SUFFOLK CLOSEUP: PSEG Has A History

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

I first got to learn about PSEG (Public Service Enterprise Group) in the early 1970s driving down Dune Road in the Hamptons and there, next to Hot Dog Beach, was a weather station with various devices. It was surrounded by a chain link fence with a sign saying U.S. Atomic Energy Commission and Brookhaven National Laboratory on it.

I called BNL and was told by its PR office that the station was set up because “this company from New Jersey”—PSEG—planned to construct a string of “floating nuclear power plants” in the Atlantic starting off the coast of southern New Jersey and extending to 20 miles off the southern coast of Long Island.

I was told the station monitored how, in the event of an accident at one of the plants, a radioactive cloud might move. A 75-foot landing craft was on loan from the Navy and also aircraft and a trawler were being used. Clouds of smoke were discharged, and the PR representative said it was determined that because of prevailing winds coming here from the southwest, the smoke mainly floated to Long Island.  

Upon finding I was working on this, Dave Starr, editor of the Long Island Press and national editor of the Newhouse newspaper chain, telephoned and said I should “play down” the story. “I don’t want to get people upset,” said Starr. This was among my earliest experiences in finding out how nuclear issues are hot media potatoes.

My article was published, but not on Page One as most of my articles as an investigative reporter began, but inside The Press. The episode was featured in a 1980 book—I started writing it the day of the Three Mile Island nuclear plant accident in 1979—titled “Cover Up: What You Are Not Supposed to Know About Nuclear Power.” It is in a chapter “How We Got So Far” that includes details about media treatment of nuclear issues.

Also, in the book is how the floating nuclear power plant scheme began. In PSEG literature it was credited to Richard Eckert, a PSEG vice president, who, it said, while taking a shower in 1969 thought the sea could supply the huge amounts of water nuclear power plants need as coolant. PSEG got Westinghouse to agree to build them. Westinghouse partnered with Tenneco in a company called Offshore Power Systems and constructed a massive facility on Blount Island off Jacksonville, Florida. The plants were to be towed up the Atlantic into position.

The book devotes several pages to an Offshore Power Systems sales brochure and also the announcement of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (which replaced the AEC in 1974) that it was issuing a “manufacturing license” for the floating nuclear power plants. However, the scheme went belly-up with Offshore Power Systems losing $180 million.

Jump to 2012. Then New York Governor Andrew Cuomo brought in Newark-based PSEG as the contractor to run Long Island’s electric grid for the Long Island Power Authority. That came after major failures of LIPA’s then contractor, London, England-based National Grid, when Superstorm Sandy hit in 2012 and most LIPA customers were left without electricity. Then when Hurricane Isaiah struck in 2020, with PSEG as LIPA’s contractor, more than half of LIPA customers lost power, too, many for as long as a week.

 A Legislative Commission on the Future of the Long Island Power Authority, a bipartisan eight-member panel co-chaired by State Assemblyman Fred W. Thiele of Sag Harbor, concluded last year after an extensive investigation and many public hearings, that LIPA should operate the electric system on Long Island itself and not contract out the work—the original vision when LIPA was created in the 1980s. But despite strong support for this in the State Assembly and its passage of legislation facilitating it, Thiele has just said that action “has stalled” because of “the failure of any member of the State Senate” to introduce a needed companion bill and “the silence” of New York Governor Kathy Hochul. 

This stall, said Thiele, has come amid intense lobbying of state officials by PSEG to continue its contract to operate the electric grid for LIPA. Said Thiele: “PSEG has been spending millions of dollars on lobbying.”

LIPA was created to block the Shoreham nuclear power plant and prevent the construction of six to ten more nuclear power plants the now defunct Long Island Lighting Company sought to build in Suffolk County, and instead to focus on green energy. 

PSEG didn’t get anywhere with its floating nuclear power plant scheme, but it is the major nuclear utility in New Jersey. It operates the Salem 1 and 2 and Hope Creek nuclear plants. 

“I don’t hold PSEG in high regard,” says Maya van Rossum, the Delaware Riverkeeper, who for years has been battling PSEG on nuclear and environmental issues. Kills of billions of fish annually by the Salem plants has been a major issue. She told me last week: “I think PSEG is a purely profit-making venture that throws money at government entities and government officials and also tries to manipulate through messaging, claiming it is pro-environment.”

Van Rossum is the woman behind the Green Amendment, an initiative to have states and the federal government enact constitutional amendments declaring that “each person shall have the right to clean air and water and a healthful environment.” She was in Suffolk last year giving the keynote address at the Docs Equinox celebration in Southampton honoring Earth Day. With her help and Assemblyman Steve Englebright of Setauket a prime sponsor, a Green Amendment for New York State was approved by 70 percent of voters in a 2021 referendum and is now part of the state’s Constitution. 

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: Suffolk County Needs A Water Reuse Policy

SUFFOLK CLOSEUP

By Karl Grossman

photo Aquifer.org“If we look to western Long Island, there are a lot of lessons that should be applied to us—how a lot of mistakes were made regarding water,” environmentalist John Turner was saying. 

Turner was speaking about far-western Long Island—Brooklyn—and how it blew its underground water supply more than a century ago. 

Brooklyn then tried to tap into the aquifers under the Pine Barrens of Suffolk County for potable water but was rebuffed. So, it needed to look for water from reservoirs built upstate.

These days, the 2.6 million residents of Suffolk and Nassau Counties won’t be able to tap into those reservoirs if they blow their underground water supply because they’re functioning at their maximum, notes Turner. “Suffolk and Nassau will not be able to turn to New York City simply because there’s just not excess or surplus water that the city could provide to those two counties because of the water supply needs of New York City. Plus the cost of trying to interconnect, even if there were excess capacity, would be cost-prohibitive,” he said last week.

Thus, he emphasizes, it’s critical we preserve the water supply we have—the aquifers below our feet—our “sole source” of potable water.

Turner is senior conservation policy advocate at Seatuck Environmental Association in Islip and former legislative director of the New York Legislative Commission on Water Resources Needs of New York State and Long Island. He is also former director of Brookhaven Town’s Division of Environmental Protection.

He has been a leader in the effort to have wastewater purified and returned to the underground water table on Long Island rather than it being discharged into surrounding bays, the Atlantic Ocean and Long Island Sound—as most sewer systems on Long Island do.

Nassau County is 85 percent sewered and as a result of its releasing wastewater in this way, “the uppermost expression of the aquifer system” in Nassau has “dropped considerably,” notes Turner. Hempstead Lake now “is Hempstead Pond.”

What Turner has been warning about is not new.  

Dr. Jeffrey A. Kroessler, a historian and professor and chief librarian at John Jay College in Manhattan, wrote and lectured about the Brooklyn and Long Island water story years ago. He lived in Sunnyside, Queens and died in 2023. In 2011, in the “Long Island History Journal,” published by Stony Brook University, there was an extensive article by Kroessler titled “Brooklyn’s Thirst, Long Island’s Water: Consolidation, Local Control, And The Aquifer.”

“In the 1850s…Brooklyn tapped ponds and streams on the south side of Queens County, and in the 1880s dug wells for additional supply,” he related. “This lowered the water table and caused problems for farmers and oystermen, many of whom sued…for damages. Ultimately, salt water seeped into some wells from over-pumping. By 1896, Brooklyn’s system had reached its limit.”

“Brooklyn had to find additional sources for its increasing population,” said Kroessler. “Wary of those intentions, as early as 1884 the supervisors of Suffolk County resolved to oppose ‘the enactment of any measure which, under the plea of supplying water to…Brookyn, may presently or prospectively take from any part of Suffolk County water needed for the use of its own population.’” That legislation was enacted by the Suffolk County Board of Supervisors.

Brooklyn “was casting a covetous eye on the Pine Barrens in Suffolk County.”

“As one writer explained in 1899,” related Kroessler, “In considering the subject of the water supply of Long Island, we must first of all leave out the idea that we receive water from any other source than which falls directly from the sky.” Kroessler said: “The aquifer, therefore, can only be replenished by rainfall filtered through many layers of sand and soil. That slow process accounts for Long Island’s particularly fine water, but also points to the vulnerability of that limited resource.”

The action by the Suffolk County Board of Supervisors was buttressed by New York State. As Kroessler wrote, “Governor Levi P. Morton…signed a law sponsored by Assemblyman Carll S. Burr of Commack that prevented Brooklyn from drawing off Suffolk’s water without the approval of a majority of the county supervisors.”

Meanwhile, New York City “built a new system of reservoirs and aqueducts to deliver water from the Catskills” and “Brooklyn’s old water system was transferred to the City of New York.” 

“Only in 1993 did the state legislature pass the Pine Barrens Protection Act to conserve the valuable and irreplaceable resource” as “Suffolk approached the limit of its precious water supply, just as Brooklyn had a century before. But while Brooklyn could look to additional water from New York’s system,” concluded Kroessler in his “Long Island History Journal” article, “Suffolk has no option other than reforming its own practices and policies.”

That is truer than ever today. 

Turner is excited about the Suffolk County Water Quality Restoration Act proposed to be  on the November election ballot providing for county funding for “projects for the reuse of treated effluent”—notably for utilization on golf courses, sod farms and similar sites—to help  preserve the quantity in the underground water table in Suffolk. Turner says it “behooves all levels of government to focus on water reuse.”

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: 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.