The folks of Suffolk County, Lengthy Island, want to begin contemplating it. That’s as a result of the county — which encompasses the jap portion of the island, together with the Hamptons — depends overwhelmingly on septic tanks and cesspools, quite than a public sewer system, and people outdated methods are contaminating its groundwater aquifers.
And the sewer challenge can be making one other, far more politicized, downside worse: housing affordability.
Like a lot of the suburbs surrounding New York Metropolis, Suffolk County is affected by a significant scarcity of houses. The county makes it unlawful to construct something however single-family houses within the overwhelming majority of its residential neighborhoods, holding provide low and costs inflated. Its insufficient sewer system makes it tough or inconceivable to construct denser housing in a lot the identical means that its restrictive zoning legal guidelines do.
Some housing advocates imagine native officers are utilizing the county’s sewer points as an excuse to stop new and denser housing building. Hunter Gross, president of a nonprofit pro-housing group within the city of Huntington on the county’s western edge, mentioned native elected officers conceal behind wastewater points so as to dodge the housing debate.
“They understand that in the event that they do construct the wanted sewer system, then they must construct the wanted housing,” Gross mentioned.
No upzoning with out sewers — and vice versa
Lengthy Island has public sewer strains, on-site sewage therapy crops, and particular person septic tanks. However about 75% of Suffolk County properties depend on outdated septic methods that don’t take away nitrogen from the water, Newsday reported. Extra nitrogen within the water provide — which additionally comes from fertilizer runoff — might be harmful to devour and disrupts ecological methods, inflicting dangerous phenomena like algae blooms that poison wildlife, crops, and other people.
The county’s conventional septic methods and cesspits are designed to permit handled sewage to soundly seep into the bottom soil, however when tanks aren’t frequently emptied, the water desk is excessive, or the system floods, untreated sewage pollutes close by water.
The commonest cause native elected officers cite for not upgrading their wastewater administration is value. Even in a county the place the median family earnings is virtually $50,000 extra than the nationwide common, policymakers say they merely can’t afford it. Final summer time, the Republican members of the county’s legislature squashed an effort to barely enhance the county’s gross sales tax to pay for sewer upgrades.
However there’s nonetheless hope for the hassle. Earlier this month, Suffolk County’s not too long ago elected govt, Ed Romaine, backed the same measure elevating the gross sales tax to fund the sewer system and particular person septic tanks. In December, New York Governor Kathy Hochul introduced she’ll ship $59 million to Lengthy Island to cope with water contamination and sewer upgrades.
Romaine, a Republican, made housing affordability central to his agenda whereas campaigning and says he wants extra state and federal funding to pay for the sewer and different infrastructure initiatives.
“The governor has mentioned she needs to see extra housing on Lengthy Island. Nice, governor, you’ve bought to provide us cash for sewage as a result of the kind of housing you need, we will not construct,” he mentioned, including that he supported President Joe Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure invoice. “How about a few of that cash? Why ought to Lengthy Island get shortchanged?”
Edmund Smyth, the city supervisor of Huntington, Suffolk County, mentioned he’d prefer to see the federal authorities commit billions of {dollars} to increasing and upgrading sewer strains and therapy crops throughout the US to guard the water provide and increase improvement.
“If the governor’s plan requires the city to undertake sure housing insurance policies, and that does not include a really giant infrastructure verify together with it,” Smyth mentioned, “there’s nothing to speak about.”
Lengthy Islanders cannot afford to reside the place they grew up
Anti-development NIMBYism is rampant throughout Lengthy Island, and its jap half isn’t any exception. Suffolk County has allowed much less new housing to be constructed over the past 10 years than virtually every other county within the US. It additionally has a better proportion of single-family houses than almost every other county — greater than 80% of its houses are indifferent, single-family homes.
Final yr, Lengthy Island public officers led the cost in opposition to Gov. Kathy Hochul’s effort to spice up housing building round transit hubs, finish single-family zoning, and different measures to encourage improvement, significantly within the New York Metropolis suburbs. Final summer time, opponents of permitting accent dwelling models, like basement residences, in Huntington warned in opposition to “altering the complexion of this lovely group” and bringing in “migrants, pedophiles, or criminals.”
However many residents, together with householders who’ve benefited from hovering house values, are feeling the ache of the housing affordability disaster and wish change. Companies are struggling to draw employees, who can’t discover first rate housing. Child boomers are involved their very own youngsters and grandchildren can’t afford to reside within the communities they grew up in.
“We’re creating numerous jobs right here, however that is not going to proceed if we do not have locations to reside for the individuals who have these jobs,” mentioned Ian Wilder, govt director of the nonprofit group Lengthy Island Housing Providers. “The one factor we’re creating is a market in unlawful and, a few of it, harmful housing as a result of folks haven’t any selection about the place to reside.”
Sewers tie into an extended historical past of exclusionary housing coverage
Like many related suburban areas, Lengthy Island has an extended historical past of implementing racial segregation by way of housing insurance policies. Levittown, the well-known master-planned Fifties suburb designed for WWII veterans, excluded Black residents. In 1988, the Supreme Court docket discovered in a landmark case that the city of Huntington perpetuated racial discrimination with zoning legal guidelines that prohibited multi-family housing building in largely white neighborhoods.
Whereas civil rights legal guidelines have since modified, the county remains to be probably the most segregated within the US. In 2019, Newsday printed a three-year investigation discovering that residential actual property brokers and brokers frequently discriminated in opposition to Black, Hispanic, and Asian purchasers.
Infrastructure is simply as key to increasing the housing inventory as land-use legal guidelines are. Sewers and zoning are “two sides of the identical coin,” mentioned Nathan Cummings, a regulation clerk who printed a paper within the Yale Legislation & Coverage Assessment in 2022 on wastewater therapy and concrete improvement. You possibly can’t change land-use legal guidelines to permit for extra density when the sewer capability isn’t there, and you’ll’t construct out the sewer system when the land-use legal guidelines don’t enable for extra density.
“It’s totally simple for native policymakers to fall right into a entice the place they are saying we will not upzone as a result of we do not have infrastructure and we will’t construct infrastructure as a result of our zoning does not allow something above a sure degree of improvement,” Cummings mentioned. “If you wish to construct extra densely, it is a two-step course of the place you do each and in the end what it takes is the political will.”
The connection between anti-sewer and anti-housing activism isn’t restricted to Lengthy Island. Comparable communities, like Outdated Lyme, Connecticut, have been accused of blocking wastewater initiatives so as to stymie denser housing building and stop lower-income folks or folks of shade from transferring right into a group.
Alarm bells go off for Cummings in circumstances the place a group’s water is being contaminated by waste and it refuses each to construct out its sewer system or set up an alternate wastewater therapy system.
“If you don’t need both of these issues, at the same time as your groundwater is getting polluted, and also you’re having to pay the maintenance value to your septic system, it simply begins to look slightly bit much less rational,” he mentioned.
