Long Beach to get federal funds to connect to county sewage system

The City of Long Beach is receiving nearly $67 million in federal funds to convert its wastewater treatment plant into a pump station to connect with Nassau County’s sewer system in Bay Park.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency is covering 90% of the $78.3 million project, which would replace the sewage treatment center that was damaged during Superstorm Sandy.

The plant, built in 1951 and serving more than 37,000 people, pumps up to 5 million gallons of treated sewage per day into Reynolds Channel. But the FEMA funding, part of a $439 million overall state plan, would build a pipeline to connect Long Beach to the county’s treatment plant in Bay Park.

The total conversion of sewage from Long Beach to the county's Bay Park plant and Cedar Creek ocean outfall pipe is expected to eliminate 55 million gallons of sewage pumped daily into the Western bays and remove 95% of nitrogen pollution along the island's South Shore.

Nassau County legislators voted in 2019 to approve $66.4 million bonds under an intermunicipal agreement between the county and Long Beach. But the bonds were never issued, county officials said, adding the project will now be reimbursed through FEMA to cover Long Beach's construction costs. They said the city is seeking short-term financing to fund the project.

Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said he worked to acquire the funding for Long Beach to complete the treatment plant’s conversion. Schumer called the project “critical to the future of Long Beach” and Nassau County to stop pollution in the back bays.

“I fought tooth-and-nail after Sandy to make sure over $60 Billion in federal aid was available for New York and all of Long Island to build back stronger,” Schumer said in a statement. “Now, after years of progress and diligence by so many, I am proud to say the Biden administration is delivering another $66 million-plus of that aid to the City of Long Beach to help rehabilitate its wastewater treatment infrastructure.”

FEMA officials said converting the city’s treatment plant would also reduce potential storm damage.

“Located on a vulnerable, high-risk barrier island, the existing system will continue to be subject to repetitive damage and loss of functionality, posing significant health and safety threats to the community and ecological threats to the environment,” officials said.

Officials hope the project will help restore 10,000 acres of water and tidal marshlands from Atlantic Beach to Point Lookout by eliminating nitrogen and effluent being pumped from the treated sewage.

The pipeline would divert the raw sewage from Long Beach and Reynolds Channel to be treated at Bay Park’s plant in East Rockaway. The treated sewage would then be transferred seven miles through an aqueduct under Sunrise Highway to Cedar Creek in Wantagh where it would be pumped through a three-mile outflow pipe into the Atlantic Ocean.

Officials said they hoped to one day return waterways like Reynolds Channel back to being healthy habitats for sea life, shell fishing and recreation on the water, potentially seeing improvement within five years.

Construction on the project started last spring and is expected to be completed in the next two years.

Long Beach City Council President Karen McInnis said the funding and construction follows nearly a decade of city staff and state and federal aid to get the work done.

“It’s a tremendous impact to help us have the funding to convert our sewer treatment facility to protect our environment and get pollutants out of Reynolds Channel,” McInnis said. “It’s a generational impact. We haven’t seen projects of this magnitude for a long time.”

By John Asbury

john.asbury@newsday.comJohnAsbury

John Asbury is a breaking news and general assignment reporter. He has been with Newsday since 2014 and previously worked at The Press-Enterprise in Riverside, California.