2012-01-19

              The Leader is looking
for Freeport/Baldwin s
First Baby of 2012!
144 W 8EBRICK RD
CRT NY U520
See page 2
77th Year, No. 3 Freeport, N.Y. 11520 The Community Newspaper Thursday. January 19. 2012 750
Remember the dream...
KEEPING THE DREAM ALIVE: The winners of the Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
essay, poetry, and art contest stand with Mayor Andrew Hardwick and Dr.
Kishore Kuncham, superintendent of Freeport Schools, at "The Next
Generation: Keeping the Dream Alive" event held at the Freeport Recreation
Center. Mayor Hardwick, Dr. Kuncham, and others personally donated cash
prizes totaling over $1,500, which was presented to the contest winners at
the event. The contest winners also received citations .
trip to the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial in Washington,'D.C.^dm leftVre
Mayor Hardwick, Rashid McCurty, Shania Hackett, Courtney Collins,
Gabriella Thomas, Brea Baker, Brooke Baker, Tiara Carter (honorable men-tion),'
Lea Hamm, and Dr. Kuncham. Blair Baker, Drami Core, and Rose Star
Pierre-Paul were also winners but were unable to attend.
Ban pesticides in LI groundwater?
by Laura Schofer
New information just issued by the state
Department of Environmental
Conservation (DEC) points to a "chemical
cocktail" in our water supply that could
prove to adversely affect the health and
well being of residents. The draft docu-ment
called the Long Island Pesticide Use
Management Plan (LIPUMP) being devel-oped
by the DEC to protect citizens, docu-ments
123 pesticides in the water includ-ing
the top three offenders - atrazine,
metalaxyl and Imidacloprid.
Atrazine, a herbicide, was banned for
use in the European Union since 2004 and
has been identified as an endocrine dis-rupter.
Metalaxyl, a fungicide, is linked to
kidney and liver damage and Imidacloprid,
used on lawns and ornamental plantings, is
toxic to fish and crustaceans.
In response to this report, environmental
groups are calling for a zero-tolerance pol-icy
for pesticides in our ground water.
Leading the charge is Adrienne Esposito,
director of the environmental advocacy
group Citizens Campaign for the
Environment (CCE).
"The myriad of pesticides in our drink-ing
water are remnants of a toxic legacy
that started decades ago. Long Island's
groundwater will continue to be contami-nated
for years to come unless the DEC
steps up and adopts a zero-tolerance plan
for pesticides. We only have one aquifer;
that means only one chance to get this
right."
"A zero-tolerance policy will offer the
strongest protection for Long Island's
drinking water and stop the continuance of
pesticide contamination to the aquifer sys-tem,"
explained Ms. Esposito at a press
conference last week.
Still in draft form, the DEC has been
working on this plan since 1998 and have
now made the plan available to the public
for comment.
More than 20 environmental groups
including Freeport's Operation SPLASH,
have endorsed the zero-tolerance policy
for pesticides in groundwater. Other envi-ronmental
groups include NYPIRG,
Vision Long Island, Long Island Pine
Barrens Society, Sierra Club Long Island
Group, Sustainability Institute at Molloy
College,, and the Long Island Drinking
Water Coalition, among others.
"People have been lulled into a false
sense of security about these chemicals.
They figure if they are legal it's okay but
we don't know the long-term effects; peo-ple
end up getting sick," said Rob Weltner,
president of Operation SPLASH. "We
need to be our own watchdog and tell the
government what we want."
The Environmental Protection Agency
has not established drinking water stan-dards
for all the pesticides found in our
water. According to CCE, of the hundreds
of pesticide active ingredients it registers,
the EPA has established maximum contam-inant
levels (MCLs) for only 24 pesticides.
"Pesticides in water usually occur in
combinations of several compounds rather
than individually. More than 50 percent of
all stream samples by the United States
Geological Survey contain five or more
pesticides, and nearly 25 percent of all
groundwater samples contain two or more
pesticides," according to information pro-vided
by CCE.
Additionally, it is still unknown how
chemicals interact with each other or with
other contaminants, such as nitrates, com-monly
found in Long Island's aquifer.
"Look at what happens with DDT," said
Mr. Weltner. "After all these years, we are
still finding ODD in the bottom of the
Bays." Mr. Weltner explained that when
"DDT breaks down it becomes ODD."
DDD is dichorodiphenyldichloroethane,
a breakdown product of DDT. It has a half-life
of 150 years in the aquatic environ-ment,
according to the Center for
Environmental Medicine.
(continued on page 10)
NAMES MAKE THE NEWS: Read about your neighbors! % local people's names were in your community newspaper this past week. Maybe yours is in this week! See inside.
Freeport High School
open house
page 2
Danger in your
medicine cabinet
page 3
Guest editorial from
Senator Fuschillo
page 4
Baldwin senior
seminar slated
page 6