Whisper The Bull Site To Get Landscaping, Lighting And A Sign

Smithtown Parks Department employees construct sign to sit in front of Whisper the BullSmithtown Parks employees have begun remediation at the iconic Whisper the Bull site at the intersection of 25/25A in Smithtown. The bull, which memorializes the legend of Smithtown’s founder Richard Smythe earning the rights to property by riding a bull around the border of what is now Smithtown, was damaged in December of 2018 when a motor vehicle crashed into it.

Earlier this year the town released a landscape plan for the site that was developed by Smithtown Deputy Planning Director David Barnes. The plan calls for a variety of plantings around the bull that are simple but appealing to look at, low maintenance and unattractive to deer. 

The project is now in the domain of the Smithtown Parks Department.

  On Monday, July 29, Parks Department  employees began the construction of a freestanding wall 20’ long and 27” high that will sit in front of the bull. The wall will be inscribed “Smithtown 1665”. Smithtown’s Public Information Officer Nicole Gargiulo said that repairs to the base have begun, a bronze plaque inscribed with the wording currently on the concrete base of the bull will be installed as will new lighting and electricity. 

According to Gargiulo, the project is moving along with the sign expected to be completed within the next two weeks and the planting to begin when the weather cools. 

St. James General Store To Become Safer For Pedestrians And Drivers

Improvements to General Store to Increase Traffic Safety

The Town of Smithtown Traffic Safety Department is working on a series of pedestrian and driver safety measures to improve the area surrounding the St. James General Store, located on the corner of Moriches Rd. and Harbor Hill Rd. The project was presented by Traffic Safety after damage to a drainpipe required the Highway Department to go into the ground to replace it. Traffic Safety Director Mitch Crowley used the road work as an opportunity to design a safer intersection. Using capital funds leftover in pedestrian safety projects, these new improvements will make a historically difficult corner much safer for shoppers, joggers, bikers and drivers. 

“This is the perfect little downtown revitalization project at the end of the Lake Avenue business district. I commend Mitch Crowley and his department for bringing this idea to the table, when a drainpipe unexpectedly needed repair. This project increases foot traffic for the historic general store and makes the intersection much safer for our residents and visitors.” - Supervisor Ed Wehrheim

Two solar powered LED rectangular rapid flash beacon (RRFB) pedestrian signs featuring push button activation are to be installed, along with a cobblestone style pedestrian crosswalk. Concrete curbs and sidewalks will be redone as well.

The upgraded sidewalks and crosswalks will be handicap accessible, with sidewalks at a width of 5 feet, and ramps, as per the guidelines set by the New York State Department of Transportation. The Traffic Safety Department has planned to build a Bulbout, or a mini half-circle island in front of the General Store. This unique design helps to prevent driver blind spots, creates a safer waiting area for pedestrians, and slows down traffic as it descends along this downhill road. 

“Overall, safer pedestrian crosswalks and walkways would be very much welcomed. It has always been a problem when pedestrians would walk from one site to another along Taylor Lane crossing at Moriches Road. Anything to make this intersection safer would be tremendous.” - St. James General Store Manager Karen Sheedy

The renovated crosswalk will connect the parking lots for the St. James General Store and Deepwells Farm Historical Society, which will help to ease foot traffic concerns for pedestrians crossing Moriches Road. Renovations are expected to begin next week, after the drainpipe has been repaired. 

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP -The Wind And The Sun Don't Send Bills

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

“We are witnessing a tipping point in energy history and today’s commitment to large-scale investment in offshore wind power proves that New York walks the walk of powering our economy with renewable energy,” said Gordian Raacke, executive director of Renewable Energy Long Island following approval by Governor Andrew Cuomo of two major offshore wind farms in waters off Long Island.

Mr. Cuomo in his July 18^th announcement of the projects—one starting 30 miles east of Montauk Point and the other 14 to 30 miles mainly off Nassau County but also off a portion of southwest Suffolk County—said “with this agreement, New York will lead the way in developing the largest source of offshore wind power in the nation.”

The project off Montauk Point, if 10 megawatt turbines are used, would have 82 turbines, the project off Nassau and southwest Suffolk 88. 

“Offshore Wind Farms Are Spinning Up In The US—At Last,” headlined Wired magazine in April. Its article noted that “wind power is nothing new in this country” and 56,000 wind turbines are in operation on land. “But wind farms located offshore, where wind blows steady and strong, unobstructed by buildings or mountains, have yet to start cranking”—and that is changing. A factor in that is “the technology needed to install them farther away from shore has improved…making them more palatable to nearby communities.”

Economics greatly favors wind energy. Wired noted that the Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities in April awarded Vineyard Wind a contract to provide electricity from offshore wind turbines “at 8.9 cents per kilowatt-hour.” The average price of electricity per kilowatt-hour in the U.S. is currently more than 12 cents per kilowatt hour.

The wind—and the sun—don’t send bills. Once wind turbines are erected or solar panels installed, there’s no charge for fuel: energy blows in the wind and shines down from the sun freely.

Still, said Wired, developers of offshore wind need to “respond to concerns about potential harm to fisheries and marine life.” That issue has been raised by fishing interests and others in the Town of East Hampton where a 15-turbine wind farm also east of Montauk Point has been proposed. (It’s not part of the projects just given the state OK.) In East Hampton, the group Win With Wind has formed and maintains that offshore wind and fishing can be compatible. Leading figures in Win With Wind are former East Hampton Town Supervisors Judith Hope and Larry Cantwell, both with exemplary environmental records.

Offshore wind power has been booming outside the U.S. for years. Indeed, Denmark-based Orsted, involved in the wind farm Mr. Cuomo approved off Montauk Point, operates 1,150 offshore wind turbines off Denmark, the United Kingdom, Germany, Taiwan and Holland. 

“We’ve built more offshore wind farms than any other developer in the world and we’ve only begun,” Orsted says on its website. “The Orsted vision is a world that runs entirely on green energy.”

Orsted purchased Deepwater Wind of Rhode Island last year and then entered into a partnership on several projects with Eversource, the largest energy supplier in New England. Orsted and Eversource are partners in the two wind farms proposed off Montauk Point.

The first offshore wind farm to rise in U.S. waters was developed by Deepwater Wind and began running off Block Island in 2016. It’s now operated by Orsted. I’ve been to the five-turbine Block Island wind farm and it is impressive. Each turbine occupies a small footprint in the ocean. Their 240-foot-long blades revolve slowly, silently, indeed gracefully. “Awesome!” said one passenger on the boatload of officials and environmentalists. “Beautiful,” said another. 

At a beach on Block Island there are cable connections, but you could not notice them. They run underground. Their only sign is a conventional manhole cover used for maintenance located in the parking lot of the public beach. Another concern expressed by some in East Hampton has involved the location of wind farm cables onto shore.

Mr. Cuomo not only approved the two wind power projects but at the same signed the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act passed by the state legislature in June. The act’s provisions include requiring New York to achieve a carbon-free electricity system by 2040. 

A contradiction to the state’s approach is Mr. Cuomo having in recent years pushed a $7.6 bailout of four uneconomic upstate nuclear power plants, a bailout now underway. It is adding a surcharge on the electric bills of every individual ratepayer, business, educational and governmental entity in the state. It is predicated on the false claim that nuclear power doesn’t emit carbon-based greenhouse gases when, in fact, the “nuclear cycle” including mining, milling and fuel enrichment is carbon intensive and nuclear plants themselves have emissions including radioactive carbon. 

Karl Grossman is a veteran investigative reporter and columnist, the winner of numerous awards for his work and a member of the L.I. Journalism Hall of Fame. He is a professor of journalism at SUNY/College at Old Westbury and the author of six books.   

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP - Thank You Peter Maniscalco

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

Down the beach from the remains of the Shoreham nuclear power plant, a commemoration was held last week for Peter Maniscalco, a major figure in the three decades-long battle against Shoreham and the scheme of the now defunct Long Island Lighting Company to build seven to eleven nuclear plants in Suffolk.

Mr. Maniscalco of Manorville, a highly spiritual person and brilliant activist, died in November of prostate cancer—fighting it for 17 years, never giving up, like he fought nuclear power.  He was 77.

“My lovely Pete’s birthday,” said his wife, Stephanie Joyce, to the circle of 70 people.  “He wanted to have a party.”

There was the beating of drums and the haunting sound of a didgeridoo, the Aboriginal instrument of Australia. And there was speaker after speaker—of all different backgrounds—standing and giving testimony about Peter.

There was Gordian Raacke, executive director of East Hampton-based Renewable Energy Long Island, who described Mr. Maniscalco as “bright and bold and visionary.” He spoke of working with him for 10 years on an entity established by federal court order because of the Shoreham debacle, the Citizens Advisory Panel. A goal was working for renewable energy and it was Mr. Maniscalco, said Mr. Raacke, who advocated “putting us on a 100% renewable energy path” seen then as a huge leap. Now 160 communities in the U.S. and four of its states have 100% renewable energy goals, he said. Mr. Maniscalco not only successfully was involved in “shutting down Shoreham” but was a leader in pushing for a safe, green energy alternative to nuclear power.  “Thank you Peter,” said Mr. Raacke. 

Father Bill Brisotti of Our Lady of the Miraculous Medal Catholic Church in Wyandanch, who worked closely with Peter in challenging Shoreham and LILCO’s nuclear scheme, said: “Peter was a person of the Earth. He taught all of us in different ways. What motivated his work against Shoreham and nuclear power was his love for the Earth.”

Dr. Scott Carlin of Hampton Bays who taught in the Environmental Studies Program at Southampton College with Peter spoke of the “wonderful things Pete did with the students,” how he was focused on “Earth-centered education….Pete was amazing, that’s why we are all here.” Among the courses Mr. Maniscalco taught was “Spirituality of the Environment.” He was also the college’s “green coordinator.” Professor Carlin, who since the closure of Southampton College has gone on to teach at the Post Campus of Long Island University, outlined plans to establish a scholarship in Mr. Maniscalco’s name at LIU. 

Lori Maher of Patchogue told of moving to Suffolk from Queens because of a shooting on the block on which she lived and fearing for her daughter’s life, and finding that cancer was widespread in Suffolk. Then she met Mr. Maniscalco who directed her toward Earth-based spirituality and action. “I feel we were comrades in a very important cause,” said Ms. Maher. “It was very powerful. He changed my whole life. “

Jonathan Hernandez of Bay Shore who treated Peter at St. Charles Hospital in Port Jefferson said Peter taught him “not to follow some guru but to follow your own guru—that all the awareness is already inside you. He guided me to where I need to be.”

Dr. Charles Bevington, chair of the Sierra Club Long Island Group, a Rocky Point resident, said: “If not for Peter we may be in a nuclear wasteland.” His connection to Peter caused him to work on environmental issues, he said.

Mark Dougherty of East Islip, Peter’s student at Southampton College, said that Mr. Maniscalco “lived the truth” and for him is “still alive.”

The testimonies continued, punctuated by the circle of people chanting: “The Earth is Our Mother, We Must Take Care of Her.”

The commemoration over, Stephanie Joyce commented that “what really stood out were the many varieties of people here….and everybody loved Pete.”

Mr. Maniscalco, protesting a headline in Newsday a while back, “Shoreham’s Empty Legacy,” wrote in a letter published by the paper how it “misses the point. The legacy of the Shoreham nuclear plant battle is how it created a model for citizen-driven democracy. This inspiring, powerful model may be used by progressive activists during our present national political chaos. I began organizing against the nuclear plant in 1978 and was arrested with 571 others for taking part in peaceful civil disobedience on June 3, 1979. I was arrested four more times. In one instance, civil disobedience helped to keep Shoreham’s nuclear fuel rods from being reprocessed into nuclear weapons material….Anti-Shoreham activists became political activists, public speakers, plaintiffs in lawsuits and organizers of ad hoc groups to address pressing issues…The most powerful aspect of the anti-Shoreham movement was its diversity of people with wide-ranging skills working together.”

“Many Long Islanders thought it would be impossible to keep the nuclear plant from opening, because it was backed by powerful corporate and political interests. But with perseverance, anti-Shoreham activists stopped it,” declared Mr. Maniscalco.

Karl Grossman is a veteran investigative reporter and columnist, the winner of numerous awards for his work and a member of the L.I. Journalism Hall of Fame. He is a professor of journalism at SUNY/College at Old Westbury and the author of six books.   

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP - Farmworkers Bill Of Rights

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

 Passage of the Farmworkers Bill of Rights by the New York State Legislature at its recent session was among its most notable achievements this year. Governor Andrew Cuomo says he will sign the measure into law.

The treatment of farmworkers has been a huge scandal in the United States. Suffolk, which has been and continues as a leading agricultural county in New York, has been involved.

Farmworkers—many of them migrant farmworkers lured by phony promises—have been excluded from basic laws in the U.S. among them those on housing and work. The New York legislation would give them rights including overtime pay, voting to unionize, having at least one day off a week and receiving workers’ compensation benefits.

“Today is the culmination of a decades-long fight centered upon one simple premise: that farmworkers deserve fairness, equality and justice,” said New York AFL-CIO President Mario Cilento. 

Every semester in my four decades of teaching an Environmental Journalism class at SUNY/College at Old Westbury I show the students Edward R. Murrow’s TV documentary, “Harvest of Shame” about the plight of farmworkers broadcast on CBS in 1960.

“We present this report on Thanksgiving because were it not for the labor of the people you are going to meet, you might not starve, but your table would not be laden with the luxuries that we have all come to regard as essential,” declared Mr. Murrow, the preeminent U.S. broadcast journalist of his era, standing in a farm field. “They are the migrants, workers in the sweatshops of the soil—the harvest of shame,” says Murrow. They are “the forgotten people.”

The documentary—which you can view on YouTube—leaves students shocked. Their jaws drop as they hear farmworkers who believed the promises of crew leaders who recruited them to harvest crops, are charged for all sorts of things and become indebted, trapped in migrant farmwork. The housing and work conditions shown are outrageous. 

Shown, too, are the terrible journeys. “Produce en route to the tables of America by trailer is refrigerated to prevent bruising,” says Murrow. “Cattle carried to market, by federal regulation, must be watered, fed and rested for five hours every 24 hours. People—men, women and children—are carried to the fields…in journeys as long as four days and three nights. They often ride ten hours without stopping for food or facilities.”

A minister, Rev. Michael Cassidy, who travels with migrant farmworkers trying to help them, says: “Only in name they are not a slave. But in the way they are treated, they are worse than slaves.”

My students are appalled to hear a farmer declare: “I guess they got a little gypsy in their blood. They just like it. Lot of ‘em wouldn’t do anything else. Lot of ‘em don’t know anything different. They don’t have a worry in the world. They’re happier than we are. Today they eat. Tomorrow they don’t worry about. They’re the happiest race of people on Earth.”

Suffolk County figures in “Harvest of Shame.” As a journalist based here since 1962, I’ve gotten my lumps on the farmworker story. Then State Assemblyman Andrew Stein of Manhattan inspected migrant farmworker camps in Suffolk in 1971. He was pressing for protections for them under state law. “The conditions here are feudal,” said Mr. Stein as noted in an article in The New York Times. “People live like indentured servants. This is not the kind of thing we want to have in New York State.”

The article continued: “At the first camp Mr. Stein visited here, the assemblyman, his party and accompanying newsmen were driven from the camp by a man the police said was the owner, William Chudiak. Mr. Stein was speaking with a migrant worker when Mr. Chudiak drove up in a pick-up truck. He grabbed a camera belonging to Karl H. Grossman, a reporter for the Long Island Press, and pushed and struck him.” (The Cutchogue camp was featured in “Harvest of Shame.”)

My students find it hard to believe that the outrageous conditions in “Harvest of Shame” continue. I present more recent journalism. On the 50^th anniversary of “Harvest of Shame,” CBS correspondent Byron Pitts did a follow-up and, as The Atlantic noted, what he saw “was the same ugly dynamic that had existed during Murrow’s visits, the same cycle of brutal work, deplorable conditions…”

Murrow’s broadcast ended with his saying: “The migrants have no lobby. Only an enlightened, aroused and perhaps angered public opinion can do anything about the migrants. The people you have seen have the strength to harvest your fruits and vegetables. They do not have the strength to influence legislation. Maybe we do.”

I moderated a TV program with Cesar Chavez, leader of the United Farm Workers union, in Suffolk in 1992. He emphasized the need for broad action to end the nightmare for farmworkers. 

Karl Grossman is a veteran investigative reporter and columnist, the winner of numerous awards for his work and a member of the L.I. Journalism Hall of Fame. He is a professor of journalism at SUNY/College at Old Westbury and the author of six books.