OP-ED: Greater Sayville Needs CPR

As I write, there’s a football field-sized container ship stuck in the middle of the Suez Canal named the Ever Given. It’s blocking 300 cargo-laden ships. The canal, in Egypt, connects the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. It is hugely important to global trade.
We don’t have 300 ships clogging up Greater Sayville. But we do have three Ever Givens. Two—the Bay and Brown’s River—are gunking up the works for Greater Sayville’s businesses. The other is gunking things up for everyone else, the [Oakdale] Merge. Our local economy hasn’t operated at full strength for decades due largely to these three problems. Now is the time to move. Let’s strike while the iron is hot.
We can now address our problems through congressional earmarks, a funding mechanism from a bygone era that has resurfaced as part our COVID relief plan. Banned 10 years ago for being self-serving and secretive, such expenditures were called pork barrel spending. They epitomized government waste and corruption. New transparency rules and a new name have been developed during COVID. Earmarks are now called Community Project Requests, or CPR. Leaders in both parties of the U.S. House of Representatives have taken steps to allow CPRs; the Senate is expected to reach a similar agreement soon.
Currently, state governments or federal agencies request federal money for projects. This changes with CPRs. Members of Congress will request monies directly. They must offer an affirmative statement that they derive no financial benefits from projects to qualify. Like the name CPR is intended to communicate, CPRs are meant to streamline access to federal monies while ensuring greater transparency and accountability.
Sayville needs to be resuscitated starting with our water. Why? We are using a 16th-century technology for a community with 21st-century suburban needs. The mismatch between our population and our use of cesspools has nearly destroyed the Great South Bay. This mismatch is also killing Greater Sayville’s business.
County water rules make it nearly impossible to retool an existing business or open a new one in Sayville. Such rules were put in place because while we once provided three of every four hard shell clams nationwide, the bay is now a wasteland, a shell of its former self. And while plans are underway in Central Islip, Kings Park and William Floyd for new water treatment systems, lands between Patchogue and East Islip are a no-man’s-land. Sayville sits right in the middle of this no-man’s-land.
We are losing the battle for commerce with our neighbors to the east and west, Patchogue and Bay Shore. Those business areas are growing. Ours is dying. The former Brinkmann’s location likely would’ve been sold by now to a job-creating tenant, for example, if it was hooked up to water treatment.
I would like to see us move to micro-sewers (as opposed to large-scale sewers), whose benefits are threefold: we can make money clamming again and enjoy our bay, our businesses can compete, and we can sidestep the environmental, political and quality-of-life entanglements that make sewers unpopular to some. For the first time, the Suffolk County Legislature is considering micros-sewers for Fire Island. This is a first, meaning micro-sewers are now a public option. Micro-sewers put water back in the ground. That is important. Many argue that large-scale sewers extract too much water from our ground table; this opens the door to saltwater intrusion, meaning our fresh water could be put at risk with large-scale sewers.
Micro-sewers have two other benefits: political and management issues are rampant throughout the county, the state and the nation. Why hitch our wagon to a crazy train? Why deal with the ugliness of partisan politics if we don’t have to? Micro-sewers are also scalable, meaning we decide how big we make it. That helps us avoid the very real concern many have: that sewers open us up to rampant overdevelopment.
Our other biggest problem is water-related. Browns River has not been dredged for 13 years. Many understand how central downtown Sayville and West Sayville are to our local economy. Few understand how big a job creator Fire Island is. Outside the school district and Sayville Ford, in fact, the Sayville Ferries are the biggest employer in town.
Yet, the ferries are just the tip of the iceberg for Fire Island. Just as tourism is Long Island’s biggest industry, all the businesses and homes in Cherry Grove and the Pines—which is Fire Island’s biggest and wealthiest community—buy the lion’s share of their goods in town. Tourists are spending money here. Fire Island is a huge job creator. All of this commerce is in jeopardy until Browns River is dredged.
Then there’s the fact that we protect the property and people of Fire Island by transporting fire departments and lifesaving equipment via ferries. What happens when these ferries bottom out in Browns River? We are at that point now. Again, it’s been 13 years since we last dredged. That’s a long time.
What’s the problem with the [Oakdale] Merge? Everything. Nothing is a bigger drain on our way of life, in fact, than the merge. Despite its 55mph speed limit, I expect to spend 55 days of my life waiting to get through it. That’s time spent away from my family and being more productive at my job in Nassau County.
How many people will benefit from fixing that boondoggle of a merge? A lot! While only 1.4 miles long, 126,000 people pass through the merge each day. When combining the Southern State, Sunrise Highway and the service road – a total of 16 lanes of traffic – we narrow down to six lanes at the merge, a choke point. We are literally suffocating in traffic. Again, we need CPR.
Then there’s public safety. Over a three-year period, from 2015-2018, we have had over 600 accidents there.
People are experiencing real hardships because of COVID. Issuing relief checks can only help. When people are hungry (and they are), they need fish. But commerce in Greater Sayville is also dying a slow death. Investing in our infrastructure is teaching them how to fish.
If we’re to have a future, we need to invest in water treatment, Browns River and the merge. These projects will create jobs. And the workers on these projects will spend their money in town. Not only that, these projects will give the merchants of today and tomorrow a fighting chance at a future. That gives our community a fighting chance, a real future.
A champion for small businesses, contact Sayville’s own congressman Andrew Garbarino. Ask him to request federal monies for the merge and our water problems. Congressman Garbarino’s family started as grocers in Sayville and still operate a family business in town. It is no mistake that he serves on the Committee for Small Businesses.
You can contact congressman Garbarino through his contact site: https://garbarino.house.gov/contact.