by Douglas Finlay
Under brilliant morning blue skies in Freeport, Nassau County Executive Thomas Suozzi last week christened two new 27-foot SPLASH (Stop Polluting Littering And Save Harbors) boats paid for with county Environmental Bond Act money that will increase the amount of loose refuse volunteers can retrieve from the water while it increases SPLASH’s educational outreach into the community.
Telling those gathered that a community such as Freeport is what the future of the county is all about because it focuses on creating an exciting destination that offers a better quality of life, he praised SPLASH members for their tireless commitment to the preservation and enhancement of their communities.
“They do it out of the love and passion they have for their homes. They do this work for all the right reasons.”
The two new boats, as part of an intermunicipal agreement between the county and the Village of Freeport, are 27-foot Carolina skiffs costing $70,000 and being paid for by the county’s Environmental Bond Act money voted on in 2004 and 2006.
One of the new boats belongs to the Bellmore-Wantagh-Seaford SPLASH chapter and will be docked at the Wantagh Park marina to serve the Bellmore, Wantagh and Seaford bay areas.
Captain Bob DiGiacomo, who has piloted the current Bellmore SPLASH boat for several years, called the new skiffs “aircraft carriers” compared to the previous boats, one of which is now being docked in Massapequa as SPLASH prepares to expand into that community.
Easy to navigate
Mr. DiGiacomo, who first began fishing flotsdam out of the Bellmore backwaters in 1988 using only his Jet Ski, says the new boats will hold much more refuse and will be easy to navigate into shallow marshland, where much of the refuse often floats.
Rob Weltner, president of SPLASH, told Bellmore Life he has seen refuse in the backwaters with European identification marks on it, suggesting it floated all the way from Europe.
Meanwhile, Skip Zawrotny, skipper of the Freeport boat, says the larger boats offer another advantage. “We offer special trips for residents who want to clean up their bays, and with much more boat capacity we can provide special trips for parents and their kids” as an educational excursion to the islands to clean up refuse.
He added that SPLASH is in partnership with Adelphi University, which often uses SPLASH boats to ferry studdents out to study the bays.
Freeport Mayor Andrew Hardwick reflected a similar sentiment, telling Belmore Life that the new boats would act as “mentors” to the young, whom he calls the future stewards of the environment. “SPLASH is a good mentor for getting the young involved in cleaning up the environment,” he said.
He added that the new boats are “safer vessels” that can hold more people and can maneuver more deftly around shallow waters.
Tito Batista, a former Bellmore resident who graduated from Kennedy High School and now lives in Cold Spring Harbor, told Bellmore Life he would like to see a Cold Spring Harbor SPLASH chapter start on the North Shore.
“There is a lack of education among older people about global warming and the environment, and they have to be taught to pitch in to clean up,” he said. He added that young people show more concern with the environment, and are pitching in to clean it up.
A SPLASH chapter would help educate residents about their responsibiliy as stewards of the harbors, he concluded.
Bond money slated for South Shore
Earlier criticisms leveled against stewards of environmental bond money included the opinion that more bond money was being spent to save open space on the North Shore than was being spent for South Shore projects.
Mr. Weltner remarked that as a board member looking at all the tracts of open space nominated by county residents for purchase, open space on the North Shore was the dominant land to be saved.
But Adrienne Esposito – president of the Farmingdale-based Citizens Campaign for the Environment (CCE), an 80,000-member nonprofit organization, who sits on an advisory board with Mr. Weltner – last year rebuffed any notion that several open spaces preserved on the North Shore with environmental bond money were bought from millionaires to provide them with tax breaks.
Instead, these were delicate – if unaccessible – areas important to the preservation of the area’s groundwater, she said.
Brad Tito, director of environmental services for the county, explained that because the South Shore does not have much open space left, money had gone toward storm water runoff improvements, restorations of county park land and ponds, and intermunicipal agreements such as the SPLASH boats as ways to provide the South Shore with environmental bond money.
Mr. Weltner agreed, but added a twist. He said that the hundreds of filters that had been put onto drains in Freeport and surrounding communities to catch floatables from storm water runoff such as cans, cups and other hardware from escaping into the bays had in fact gone to protecting the waters, or “open spaces” of the South Shore Estuary, as he called them.
Regarding the Army base open space in North Bellmore, when asked if the county was considering buying the property to maintain it as wild preserve, Mr. Tito referred to a statement heard at last week’s county Planning Commission hearing on subdividing the property: The developers were not interested in selling the property.
At that meeting many residents, and both county Legislators Dave Denenberg and Norma Gonsalves, implored the commission to consider some sort of open space such as a pocket park be included in the subdivision.
DEDICATION: Presiding over the christening of the new boats were, from left, County Legislator David Denenberg, Freeport Mayor Andrew Hardwick, and County Executive Tom Suozzi.
Leader photo by Douglas Finlay