Bethpage-Tribune_1972-03-23

              Island Trees Serving Bethpage - Plainview - Island Trees - Plainedge - Seaford
1 * ^ 3 v/w bethpage
VOL. 6 No. 20 Thursday, March 2 3 , 1 9 72 10e per copy
Student Survey To Update
Bethpage Transit Picture
PRIVATE PERFORMANCE: The players of the Town
of Oyster Bay Teen Repertory Theatre staged a scene
from their production 'The King's Creampuffs' for the
enjoyment of Town Councilman Joseph Saladino and
Mi-3. i»nini OkmRKin President of the Plainedge Council
of the P.T.A. The performance was held last week at
the John H. West School in Bethpage.
Seaman's Bank Opens
East Meadow Branch
The billion-dollar Seamen's
Bank for Savings - which first
opened for business over 143
years ago in lower Manhattan -
will open its first office in Nassau
County at 2469 Hempstead
Turnpike and Newbridge Road,
in the Great Eastern Shopping
Center, East Meadow, on Wed­nesday,
March 22.
This interim office will serve
the community until the "hand­some
modern permanent office,
now being built, opens in the fall.
Although this is an interim
facility, all savings bank services
will be offered, including 6
percent Time Savings Accounts,
5 percent Day of Deposit to Day
of Withdrawal Accounts and
Grace Days Accounts, home
mortgage and home im­provement
loans, and Savings
Bank Life Insurance, according
to E. Virgil Conway, Chairman
and President.
Leroy D. Runyon, Assistant
Vice President, has been ap­pointed
manager of the new of­fice.
He has been with Seamen's
since 1937 and is a lifetime
resident of Long Island.
Chartered in 1829, The
Seamen's Bank for Savings has
played an important role in New
York history. It has continued to
.cherish its maritime tradition,
from the early times when most,
trustees were prominently
identified with leading New York
shipping firms, right down to the
present when its offices also
serve ah museums to show the
•^[Continued on Page 7)
SPEAKING OF TAXES: Oyster Bay Town Receiver of
Taxes Sol Newborn, center, is thanked by Chancellor
Harold Levine, left, and Secretary Jerry Ness of
Knights of Pythias Lodge 833, Plainview, following his
talk on special tax exemptions for veterans and senior
citizens at a recent meeting of the organization.
Students in Bethpage who want
to do more for their environment
than pick up litter will get that
chance this Easter vacation.
With forms developed by a
teacher and an ecology club, they
will attempt an in-depth survey of
transportation needs in this
community of 5,000 families.
Doing the legwork on the
survey will be 160 driver
education students and a dozen
members of S.A.V.E. (Students
Against Violence to the En­vironment).
Each person will
cover 30 homes, asking questions
about times of departure and
arrival, destinations, and mode
of transportation for those who
travel to work, school, or com­munity
activities.
"Automobiles are our biggest
polluters", notes David Lubell,
director of work-study programs
in the district and the man who
started the project. As he sees it,
the survey will be an inexpensive
means to guage transportation
needs so that public transit could
be better planned. With less cars
on the road, air pollution would
then be reduced.
Besides the educational value
of conducting a survey, Lubell
feels students will make a sub­stantial
contribution to ecological
change. "Too often", he points
out, "students are encouraged to
clean up a river or an empty lot.
In a little while, these are dirty
again, and the kids naturally
become cynical."
If the Bethpage project is
successful, Lubell is sure other
districts can easily duplicate it.
By including such a survey in its
annual census, a district could
update the picture of tran­sportation
needs at little or no
extra cost, he believes.
"What we are trying to do is to
educate both students and
community to the trade-offs our
technological society demands",
explains Lubell, an atmospheric
research (associate at
Albany State University. "If
everyone is to drive a dirty
automobile, then we must put up
with pollution. Otherwise, we
must make cars cleaner - which
costs money — or cut down on
their numbers."
One way to do this is car pools.
Another is greater use of buses.
Both of these are less convenient
than cars, admits Lubell, "but
convenience is hard to prove
when cars choke the highways
and pollution chokes us all."
Lubell is a realistic man. He
knows that the car is here to stay.
But he is sure that a better mass
transist system must co-exist
with automobiles. For example,
he proposes that school buses be
used during idle hours to tran­sport
senior citizens to local
destinations, and that) buses be
rerouted so more non-driving
students can be involved in work
or community activities after
school.
Whether or not these proposals
are practical, Lubell is confident
that the student survey, at least,
will prove a cheap, workable
means to determine just what has
to be done for public transit in
Bethpage.
If the data can be organized to
Nassau County Department of
'Transportation,
Lubell feels such an update is
necessary, even though the 1970
federal census included tran­sportation
questions. "The past
two years have seen a great deal
of economic change", he argues,
"and this may very well have
changed destinations and modes
of transit/'
Tobay Finds:
Newspapers Easy to Recycle;
Glass and Cans Hard to Do
The'Town of Oyster Bay, upon
recommendations from David
Mafrici, Director of the Town's
Division of Environmental
Control, expects to expand its
newspaper recycling program
while discontinuing its glass and
can collection centers.
"We have not given up on the
concept of recycling of glass and
cans," Supervisor John W. Burke
explained. "The collection
centers were established as an •
experimental program to
determine the attitude of the
residents towards recycling and
to develop Town methods for the
management of permanent
. facilities for recycling. These
objectives were realized by the
three reclamation centers.
"Our residents have demon­strated
a willingness to par­ticipate
in recycling programs,
but they have not been responsive
to the necessity of transporting
glass to collection centers and
eliminating rings and caps from
the bottles" he stated.
' "Separation at the source
through a municipal collection
system would now seem to be the
answer", concluded Burke.
Mafrici's report to Burke in­dicated
that many residents
mixed the glasses (they are
supposed to be separated by
color) and also delivered garbage
and newspapers to the 24-hour
collection points, in come cases
causing unhealthy sanitary
conditions as well as un-sightliness.
The problems associated with
the aluminum cans were similar
to those with the glass. Although
literature and publicity specified
and described all-aluminum
cans, anywhere from 33 percent
to 46 percent of the recycled cans
were bi-metallic and had to be
separated and discarded at a
high cost to• the Town.
"Economics were a definite
factor in my recommendations,"
Mafrici said. "In July and August
(71) for example, we sent two
shipments of glass totaling 30
tons to a glass manufacturer in
New Jersey. We received $160 for
the first shipment and that
represented a net loss of $427.40 -
the cost of sorting, crushing and
loading the glass into drums at
the highway garages for tran­sportation
to the main collection
point."
Mafrici said the cost alone for
separating the cans ran to three
times the amount of money the
Town would have received from
purchasers.
Burke stated that Town em­ployees
working on the glass-can
recycling program would be
utilized in the expanding
newspaper collection effort,
where it is believed that in­creased
collection and sale of
newspapers will enable the Town
to finance and promote additional
' environmental programs.
"Plans are also being made for
a pilot project to separate refuse
at the source;" Mafrici ex­plained.
"There is no doubt there
will be numerous problems in­volved
in the implementation of
mandatory curbside separation,
but a separation of the materials
at the point of collection would
seem to be the answer."
Mafrici also reported that the
Town would close the glass-can
collection centers at the Old
Bethpage Incinerator; Lake
' Avenue Garage, Oyster Bay and
Carman Road Garage,
Massapequa, by March 31.
He said the Town would con­tinue
to ask its residents to write
to their congressmen requesting
the implementation of the Town's
application for an incinerator'
residue recovery grant since to
date the Federal Government has
not acted on this project.
"A 100 ton/day incinerator
residue recovery system would
be more effective than all of the
collection centers combined,"
Mafrici emphasized.