The reaction last week to the FAA move was strong. “The FAA has failed in its duty to protect the public,” declared Suffolk County Legislator Edward Romaine.

State Assemblyman Marc Alessi, at a press conference interrupted multiple times by chopper noise, announced the creation of a website—www.quietskiesli.com—where information can be submitted on noisy chopper flights.

And Shelter Island Supervisor James Dougherty questioned the FAA’s concern for noise-tormented Long Islanders. “I don’t have a high degree of confidence,” he said. “They seem to be very sympathetic to the pilots and their concerns.”

That’s at the crux of the issue. In 1968 Congress “vested in FAA’s administrator the power to prescribe aircraft noise standards,” acknowledges the FAA’s website. In 1976, it issued an “Aviation Noise Abatement Policy” which stated: “The federal government has the authority and responsibility to control aircraft noise by the regulation of source emissions, by flight operational procedures, and by management of the air traffic control system and navigable airspace in ways that minimize noise impact on residential areas.”

But the FAA is chartered to both promote and regulate aviation. This conflict is emphasized by those who have tried to deal with the FAA on noise. As the Vermont-based Noise Pollution Clearinghouse declares on its website (www.noise.org): “The FAA makes no secret of its role as aviation cheerleader.” It notes an FAA publication “with the headline, ‘Two Years of Traffic Growth and Profits Too!’” The FAA is “out of balance” when it comes to noise, says the organization.

The “logical solution,” it says, is “dividing FAA’s roles between more appropriate entities. The FAA should remain the regulator of passenger and aircraft safety. The EPA should be the regulator of environmental quality…The multi-billion dollar airline industry should be the cheerleader of aviation. And local communities should control development of local airports.”

Long Island, as the Hamptons helicopter racket unfortunately continues, can play a part in the needed break-up of the FAA—as it did earlier with another federal agency, the Atomic Energy Commission.

In the early 1970s, testifying at and observing AEC hearings on licensing construction of the Shoreham nuclear plant, Congressman Lester Wolff of Kensington was irate at what he saw: an atomic kangaroo court. The AEC was foremost a nuclear cheerleader, Mr. Wolff concluded. He became a leader in the fight that succeeded in 1975 to abolish the AEC and establish in its place a Nuclear Regulatory Commission and have another government entity, now the Department of Energy, take a promotional role.

In the months ahead, as Long Islanders continue the battle against the noisy Hamptons helicopters and prod the FAA to take firm action, there should be an associated effort: to break up the FAA. This might also help spur the FAA to do what is needed.

As Legislator Romaine again called for last week, the Hamptons choppers “must fly no less than a mile off the north shore” and at a “minimum altitude of 3,000 feet.” They must be “prohibited from traversing land except in designated sparsely populated areas.” And choppers “bound for the East Hampton Airport”—the main landing and take-off point for the Hamptons helicopters—“must fly around Orient Point.”

Further, said Mr. Romaine, “the FAA must open up” Kennedy Airport airspace so that the helicopters “can more easily access the south shore route,” cruising over the ocean and making the short hop over Georgica Pond to and from the East Hampton field.

It was supposed to happen to the south of Long Island and was scuttled because of skyrocketing costs, public opposition and a lack of need. But the concept of floating nuclear power plants is back, demonstrating that some bad ideas never go away.

I ran into the scheme driving down Dune Road in Hampton Bays in 1974. On the oceanfront was what looked like a weather station, but on the chain link fence surrounding the various meteorological devices was the sign: “U.S. Atomic Energy Commission—Brookhaven National Laboratory.” What was this about? I called BNL and was told that the government set up the station to study the impact of radioactive discharges from floating nuclear power plants to be placed off New Jersey. The first four plants were to go 11 miles northeast of Atlantic City, 100 miles south of Long Island.

BNL was using a 75-foot landing craft on loan from the Navy, a chartered Cessna plane and a trawler. Clouds of smoke were sent up at sea. Because prevailing winds on Long Island are from the southwest, the recipient of the discharges was mostly Long Island.

I pursued the floating nuclear plant story for years. The scheme was hatched, interestingly, while a vice president of Public Service Electric and Gas Co. of New Jersey, Richard Eckert, was taking a shower. Company literature spoke of Mr. Eckert having a revelation of the sea supplying the massive amounts of water nuclear plants need as coolant. The utility convinced Westinghouse to build floating nuclear plants. A huge facility was constructed on an island off Jacksonville, Florida with the plants to be towed into position. The project was cancelled in 1984 after $180 million was blown.

Well, the notion is back. Six weeks ago, Russia’s state nuclear corporation, Rosatom, launched a barge in St. Petersburg to be the base for the first of what Rosatom says will be many floating nuclear power plants to go off Russia and also sold to nations around the world.

 David Lochbaum, senior safety engineer at the Union of Concerned Scientists, is highly critical. He describes an accident at a floating nuclear power plant as “worse” than at a land-based one. “In a meltdown, a China syndrome accident, the molten mass of what had been the core would burrow into the ground and some of the radioactive material held there. But with a floating nuclear plant, all the molten mass would drop into the water and there would be a steam explosion and the release of a tremendous amount of energy and radioactive material,” he explained from Washington. “It would be like a bomb going off.” A large plume of radioactive poisons would form and “many more people would be put in harm’s way,” said Mr. Lochbaum, for 18 years an engineer in the nuclear industry and an instructor for the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

Nuclear experts in Europe—including Russia—are as disapproving. Other issues raised include the floating plants being sources of fuel for nuclear weapons and easy targets for terrorists. The fuel the plants are to use is weapons-grade uranium. And Rosatom has been negotiating to sell them to nations including Malaysia, Algeria and Indonesia.

A book written by a group of Russian scientists, Floating Nuclear Power Plants in Russia: A Threat to the Arctic, World Oceans and Non-Proliferation, says “one would have imagined that the Chernobyl catastrophe would have taught us to treat nuclear technologies with caution.” It notes “the idea of creating floating nuclear power plants originated in the USA” but was dropped and recommends Russia do the same.

Last week, Long Island Power Authority President Kevin Law, as he prepared to leave LIPA, unveiled an ambitious new proposal for 234 wind turbines in the Atlantic off southern Long Island. That’s a safe, clean way to harvest energy on the sea. The plan for floating Chernobyls invites disaster. We should pursue wise ways of gathering energy—and, just maybe, Russia (and other nations) will emulate safe U.S. energy ideas.

Preservation Crashes: Considering the Consequences is an important report recently issued by the Long Island Pine Barrens Society. It notes how “for more than half a century, Long Island has preserved open space and farmland, protected the source of its purest drinking water and created parks and recreational opportunities.” The result has been the preservation of 65,000 acres of land and the spending of more money on land preservation—$1.3 billion—“than 45 of the 50 states in the union.”

But there has been, says the report, an “unprecedented crash” in recent years—just as Long Island faces in 2020 its “final build-out.” That is when all the land remaining on Long Island that could be saved will be or else go the way of development. And that’s just a decade away.

The report cites the environmental reasons for land preservation: to safeguard pure drinking water on an island solely dependent on its underground water table or aquifer for potable water, and to save open space and preserve natural habitats for plants and animals some of them rare and endangered.

And for people, “preserving the land now conserves the region’s quality-of-life for future generations.”

Economically, open space and farmland are “engines that drive the Island’s economy,” the report emphasizes. “Tourism remains the Number One industry on Long Island, generating $7.6 billion dollars annually…Tourists don’t flock to Levittown,” it accurately observes. “They seek the natural splendor and rural character of the limited portions of Long Island which are not over-developed.”

Suffolk County “is still the Number One money-generating agricultural county in New York State. The loss of much more farmland will make farming no longer viable as the businesses needed to sustain it will have too few customers for tractors, seed and other farming necessities,” it points out.

“Finally, residential development costs more in taxes for new government services than it generates in taxes.” This, indeed, has long been recognized by Long Islanders—and they’ve learned to reject the baloney of speculators that development provides an economic shot.

The report quotes the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan as the first to observe that “on Long Island, our environment is our economy and our economy is our environment.”

What has happened? “Unhappily, government has lost its way,” declares the report. It cites figures on the state, county and town levels of radically declining land acquisitions.

The report holds that “despite the recession, Long Islanders remain as committed as ever to land conservation.” It cites a survey last year by the “respected” polling firm Fairbanks, Maslin, Maulin, Metz & Associates which “found that eight out of 10 Long Islanders support maintaining or even increasing spending for land purchases.”

Even with the recession, “Long Islanders correctly conclude that the recession has increased the number of willing sellers and that declining real estate prices make now the best time to buy.”

“So, if the economic claims are false, what is motivating politicians to dial back support for preservation programs,” the report asks. It points to the opposition by developers “to land preservation and their conspicuous contributions to Island politicians.”

It sets forth an action program and is hopeful that “Long Island’s citizenry, always supportive of preservation, may yet prevail over the current-day, political business-as-usual.”

The report is online at www.pinebarrens.org. Or you can obtain a copy from the Long Island Pine Barrens Society at 547 East Main Street in Riverhead. The society’s e-mail address is info@pinebarrens.org and phone number is 369-3300.

Read the report and what it has to say about the crash in land preservation and join in making sure that in the few critical years left, the farms and open space up for grabs do not end up, as so much of western Long Island has, covered in sprawl. 

There’s a sitting duck for terrorists right off the coast of Long Island. And al Qaeda knows about this. So does the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) which, for security reasons primarily, wants this potential target, the Plum Island Animal Disease Center, eliminated  and its work done elsewhere.

But there’s resistance. Congressman Tim Bishop is concerned about the loss of 200 federal jobs in his district. And livestock interests in Kansas are worried that if the center’s work is shifted there, an outbreak could impact on livestock.

Aafia Siddiqui was convicted by a jury in Manhattan in February of attempted murder.

Dubbed “Lady Al Qaeda,” she holds a doctorate in neuroscience from MIT. Among the documents in her possession when she was captured in Afghanistan in 2008 were hand-written notes about a “mass-casualty attack” and a list of targets: Wall Street, Brooklyn Bridge, Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building—and the Plum Island Animal Disease Center.

At the center, on 840-acre Plum Island a mile-and-a-half off Orient Point, research is conducted into virulent animal diseases—including foot-and-mouth disease. The diseases  include some that impact on both animals and people.

Pakistan-born Dr. Siddiqui was, when captured, the FBI’s most wanted woman in the world. Found with her, too, were jars of poisonous chemicals and details on chemical, biological and radiological weapons. A relative of 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, she was convicted of shooting at Americans who had come to question her.

It was not the first time the Plum Island center appeared as an al Qaeda target. In 2002, U.S. Army commandos and CIA agents found a dossier on it in a raid on the Afghanistan residence of Sultan Bashiruddin Mahmood, a nuclear physicist from Pakistan and an associate of Osama bin Laden. .

The next year, 2003, the Government Accountability Office (GAO) issued a report about terrorism and Plum Island. GAO declared there is a substantial risk that “an adversary might try to steal pathogens” from the center and use them against people or animals in the U.S.  It noted that a camel pox strain researched at the center could be converted into “an agent as threatening as smallpox,” and the Venezuelan equine encephalitis virus studied there could be “developed into a human biowarfare agent.”

It emphasized that the center, which the DHS took over from the Department of Agriculture in 2003, “was not designed to be a highly secure facility.”

And it can never be. Plum Island sits exposed amid busy marine traffic lanes. The main laboratory is the big building that ferries taking passengers between Orient Point and New London, Connecticut pass directly in front of. It is not giving away any secret—this has been repeatedly noted—that from a boat terrorists armed with shoulder-fired rockets would have a clear shot. A plane could dive into the laboratory.

Facing this reality of security, DHS thereafter announced it would build a new National Bio and Agro Defense Facility (NBAF) with, later, Manhattan, Kansas picked as the site, and the Plum Island center would be closed, its work transferred there.

DHS has been proceeding with the closure—but there’s no complete certainty it will happen. Mr. Bishop recently declared that “rather than pour hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars down a sinkhole in Kansas and open the Pandora’s box of decommissioning Plum Island, we should abandon NBAF and make use of existing facilities that continue to serve this nation well.”

Buoying the livestock trade groups opposing the NBAF in Kansas, GAO last year estimated $1 billion in livestock losses from an outbreak at it.

But what of an al Qaeda attack on Plum Island? It sits halfway between Boston and New York City. Work on highly toxic pathogens should only be done at a heavily guarded facility inland, perhaps constructed underground—not off a major population center of the U.S.

If you’d like to comment via the Internet or read comments made by others, go to www.regulations.gov and for “keyword” type in: FAA-2010-0302. Comments can also be mailed to the FAA at the Department of Transportation, 1200 New Jersey Avenue, SE, Washington, DC. 20590. Or you can fax them to 202-493-2251. The deadline is June 25.

The FAA is to then issue its plan—in time, it has said, for the July 4^th weekend.

Hopefully, the comments will make a difference.

The words of Merlie Neidell of Head of the Harbor sum up the views of many on the FAA website. “Please accept this comment regarding the absolute devastation to our serene way of life as a result of helicopters. Our peaceful little village is a sanctuary from hectic suburban life style; accordingly, the quietness of this unique jewel of a waterfront village has been invaded by helicopters trespassing on our solitude and causing stressful noise pollution. They are totally invasive and inconsiderate…You have absolutely no idea how rude as they travel…back and forth on their way from NYC to the Hamptons. They start at 6 a.m. and run till after midnight. They fly so low the tops of the trees rustle, the dishes in the kitchen cabinets shake and they interrupt our conversations, wake us up and invade our very existence.”

Suffolk Legislator Edward Romaine, the leading official locally in the fight against the chopper racket, writes that he is “pleased that the FAA has proposed rules to regulate helicopter traffic over Long Island” but is concerned about the details. The FAA “should establish waypoints along unpopulated areas” for the flights rather than “leaving” this to the “discretion” of the pilots. And he questions the FAA’s reliance on the so-called North Shore Route urging the “opening up” of airspace south of Kennedy Airport to enable helicopters to fly a southern route “completely away from populated areas and out over the ocean.”

U.S. Senator Charles Schumer, in announcing the FAA move last month, declared that “these regulations are the culmination of years of work to protect Long Island residents from intrusive and disruptive helicopter noise” and “residents will finally have some peace and quiet and not have to worry about being jolted out of bed or interrupted at dinner. These regulations will make it clear, enough is enough.”

But the FAA’s “Notice of Proposed Rulemaking” published several days later in the Federal Register was quite short on details. It said: “This proposed action would require helicopter operators to use the New York North Shore Route,” and noted it was “added to the FAA flight chart in 2008 and the use of that route is currently voluntary. New York public officials have continued to receive complaints regarding the adverse impact of helicopter noise on their communities.”

 So the FAA would mandate use of the North Shore Route. But, as currently set up, the North Shore Route does not apply to all helicopters. It was developed in 2007 at meetings involving Mr. Schumer, other elected officials, the FAA and the Eastern Region Helicopter Council representing commercial chopper operators. As David Nuss, chairman of the council, wrote in a 2008 letter to Mr. Romaine: “The media and some elected officials have unfortunately perpetuated the misconception that all helicopters would be flying a mile out over the Sound at 2,500 feet. This is not and never was the case. The new North Shore Route was only designed for larger, twin-engine helicopters. Safety and weather conditions may require the smaller, single-engine helicopters to fly closer to shore or over land.”

Many of the Hamptons helicopters are single-engine craft—and they make lots of noise, too. Will the North Shore Route, in the end, be applied to them? The Eastern Region Helicopter Council is already complaining about that. “To send single-engine helicopters over water a mile or a mile-and-a-half from shore is something we have advised against because of safety,” Robert Grotell, its special advisor, recently told Newsday.

If many people speak out, maybe the FAA will listen and set the sweeping restrictions on the operations of the Hamptons choppers that are necessary. But comments will need to be sent in to the FAA before next week’s deadline. 

At long last, the Federal Aviation Administration has agreed to take steps to do something about the racket made by helicopters taking people from Manhattan to the Hamptons and back again. But its plan is just a start.

U.S.  Senator Charles Schumer announced Friday that the FAA will set a minimum cruising altitude of 2,500 feet for the choppers and also “mandatory flight patterns.” These would bar them after leaving Manhattan from flying over North Shore communities and, instead, have them take an over-water route a mile out over the Long Island Sound. Then they’d be required to travel south over “least populated” areas to get to Francis Gabreski Airport in Westhampton, the Southampton Village helipad and East Hampton Airport. Returning to Manhattan, they’d do the reverse.

The plan is “a step in the right direction—but only the beginning,” says Suffolk Legislator Edward Romaine. Mr. Romaine, Senator Schumer, Congressman Tim Bishop, and others, including Shelter Island Supervisor Jim Dougherty, the Noyac Civic Council and a group organized by Shelter Islanders have been in the lead battling the chopper noise.

Mr. Romaine, despite stiff opposition from helicopter operators and the FAA, got a county law enacted last year classifying low-flying chopper operation here as a “careless and reckless” and thus illegal. Mr. Schumer considers Mr. Romaine’s work pivotal.

He and Congressman Bishop then challenged the FAA’s contention that it was not empowered to regulate helicopter flight beyond the airspace of FAA-approved control towers. They called on FAA Administrator Randy Babbitt to impose “regulations that will set a minimum flying altitude and a mandatory flight path for helicopters over Long Island…and that you do so in time for the 2010 summer season.”

The new FAA regulations are to take effect July 1.

Far more needs to be done. Mr. Romaine wants a truly over-water route taking the helicopters over the Atlantic from and back to Manhattan. A short hop over Georgica would be made in getting in and out of the East Hampton Airport, the field with the most chopper traffic. This was also the demand of the group put together by Shelter Islanders Ken Winston and Mike Loriz.

Mr. Romaine says the FAA has rejected this, maintaining the air space south of Kennedy is too busy. Mr. Loriz, a commercial airline pilot who flies regularly in and out of Kennedy  has—including at a meeting last July involving FAA officials—emphasized that that this is a feasible route. The “real reason” helicopter operators don’t want it, he says, are several extra minutes of flying time.

Mr. Romaine is vexed that there would still be under the FAA plan continued frequent chopper traffic over a number of communities, including North Sea, Noyac, Sag Harbor and North Haven, although the 2,500-foot minimum altitude will help..

State Assemblyman Marc Alessi is calling for “multiple” points of entry and exit for the helicopters and a requirement that these points “only be accessed during certain times of the day.”

The FAA has arranged a 30-day period for public comments on its plan.

The FAA has, at least, finally acknowledged it can regulate the Hamptons  helicopter traffic. Yet another issue: will it enforce its proposed regulations? A central problem: the FAA has a mission in conflict of interest—to boost air travel and at the same time regulate it. That’s similar to other federal agencies like the Mineral Management Service of the Interior Department, a cheerleader and regulator of offshore oil drilling—the unfolding Gulf of Mexico catastrophe tragically demonstrates its conflict—and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission.

For all these agencies, making rules means little because they don’t want to enforce them and interfere with the industries they are so busy promoting. How much of a difference will the new FAA rules make? 

 “Stewart Udall was critical,” says Murray Barbash, who was chairman of the organization that spearheaded  the effort, the Citizens Committee for a Fire Island National Seashore.

Later, the strategy in the Fire Island fight was utilized—in reverse—in the also successful battle to stop the Long Island Lighting Company’s plans to build Shoreham and other nuclear plants on Long Island, a struggle in which Mr. Barbash was also a leader.

The year was 1962 and New York State public works czar Robert Moses announced that a four-lane highway would be built on roadless Fire Island. It would “anchor” Fire Island, he claimed. This was my first major story as a reporter on Long Island. Quickly, John Maher, my editor at the Babylon Town Leader, and I found that Mr. Moses’ Jones Beach State Parkway Authority used bulldozers with regularity to dump sand along the Jones Beach highway to keep it in place.

The highway Mr. Moses would build on Fire Island—wider at some points than Fire Island—wouldn’t “anchor” it, and, moreover, would destroy a string of unique communities and devastate an extraordinary natural environment including the Sunken Forest. It is one of the few remaining maritime forests on the Atlantic coast, a magical place featuring bushes and trees, some more than 200 years old, shaped by the salt spray.

But how to stop Mr. Moses, enormously powerful in New York State?

The strategy was to try to involve the federal government. Mr. Barbash’s brother-in-law, attorney Irving Like, had read an “an Interior Department publication that described Fire Island as having the characteristics of a national seashore,” Mr. Barbash was recounting the other day.

But there was no national seashore so close to a major population center. A delegation from Mr. Barbash’s committee went to Washington to meet with Mr. Udall. Mr. Barbash  remembers it vividly: of Mr. Udall “sitting in a rocking chair JFK had given him.” The proposal for a Fire Island National Seashore was advanced to Mr. Udall “and he said, yes.” He liked the idea—and fought for it.  “He was steadfast and never wavered,” recalls Mr. Barbash.

Fire Island National Seashore became a reality in 1964.

A decade later, LILCO was building its Shoreham nuclear plant and planning two more on that site, four more at Jamesport and yet four more in between. Long Island was to be turned into, in the parlance of federal nuclear policy, a “nuclear park.”

How to stop that considering that U.S. nuclear officials never denied a license (they still haven’t) to build a nuclear plant?  The Fire Island strategy was turned around. Mr. Barbash became chairman of Citizens to Replace LILCO—to use state power to stop the federal juggernaut. The state could form a Long Island Power Authority and say no to the nuclear scheme.

That happened, with Mr. Like, who was counsel to the Citizens Committee for a Fire Island National Seashore, counsel to the new group, and an original LIPA trustee.

I spoke to Mr. Udall in 1999 when he received the Nuclear-Free Future Award at a ceremony in Los Alamos, New Mexico. The award is given annually to people from around the world leading the challenge to nuclear technology. I’ve been among the judges. Mr. Udall, back in the 1960s, was pro-nuclear, but he learned about the lethal dangers of the technology and became a crusader against it and, as a lawyer, represented uranium miners, atomic plant workers, downwinders and other nuclear victims. He would describe the nuclear industry as “an industry willing to kill our own people.”

We talked about the Fire Island fight and he spoke about a meeting he had with Mr. Moses at which he encountered his “arrogance.”

Stewart Udall died at 90, of “natural causes,” as the obituaries put it—after a life of working to protect the natural world including here on Long Island.

Drill, Baby, Spill. Oil spillage is intertwined with offshore oil drilling—as the environmental disaster now unfolding in the Gulf of Mexico tragically demonstrates.

Only strong political action prevented offshore oil rigs—and the inevitable spillage—from affecting us. That kind of action will have to come again if Congress approves the Obama administration’s plan to open the Mid-Atlantic to oil and gas drilling—despite what the world is now witnessing. The mess in the Gulf stands to be the worst spill ever from an offshore rig but, in fact, spills in offshore drilling are chronic.

I’ve mentioned in this space how, exactly 40 years ago, as a reporter for the Long Island Press, I broke the story about the oil industry seeking to drill in the Atlantic. I got a tip from a Montauk fisherman who said he had seen in the ocean east of Montauk the same kind of vessel he observed searching for oil when he was a shrimper in the Gulf of Mexico. I phoned oil companies to be told by their PR people they were not involved in searching for oil in the Atlantic. But, at day’s end, as I was leaving the  office, there was a call from a PR guy from Gulf saying, yes, Gulf was involved in exploring for oil in the Atlantic—as part of a “consortium” of 32 oil companies, including the companies that all day issued denials.

I was on the story for years, visiting the first drilling rig set up in the Atlantic, off Nova Scotia, circled by a rescue boat 24-hours-a-day, and on which a Shell Canada official admitted that the booms the oil industry likes to say will contain spills “just don’t work in over five-foot seas.” That’s a big problem now in a wind-tossed Gulf.

I traveled: to Massachusetts where the Department of Interior was planning to lease 882,443 acres for drilling on the George’s Bank, one of the world’s foremost fishing grounds.

I went to the Florida Keys in whose turquoise waters Interior—then and now cheerleaders for the oil industry—would let oil companies drill.

I spent much time in New Jersey—Interior held many of its meetings involving

Mid-Atlantic leasing in Trenton. In 1976, it leased 529,446 Mid-Atlantic acres—east of New Jersey, south of Long Island—to the oil industry for $1.1 billion. There was litigation and, in 1978, in connection with that Mid-Atlantic leasing, Interior issued an environmental impact statement acknowledging: “Recovery of the affected area from a large spill will be slow, probably requiring a minimum of ten years.” For the anticipated 20-to-25 year lives of this field, it forecast four large spills of more than 1,000 barrels, 58 spills of 50 to 1,000 barrels and 3,340 spills of up to 50 barrels.

When there’s drilling, there’s spilling. Indeed, as the late Red Adair, who specialized in trying to cap oil well blow-outs, said: “You can take all the precautions in the world” and spills “still happen.”

I’ve been busy in recent days because of my experience with offshore drilling and its dangers. Pieces I wrote were featured on the Huffington Post and CounterPunch. Calls included one from Sydney, Australia for an interview on Australian Broadcasting Corporation radio. Last year there was a blow-out—similar to what happened in the Gulf—on a rig in the Timor Sea off northwest Australia. The oil slick extended for more than 100 miles; it took 10 weeks for the blow-out to be brought until control; marine life was impacted and shores blackened. Wherever there’s drilling, there’s spilling.

President Obama Friday rejected calls from environmentalists to cancel planned lease sales by Interior for drilling in the Mid-Atlantic, eastern Gulf of Mexico and off northern Alaska, but said he wanted to see new “safeguards.” The notion of new “safeguards” in a process that always results in spilled oil is a fairy tale.

The prohibition of drilling in the Mid-Atlantic—that officials from Suffolk including then County Executive John V. N. Klein, State Assembly Speaker Perry Duryea, Jr. of Montauk and our Congressional delegation were leaders in fighting for—must remain.

Besides the environmental damage it causes, the drilling itself has a huge financial price: ten times the cost of drilling for petroleum on land. It is far wiser to spend that kind of money on widely implementing the use of solar and wind power and other clean, safe, renewable energy technologies now available.

More trials of members of the gang of seven young men who engaged in what they called “beaner-hopping”—searching out and assaulting Latinos in Suffolk—are scheduled. Meanwhile, now 19-year-old Mr. Conroy, who, as noted at his jury trial, telegraphed his views by sporting tattoos of a swastika and a lightning bolt which he said represented “white power,” will be sentenced next month.

But the underlying issues remain with us.

Indeed, last week Suffolk Dist. Atty. Thomas Spota announced the indictment of four Suffolk men and two women for robbery as a hate crime and conspiracy for “targeting Hispanic men as victims in strong-arm street robberies” which continued from last year to last month. The victims were picked, said Mr. Spota, because those indicted “believed, mistakenly as it turned out, that these men would not report the robberies to the Suffolk County Police.”

After the 2008 murder of Mr. Lucero, the Southern Poverty Law Center investigated the situation involving bias against Latinos in Suffolk and declared in a report issued last year that “nativist and hate violence has been festering for years in Suffolk County.”  Moreover, “fueling the fire are many of the very people who are charged with protecting the residents of Suffolk County… There is abundant evidence that Suffolk County officials have contributed substantially to an atmosphere of racial violence.” It called on Suffolk officials to “halt their angry demagoguery on the issue of immigration.”

The report spoke of one legislator at a meeting of the Suffolk Legislature (at which I was present) announcing that if Latino day laborers came to “his town, ‘we’ll be out with baseball bats.’ Another said if Latino workers were to gather in his district, “’I would load my gun and start shooting period’”

The center, a leading institution fighting racism throughout the U.S., acknowledged that “Suffolk County is not unique…Many communities across the United States are undergoing similar racial conflicts and rapid demographic changes.”  The signing last week in Arizona of a legally-dubious law aimed at illegal immigration underlines this.

In Suffolk, not too incidentally, it’s been a sociology textbook case when it comes to the officials who have been most outspoken about Latino immigrants. They have virtually all been first and second-generation Americans. Members of the last immigrant group that arrived are often in the forefront in attacking the newest group, sociological research has long found.

In Suffolk in 1963, a Suffolk County Human Rights Commission was created to work toward “the elimination of bias and discrimination” in the county. In the 60s it had a staff of 37 actively taking on bias—going out and testing for discrimination in housing (Long Island, the group Erase Racism has found, is the third “most segregated” suburb in the U.S.), employment and so forth. The staff was cut and cut and efforts made by county legislators to abolish the commission. It now has a staff of seven. Yes, seven. Meanwhile, the overall population and percentage of minority people—especially Latinos—has skyrocketed in Suffolk. The most current U.S. Census Bureau data on the Internet for this county of 1.5 million reports that as of last year 13.7 percent of the population is “of Latino origin.” In the 1960s, Latinos constituted a fraction of that.  The African-American percentage of the population of Suffolk is listed as 7.8%.

This week there will be consideration of a bill authored by Legislator DuWayne Gregory to expand the county’s law against bias by adding more prohibited acts. This is needed, says the measure, because since the present law was passed in 2000 “Suffolk County has seen an increase in the number of bias-related acts against individuals.”

Mr. Gregory, Suffolk’s only elected black county official, last year authored the bill that created a county Hate Crimes Task Force. It has a lot of work ahead of it.

In one of its articles after the Conroy verdict came in, Newsday quoted a student at Patchogue-Medford High School—where the Conroy gang members were students—as saying: “In our school right now, every day you hear jokes about Jewish people and black people.”
The Suffolk subculture of bias must be fully challenged.

The planned closing of most of SUNY’s Stony Brook Southampton campus represents more than an outrageous decision by the administration of Stony Brook University. It further shortchanges Long Island of seats at four-year SUNY schools.

Compared to upstate New York, Long Island for decades has been under-served in having such seats. The Southampton shuttering would worsen this inequity that has long resulted in the “out-migration” of Long Islanders to SUNY four-year schools at Oswego, Oneonta, Potsdam, Albany, Geneseo and elsewhere upstate .

The inequity is rooted in some unusual, indeed rather outrageous, history.

It was only in 1948 that New York got a state university. It was the last of the then 48 states to get one. Why?

The great state universities of the United States were largely born out of the Morrill Land Grant Act of 1862. Under it, the U.S. government provided thousands of acres of federal land to be used for campuses, or to be sold to fund these new universities.

But in New York, this “land grant” university status was grabbed by a private school: Cornell University. Ezra Cornell, who made his fortune on Western Union Telegraph Company stock, launched Cornell with Andrew White in 1865. Both were also state senators. White, in the Senate, introduced the measure to direct Morrill Act proceeds to Cornell. There was much complaining in New York educational circles, but Cornell and White got away with the move. Insider deals in the New York State Legislature have obviously been going on for a long time.

Cornell under contract with the state has offered some public education. It has operated the State College of Veterinary Medicine, a Home Economics School and a School of Industrial and Labor Relations on its campus. When Cooperative Extension was instituted, to assist farmers, although elsewhere in the nation the programs were run by state universities, Cornell ran New York’s — that’s why it’s been Cornell Cooperative Extension.

Only after a Temporary Commission on the Need for a State University, set up in 1946, called for a state university was one finally created in New York.

But the State University of New York, SUNY, was to a large degree built on the skeleton of “normal” colleges — institutions set up in the 19th Century by the state to train teachers — at places like Oswego, Oneonta, Potsdam, Albany, Geneseo, etc. There was no “normal” college on Long Island. Indeed, the only state college here had been what began in 1912 as the New York School of Agriculture, a two-year institution in Farmingdale.

Moreover, although formally organized in 1948, SUNY only got intense state energy behind it in the 1960s when Nelson Rockefeller became governor. With his characteristic drive, Rockefeller pushed for an expanded SUNY. Under Rockefeller, on Long Island SUNY Stony Brook was begun as a university center and SUNY College at Old Westbury was founded. Only in 1985 did the “Aggie” school in Farmingdale become the third four-year SUNY school here. It’s now called Farmingdale State College with a focus on technology.

But that’s it: just three four-year SUNY schools for Nassau and Suffolk counties which have a combined population of 2.9 million people. The population upstate is 8.3 million. That’s a bit less than three times Long Island’s population. New York City does not fit into the SUNY equation because it has long had its own fine public colleges, since 1991 components of the City University of New York, CUNY.

The most recent figure on the SUNY website for “headcount enrollment” at the three Long Island schools is 33,359. The total “headcount enrollment” at SUNY’s three university centers upstate, its 18 four-year colleges there, and “statutory” schools (like the College of Veterinary Medicine at Cornell) is 162,337. That’s five times the number on Long Island — thus the major inequity.

Stony Brook Southampton with a planned enrollment of 2,000 would help offset  the inequity a little. Its all-but closing would increase the educational shortchanging of Long Island.

These days, with the cost of private colleges astronomical, attending a SUNY college is a necessity for many in New York. But if they’re from Long Island, many will have to go upstate. SUNY has become the largest public higher education system in the nation — but geographically it is not fairly balanced.