SUFFOLK CLOSEUP: Plum Island's Many Challenges To Consider

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

Photo: WikipediaCan Plum Island, the 843-acre island a mile and a half off Orient Point, be safely preserved as a “national monument” with public access, as is being advocated by a grouping of environmentalists and Congressman Nick LaLota?  LaLota, of Amityville, whose district encompasses Smithtown, part of Huntington, northern Brookhaven and the five East End towns and includes Plum Island, has introduced a bill facilitating this.

But as an official of the National Park Service testified last month at a hearing in Washington on LaLota’s measure: “The department appreciates the bill’s intent to increase public access to and to protect Plum Island’s natural and cultural heritage, and we support that goal,” he testified. “However, given the multiple hazards to human health and safety that may exist, we have serious concerns about the bill’s requirements that the department assume administrative jurisdiction over the island.”

Michael T. Reynolds, deputy director for Congressional Relations of the National Park Service, a part of the Department of Interior, continued: “Plum Island’s long history of serving as a site for military operations and animal pathogen research has led to a series of ongoing environmental challenges.”

  He said the Plum Island Animal Disease Center’s “biocontainment facilities must be decontaminated.” He said an environmental assessment by the Department of Homeland Security “recommends that a decontamination process, complete validation testing, and soil testing be conducted… Decontamination will include methods such as scrubbing, liquid cleaning, thermal disinfection via autoclaves, chemical disinfection, and fumigation. As a result of the use of cleaning chemicals such as formaldehyde and the thermal disinfection of nearly all equipment within the facility, once usable infrastructure at PIADC will be rendered unsafe for human occupation until this costly decontamination work can be completed.”

Also, “A number of waste management areas must be remediated,” Reynolds said. He said the environmental assessment notes that this includes “numerous sites of concern, including removing buried waste, capping contaminated areas, and conducting soil and groundwater monitoring. However, 10 additional sites of concern require further action.”

“In addition,” said Reynolds, “the Department foresees budgetary challenges—and potentially further environmental concerns—involved with rehabilitating or demolishing aging buildings, maintaining a costly marine transportation system, and upgrading island infrastructure to accommodate use in a manner that is safe and accessible for employees and the public.” 

His testimony is online at https://naturalresources.house.gov/uploadedfiles/testimony_reynolds.pdf

Michael Carroll, author of the New York Times best-selling book “Lab 257: The Disturbing Story of the Government’s Secret Plum Island Germ Laboratory,” has long said Plum Island can never be made safe for the public. “The island is an environmental disaster,” says Carroll. “You can’t let anybody on it…There is contamination all over the island” and thus it needs to be “forsaken.” 

Up until recent decades all waste generated by the Plum Island Animal Disease Center and from prior animal disease work stayed on the island. No waste was removed, including animal remains. Some of it was incinerated, much of it buried on the island.  

After the 9-11 attack, Plum Island was transferred from the Department of Agriculture to the Department of Homeland Security out of concern about its vulnerability and access by terrorists seeking disease agents it experimented with, some of which cross over to people. The island sits along a major water route between eastern Long Island and Connecticut. The U.S. thereafter decided to shut down its Plum Island Animal Disease Center and shift operations to a National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility that is to function at the government’s highest safety level, BioSafety Level 4. Built at a cost of $1.25 billion in Kansas, it opened last year.

With operations on Plum Island being made extraneous, the government first considered selling it for private use. Donald Trump, in 2013 before becoming president, was interested in constructing “a world-class golf course” on it. LaLota’s predecessor in Congress, Lee Zeldin of Shirley, and some environmentalists, opposed a sale and Zeldin introduced a bill that was enacted to keep the island in government hands and preserve it. LaLota’s measure advances that. 

Plum Island was developed in the early 1950s by the U.S. Army with a Cold War mission involving biological warfare that would be waged against livestock in the Soviet Union. As Newsday investigative reporter John McDonald reported in 1993: “A 1950s military plan to cripple the Soviet economy by killing horses, cattle and swine called for making biological warfare weapons out of exotic animal diseases at a Plum Island laboratory, now-declassified Army records reveal.” A facsimile of one of the Army records documenting the mission covered the front page of Newsday. There was an extensive article.

However, as Carroll’s book discloses, based on research by Carroll, an attorney, in the National Archives in Washington, the U.S. military became apprehensive about having to feed millions of people in the Soviet Union if it destroyed food animals. The U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff “found that a war with the USSR would best be fought with conventional and nuclear means,” he relates in “Lab 257.” Thus, the island was turned over to the Department of Agriculture to conduct research into foreign animal diseases, although department officials have acknowledged doing “defensive” biological warfare research on it, too. 

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: Support Historic Tesla Lab With "Metals for Tesla" And "Bricks For Nik"

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

The historic laboratory in Suffolk County in which genius inventor Nikola Tesla did important, breakthrough work in a building designed by his friend, famed architect Stanford White, suffered a fire last year as restoration was beginning to turn the lab into a museum.

But the project of creating the Tesla Science Center at Wardenclyffe very much continues—with its leadership working hard on it.

“Terrible,” Jane Alcorn, a driving force behind the Tesla Science Center project in Shoreham, said last week about the damage from the blaze in November. But there is “momentum to bring back Tesla’s laboratory to its former glory,” said Alcorn, a center director. 

As it declares on the opening page of its website: “Mission: Rebuild. Keep the momentum going. Donate today to see Tesla’s dream come to fruition.”

Marc Alessi, executive director of Tesla Science Center, said of the blaze: “It was heartbreaking.” He spoke last week of how firefighters from 13 departments who battled it “took it personally. It means a lot to everybody.” In 2018 Tesla’s lab in Suffolk was placed on the National Register of Historic Places.

The fire was “a gut punch,” said Alessi, a former New York State assemblyman and Shoreham resident. It was originally estimated to cost $3 million to repair the damage. Now, said Alessi, that’s projected at $4 million, bringing the Tesla Science Center’s total cost to $24 million which includes restoration of the lab and also building a visitor’s center on the 16.5 acre site. 

Fundraising is in high gear with grant applications being sent to foundations and the seeking of government support and donations from contributors. Since the inception of the Tesla Science Center project, some $14 million has been raised including from the state and local governments, foundations and contributors “large and small,” said Alessi.

A “Metals for Tesla” effort has begun. This month, on April 20^th, in honor of Earth Day, or any day earlier, metal that can be recycled—including metal furniture, vehicles and pipes—can be dropped off at the lab site. Details are on the Tesla Science Center website at https://teslasciencecenter.org/ 

There is “Bricks for Nik” initiative in which individuals and businesses can buy commemorative bricks. They would be placed at the base of the statue to Nikola Tesla donated by the Serbian government (Tesla’s parents were Serbs) or other paved areas on the site. In addition to names, they could include quotes and dedications. The statue was unveiled in 2003 by then Serbian President Tomislav Nikolic who called Tesla a man whose “ideas were larger than his time.” More information on this is at: https://donate.brickmarkers.com/tsc

As the book “Tesla, Inventor of the Electrical Age,” published by Princeton University Press, relates: “Tesla was a major contributor to the electrical revolution that transformed daily life…His inventions, patents, and theoretical work formed the basis of modern AC electricity and contributed to radio and television.” Its author is Dr. W. Bernard Carlson, a University of Virginia professor of science, technology, and society. 

Most of the world would adopt AC or alternating current. And Tesla was responsible for many more inventions, among them hydroelectric energy technology, remote control through electricity, fluorescent lighting and the bladeless turbine, notes the book. Regarding radio, Guglielmo Marconi is usually credited with originating radio but, the book points out that the U.S. Supreme Court, after Tesla’s death in 1943, determined that much of Marconi’s work was based on 17 Tesla patents. 

He went to Shoreham in 1901 to pursue his vision of providing wireless electricity. “Tesla was convinced that he could set up stationary waves in the Earth and transmit power and messages,” writes Carlson. He received a $150,000 loan from “the most powerful man on Wall Street, J.P. Morgan…to support his wireless work.” 

He had been “approached by James S. Warden, a lawyer and banker from Ohio who had relocated to Suffolk County,” purchased farmland and “christened his property Wardenclyffe.” 

He offered Tesla land. On it, the laboratory was built along with a tower 187-feet tall. Below the tower a deep “ground connection” was dug. “In many ways, Wardenclyffe was the fulfillment of Tesla’s dreams. For nearly a decade he had been planning in his imagination a system for broadcasting power around the world, and now that system was taking shape in the real world,” says Carlson. But then Morgan pulled out of the undertaking and Tesla faced huge financial problems. The tower was demolished in 1917.

        As Alcorn, a retired teacher and librarian from Shoreham, explained in a presentation at the Suffolk County Historical Society, Tesla’s “plan and dream was to…provide wireless electricity to people around the world.” He was a “visionary” with ideas that would revolutionize the world. He envisioned that not only radio signals but electricity could be sent far distances by linking into the resonance of the Earth. She said Tesla believed that if electricity could be “wirelessly” transmitted, people all over the world “would be able to tap into it”—for free.

I wrote and presented a TV program about Wardenclyffe for WVVH-TV in 2011. You can view it on YouTube by inputting “Saving Nikola Tesla’s Laboratory” and my name or by going to https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_H-UBvdPtag 

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 : 1st CD Voters Have A Record Of Swinging Politically

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

Primaries on June 25^th will set who will run for the House of Representatives in Suffolk’s lst Congressional District. The district includes Smithtown, the northern half of Brookhaven, much of Huntington and the five East End towns. 

 It’s a “swing” district, one that could go Democrat or Republican, unusual these days for a House district most of which are dominated by voters of one party due to politically manipulated reapportionment.

I’ve covered races in the lst C.D. since becoming a journalist in Suffolk in 1962 when Otis G. Pike held the seat. He typified the independence of district voters. When I started, my editor at the Babylon Town Leader explained that on the East End, town Democratic committees considered themselves “Wilsonian Democrats.” They “reject the New Deal” of Franklin D. Roosevelt, John A. Maher said, and were still on the political path of President Woodrow Wilson.

But Pike, from the East End, from Riverhead, saw himself as a “Stevensonian Democrat”—an admirer of liberal Adlai Stevenson. Yet, for nearly two decades he won over and over again in the lst C.D. before retiring from the House in 1979.

Pike was followed by William Carney, a Conservative Party member, a Suffolk County legislator from Hauppauge who got the Republican nod in the lst C.D. in a deal in 1978 by which the Conservative Party endorsed GOPer Perry Duryea of Montauk for governor that year. 

Carney was defeated for re-election in 1986 largely because of his ardent support of the then under-construction Shoreham nuclear power plant. He then took a job as a lobbyist for the nuclear power industry. Still, although a staunch conservative, Carney had previously been re-elected three times in the lst C.D. 

Yes, voters in the lst C.D. have a record of swinging politically.

The incumbent now in the lst C.D., in his first term, is Republican Nick LaLota of Amityville, a former chief of staff of the Suffolk County Legislature and an ex-commissioner of the Suffolk County Board of Elections. 

George Santos has announced he will take on LaLota in the June GOP primary. He came to the presidential “State of the Union” address this month and at the same time proclaimed on X that he was running against LaLota to be the Republican candidate in the lst C.D. The preposterous Santos was expelled from the House by an overwhelming vote of its members last year following an investigation by its Ethics Committee which found he broke federal laws, stole from his campaign and delivered a “constant series of lies” to voters and donors. He faces trial in U.S. District Court in Central Islip in September on a 23 felony count indictment. He said he will run against LaLota because LaLota was among the “empty suits” in the House kicking him out.

LaLota responded saying that “to hold a pathological liar who stole an election accountable, I led the charge to expel George Santos. If finishing the job requires beating him in a primary, count me in.”

However, to be eligible to run in the primary to be the GOP candidate in the lst C.D., some 1,250 signatures of enrolled Republicans in it are required. It’s very doubtful that Santos, who had represented the 3^rd C.D. then made up of Nassau County and part of Queens, and with his last known address in Queens, can collect that number of signatures.

Santos has just announced, again on X, that he won’t seek the GOP line to run in the primary but will run in the general election for the lst C.D. position as an independent. However, to get on the general election ballot as an independent would, according to the Suffolk County Board of Elections, require the signatures of 3,500 voters in the lst C.D. — yet another Santos fantasy.

On the Democratic side, primary rivals this year for the lst C.D. position are John Avlon of Sag Harbor, an author and CNN analyst and anchor who left CNN to run for it, and Nancy Goroff, a retired Stony Brook University chemistry professor who lives in Stony Brook.

Avlon has been endorsed by Democratic figures including State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele, Jr. of Sag Harbor; Southampton Councilman Tommy John Schiavoni; Suffolk Legislator Ann Welker; and former Southampton Town Supervisor Jay Schneiderman, who all addressed well over 100 people at a recent kick-off in Sag Harbor of his campaign. Southampton Town Democratic Chair Gordon Herr and East Hampton Town Democratic Chair Anna Skrenton, whose town committees have endorsed Avlon, spoke as well.

Thiele declared that this is “the most important election in our lifetime.” Avlon, he said, “listens, he communicates, he understands how politics works and he can win.”

Avlon said this year’s election is “about freedom and democracy in a fundamental way like we’ve never faced.” He described former President Donald Trump who “praises dictators at every stop” as a threat to democracy. Earlier, Avlon and Goroff debated in East Hampton with both scoring LaLota and Trump. 

Goroff has experience running in the lst C.D. having been the Democratic candidate in 2020 against then incumbent Representative Lee Zeldin, a Shirley Republican, but losing by 10 percent.
LaLota has affirmed his wanting Trump to regain the presidency saying on X that “as a Navy veteran…I understand America needs a Commander-in-Chief who will keep us safe.”

Will LaLota’s advocacy of Trump help or hurt him? Voters in the lst C.D. in 2016 balloted 54 percent for Republican Trump and 42 percent for Democrat Hillary Clinton for president, and in 2020 some 51 percent went for Trump and 47 percent for Democrat Joe Biden. Yet in 2012 they went 50 percent for Democrat Barack Obama and 49 percent for Republican Mitt Romney, and in 2008 52 percent for Obama and 48 percent for Republican John McCain. In 2004 both Republican George W. Bush and Democrat John Kerry received 49 percent. And in 2000 some 52 percent of voters balloted for Democrat Al Gore and 44 percent for Bush in the independent-minded lst C.D. 

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 : NYS's Bail Reform

By Karl Grossman

My first beat as a reporter at the daily Long Island Press was covering cops-and-courts in Suffolk County. Back then, the bail issue was a vexing one in Suffolk—as it is today here and elsewhere in New York State, notably in the wake of what is known as “reform” of the bail system in the state.

It was obvious back in the middle 1960s that if a person had the money, or property to put up as security, he or she was released on bail. If not, the person was sent to jail—to wait, sometimes for months, to be tried. More than a few defendants who ended up being judged innocent thus served jail time anyway. 

There has been great controversy in recent weeks over the release in Suffolk—without bail—of four suspects arrested in connection with human body parts found strewn in parks on Long Island including in Babylon. The charges were: concealment of a human corpse, tampering with physical evidence and hindering prosecution, all felonies.

Suffolk District Attorney Ray Tierney issued a press release on March 6th declaring: “It is our understanding that the Suffolk County Police Department is still investigating these murders. Unfortunately, due to ‘Bail Reform’ passed by the New York State Legislature in 2019, charges relating to the mutilation and disposal of murdered corpses is no longer bail-eligible, meaning my prosecutors cannot ask for bail. This is yet another absurd result thanks to ‘Bail Reform’ and a system where the Legislature in Albany substitutes their judgment for the judgment of our judges and the litigants in court,”

The DA, a Republican, went on: “We will work with the SCPD to resolve this investigation as soon as possible and implore our [State] Legislature to make common sense fixes to this law.”

His statement was followed by one from Kevin McCaffrey of Lindenhurst, presiding officer of the Suffolk County Legislature, also a Republican, scoring “the focus of progressive liberal controlled Albany.”

The Democratic majorities in the State Legislature “through the adoption of misguided and irresponsible legislation” moved “to take the handcuffs off of criminals and put them on law enforcement by making it harder, if not impossible in certain instances, for them to do their job,” he said. “The state’s adoption of irresponsible so-called ‘Bail Reform’ legislation has created a revolving door justice system where numerous violent criminals are released almost immediately after arrest, free to walk our streets.” 

McCaffrey, also a Teamsters Union leader, continued that the “release of four people charged with the mutilation and disposal of murdered corpses which was mandated by this ‘reform’ legislation may be the most egregious example of how these ‘reforms’ have tied the hands of our law enforcement and our district attorney, putting the public’s safety at risks. The law must be changed now. We are once again calling upon Albany to repeal these laws to protect the welfare of our citizens.”

Meanwhile, Governor Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, said in a TV interview: “Maybe the DA should have done a more thorough investigation and brought murder charges—or conspiracy to commit murder—even assault charges because all of them are bail-eligible.” Hochul, a lawyer, said, “Maybe they brought [the case] a little early.” She said: “I encourage the DA’s office to glo back and build your case.” 

Tierney responded by saying Hochul is “either absolutely clueless or being deceitful about how the criminal justice system works.” He said: “Prosecutors have a duty to bring only charges that are supported by evidence. Anything else would be unethical. When law enforcement had enough evidence to arrest those defendants for serious felonies, they did the right thing and made those arrests.” 

And in the State Legislature, measures are now being introduced to add “concealing a human corpse” to bail-eligible crimes. Senator Monica Martinez and Assemblyman Steve Stern of Huntington, both Democrats, are moving on a bill. Senator Anthony Palumbo of New Suffolk is among a group of Republican sponsoring another bill. Palumbo, a former Suffolk assistant DA, says: “I don’t think anyone would argue that a world where people charged with the crime of body dismemberment can walk back out onto the streets is a good place, yet here in New York that is the world in which we are living thanks to Democrat’s failed criminal justice policies.”

As for bail for the other felonies and the host of misdemeanors eliminated in the 2019 changes, Hochul is saying it is “very clear that changes need to be made” and “judges should have more authority to set bail and detain dangerous defendants.”

The New York Civil Liberties Union in a web posting titled “The Facts on Bail Reform” says: “In 2019, New York lawmakers passed legislation that eliminated the use of cash bail for most misdemeanors and some nonviolent felony charges in an overdue recognition that a person’s wealth should not determine liberty.” However, “in 2020 prosecutors and police departments led a misinformation campaign that resulted in roll backs of the 2019 reforms. Now opponents of the bail law are determined to spread more misinformation and fear, threatening due process and push New York even further backward.” 

Has the State Legislature gone too far in altering bail laws? My view: Yes.

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 : Robert Vasiluth Crusading To Save A Miracle Plant

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

The inventive Robert (Rob) Vasiluth is moving ahead in his crusade to restore eelgrass in area waters. 

Eelgrass (Photo National Parks)“Eelgrass is the miracle plant,” says Vasiluth. “It’s vital as fish habitat. It’s a nursery ground for juvenile fish. Where it grows, scallops thrive. It slows down erosion. It neutralizes acidification. It produces oxygen. It sequesters carbon 35 times faster than a terrestrial rain forest. It is the foundation of the shallow sea.”

But the amount of eelgrass in New York waters is now “two or three percent” of what it was in the 1930s, he says. “Pollution, dredging, algae blooms, disease, commercial fishing practices and in the last decade the rising heat in bodies of water from climate change are among the causes.”

The 9/11 attack was a turning point for Vasiluth. An operating engineer from Commack, he was in Manhattan hoisting a section of a sign high up on the Renaissance Times Square Hotel, when he saw the World Trade Center a few miles to the south being struck. 

As a result, he committed himself to “saving life.”

There have been efforts to restore eelgrass by “broadcasting” eelgrass seeds on water, but that has failed, says Vasiluth. He came up with a new way. 

His idea: using a glue to affix eelgrass seeds to clams. The clams would bury themselves in the sea bottom and the seeds could far better germinate, he thought. The concept has worked well.

The glue is cyanoacrylate—the ingredient that is the basis for Super Glue and Krazy Glue. It’s strong but “it’s biodegradable,” he emphasizes.

In using clams affixed with eelgrass seeds in Smithtown Bay, Great South Bay, Shinnecock Bay and Sterling Harbor off Greenport, Vasiluth has been involved with Cornell Cooperative Extension, Save the Sound, The Nature Conservancy, Seatuck Environmental Association and Stony Brook University’s School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences.

Last year, he worked with the East Hampton Town Trustees applying his method in Napeague Harbor, considered a prime area for eelgrass restoration. He joined with John Dunne, director of East Hampton’s shellfish hatchery, and youngsters in East Hampton High School’s Environmental Awareness Club. The students glued eel grass seeds onto 1,907 clams, relates Vasiluth.

This year, he is seeking to expand the project in Napeague Harbor working with the town shellfish hatchery and Cornell Cooperative Extension, Peconic Baykeeper and Save the Sound.

Being used to spread the clams is a “machine I built” able to distribute large numbers of eelgrass seed-affixed clams from a boat.

To help in gathering eelgrass seeds, Vasiluth recently spoke about his work before the The Divers Club, and members of the West Islip-based diving group volunteered to assist.

Vasiluth says that in his eelgrass work an especially fertile site for collecting eelgrass seed has been off Fishers Island, the little island just off Connecticut that’s part of Suffolk County. He describes it as “the home of the last best eelgrass habitat in the Long Island Sound due to the work of the Fishers Island Conservancy Eelgrass Management Program.”

As to financing, Vasiluth says he has funded much of the work through the years “out of my own pocket” through an organization he has set up, SAVE Environmental.

Vasiluth has been meeting with New York State Senators Monica Martinez of Brentwood and Alexis Weik of Sayville about getting what is called a “blue carbon” credit program, such as one now in Virginia, created in New York.

About the Virginia program, the website USNature4Climate refers to it as “an exciting partnership between The Nature Conservancy, the Virginia Institute of Marine Science and the University of Virginia” that “has restored nearly 9,000 acres of eelgrass on the Virginia Coast Reserve. This partnership is part of TNC’s broader efforts to advance ‘blue carbon’ programs in the U.S. and worldwide. Blue carbon is the carbon sequestered in coastal wetlands like seagrass meadows, tidal grasslands and mangrove forests. In addition to restoring marine habitat, UVA research has shown that blue carbon projects like this present a significant opportunity to mitigate climate change.”

Vasiluth told me last week: “The public doesn’t realize how devastating the loss of eelgrass has been. It’s a crisis. It’s an emergency.”

Doing something about this is his life’s crusade that, he says, “we all should be focused upon because it is the habitat that saves us in so many ways.” Rob can be reached at rvasiluth@gmail.com

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.