Looking for $18 Million in North Hempstead

North Hempstead decided that it didn’t like a plan to divert its sewage away from Long Island Sound and to treatment plants on the south shore of the island, and so it let a state deadline to get $18 million for the project pass. The diversion would have amounted to a nitrogen removal project, to meet the Sound cleanup’s 58.5 percent goal.

Now the town wants to use the $18 million to do actual nitrogen removal at its treatment plants and the state is saying sorry, you’re too late. Here.

In Connecticut, Norwich is paying a lot more for its sewage treatment upgrades (here). Norwich is one of a handful of Connecticut cities that still have combined sewers – that is sewers designed to carry sewage and rainwater, and to bypass treatment plants in wet weather – but it has separated 27 of its 42 sections of combined sewers (in other words, there are only – still? – 15 places where raw sewage pours into local rivers when it rains).