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Politics & Government

Town Hall Notes: Calling Stony Brook's Study Flawed, Walter Defends Riverhead's Recycling Record

Rex Farr wants D.A. to investigate animal shelter; drag racing idea for EPCAL goes nowhere.

In response to a question at Wednesday night’s town board meeting, Supervisor Sean Walter lashed out against a study conducted by Stony Brook University that showed Riverhead as the town with the worst recycling record in Suffolk County.

The findings – by the school’s Waste Reduction and Management Institute and reported across several Patch sites on Tuesday – claims that Riverhead has a recycling rate of only 10 percent, compared with a 85 percent for Southampton and 55 percent for Southold.

“The basic premise of this study is flawed,” Walter said, explaining that the study failed to take into account what happens at the Medford transfer station of Maggio Carting Service, the company under contract to the town for residential curbside pick-up.

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“Maggio dumps everything it collects on the floor. It then puts the trash on a conveyor belt, and they pick out all of the plastic, the glass, the wood, the tires, the everything, and then they recycle it,” Walter explained.

“None of that is reflected in this report,” he said. “That aspect doesn’t fit nicely into their report, so they chose to ignore it.”

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David Tonjes, one of the authors of the study, admitted that the gap in data makes the report "incomplete."

He added that Riverhead is the only municipality surveyed that has privatized its waste pickup. Therefore, he said, "they don't keep as close tabs on what's happening internally."

"I'm somewhat sympathetic for them not tracking it that well," said Tonjes, an assistant professor of engineering and science at Stony Brook University. "So long as the curbside material is in acceptable shape and it's acceptable for the facility to receive. If there is no fee involved (for the residents) for how much they put out, there isn't much of a reason to keep tabs."

In Southampton, Walter said, the study only looked at the waste stream of residents who bring their waste to the town’s transfer station.

“We do a great job at recycling,” he said. “They used one formula and plugged every town into that formula. It’s like a publicity stunt. I mean it’s silly.”

Walter said that sometime in May he would hold a press conference at which a representative of Maggio will present the town with a check for a portion of the profits the company earns from recycling.

The accurate numbers will be made public at the event, he said, which would prove Riverhead’s performance “is probably on par with or better than any other town in the study.”

Farr calls for investigation

Rex Farr, president of the Greater Calverton Civic Association, said Wednesday night that he would ask the county’s district attorney, Tom Spota, to conduct an investigation unless Walter could “offer a timeline” for either firing or transferring Lou Coronesi, the town’s beleagured animal control officer who manages the town’s animal shelter on Young’s Ave.

“This has been going on long enough,” Farr said. “I’m embarrassed that I have to stand up and talk about an issue that is a no brainer.”

Walter, however, refused to say when he would take action, telling Farr, “I think what your asking is doable, but I can’t ramrod it through. I have to work within the constraints of personnel policies.”

Coronesi has been under attack by animal rights activists for years, but things came to a head in December when he ordered a dog be euthanized and then allegedly lied to Walter and Councilman Jim Wooten about the circumstances that prompting his decision.

Wooten, town board liaison to the town’s animal control advisory committee, has long recommended to Walter that Coronesi either be fired or transferred to the sewer district and that Sean McCabe, the former animal control officer who was transferred to the sewer district at the beginning of the year, be given Coronesi’s job.

On Thursday, Farr said that politics might be holding Walter back, noting that Wooten has already announced his intention to challenge Walter for the Republican nomination for supervisor.

Farr said he would hold a press conference in front of Town Hall on either Monday or Tuesday at which he would distribute copies of his letter Spota.

Another EPCAL proposal

In another in a long string of proposals for business ventures at the town-owned Enterprise Park at Calverton, the proprietor of a drag racing operation in Florida, appeared at Wednesday night’s town board meeting to press for a similar enterprise on EPCAL’s 7,000-foot runway.

In discussing his idea, Peter Scalzo, who runs Countyline Dragway in Pompano Beach, requested that the board authorize a sound test so he could prove that drag racing at EPCAL would not be a disturbance for nearby Calverton National Cemetery.

In response, Supervisor Walter said the best he could do would be to pass Scalzo’s proposal along to the consulting firm the town has hired to undertake a new re-use plan for the former Northrup-Grumman. He said that unless at least three other members of the board thought otherwise, there would be no sound test.

“We are changing our focus,” Walter said. “We’re doing a market study to see if the current zoning we have on the property makes sense, and I don’t want to derail the process.”

Walter said the entire process – which would include an environmental impact statement and subdividing EPCAL into smaller lots – would take at least 18 months to complete.

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