to divert treated sewage to the Cedar Creek plant in Wantagh, which discharges into the ocean. The Bay Park Conveyance Project will connect the Bay Park plant to the Cedar Creek plant's outfall by constructing two underground tunnels and using an abandoned aqueduct to join with Cedar Creek's three-mile long ocean outfall that has a one-mile long diffusion pipe at the end.

Doing so will stop the discharge of about 19 billion gallons of treated sewage into the Western Bays each year, which will help protect and rejuvenate the marshlands that help protect coastal communities from storm damage.

"The state and county are seeking a highly qualified team of design-build firms to clean up the bays, restore the marine ecosystem, and restore storm/buffering marshes to make the South Shore more storm-resilient," said Nassau County Executive Laura Curran. "I thank Governor Cuomo for his dedication to fast-tracking this project, which will create jobs, spur economic development, boost tourism, enhance recreation opportunities, and make significant progress towards protecting and preserving our environment for generations to come."

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation will evaluate firms submitting qualifications and select the most qualified design-build teams to submit proposals to design and build the project. The Request for Proposals will be issued in January 2020 with the most qualified and cost-effective design-build team selected in the summer. The DEC will manage the design-build contract. After the project is completed, Nassau County will own and operate the new facilities.

Due in large part to nitrogen in treated wastewater discharges from the Bay Park plant, as well as Long Beach, Cedarhurst and Lawrence treatment plants, the Western Bays are affected by macro algae blooms and other water quality impacts such as low dissolved oxygen. In addition, scientific studies have linked excess nitrogen to the damage and ultimate disintegration of coastal marsh islands that serve as a resilient barrier to storm surge and associated waves.

When completed, the conveyance project will allow for the ecological recovery of the Western Bays at a substantially lower cost and shorter construction schedule than other options considered, which would have cost more than $600 million and taken nearly a decade to construct, the state said.

The Conveyance Project builds on $830 million in state and federal funds already invested in the multi-year rebuild of the Bay Park Sewage Treatment Plant. During Hurricane Sandy, floodwaters inundated the engines for the plant's main pumping system and compromised its electrical grid. The plant was inopperable for nearly three days, resulting in a sewage backup and overflow into homes. The Governor's Office of Storm Recovery provided $101 million for the third phase of electrical resiliency work, which includes the construction of a new main substation that houses power distribution for the entire plant, emergency generators and associated switchgears.

Now equipped with multiple sources of emergency power and distribution within a structure built eight feet above the base flood elevation, Bay Park plant will be able to treat and pump wastewater during a 500-year flood event — a storm that exceeds the intensity of Hurricane Sandy. The rebuild also includes the repair and upgrade of numerous treatment systems, collection systems, pump stations and the installation of engineered structures to protect other plant operations. Nassau County is installing two nitrogen treatment systems at the Bay Park facility to reduce nitrogen concentrations in treated wastewater by up to 50 percent.

To complement these efforts, Nassau County announced the launch of the Western Bays Resiliency Initiative, which will further address nitrogen discharges to Reynolds Channel and the Western Bays under a multi-pronged program. Of the four wastewater treatment plants that discharged into Reynolds Channel — Long Beach, Cedarhurst, Lawrence and Bay Park — Cedarhurst and Lawrence are already diverting treated wastewater to Bay Park.

The City of Long Beach and Nassau County combined have received approximately $13 million in state grants to convert the city's wastewater treatment plant into a pump station that would send wastewater via a pipe under Reynolds Channel to Bay Park. The Conveyance Project will then carry treated wastewater from the four plants to the Cedar Creek ocean outfall.