State Holding Online Meeting On Bay Park Conveyance Project

NASSAU COUNTY, NY — The Nassau County Department of Public Works, in partnership with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, will host a virtual public meeting to discuss the Bay Park Conveyance Project on July 15 from 6 to 8 p.m. The project would divert effluent from the Bay Park Sewage Treatment Plant from Reynolds Channel out to the ocean, helping to preserve Long Island's Western Bays.

During the meeting, the project team will be available to address questions and comments from all interested parties and citizens. After the meeting, the meeting contents will remain available and people will be able to email the project team through the virtual meeting platform until Oct.. For more information on how to access the event, please visit The Bay Park Conveyance Project website.

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 Western Bays are the waters between the neighborhoods of East Rockaway, Oceanside, Island Park, Baldwin, Rockville Centre, Freeport and the Long Beach barrier island. Once a productive fishing area and ecological habitat, the bays have deteriorated over time due to an abundance of nitrogen in the waters, which has hurt plants and fish.