Are legitimate environmental issues too unimportant for Rye government to address?

Are legitimate environmental issues too unimportant for Rye government to address? They shouldn’t be. That’s what more and more people concerned about protecting the health and the environment for future generations want their cities and towns to do. So the question remains: why do health and environmental codes get short shrift?

Similar questions hover with respect to Rye’s Hen Island. This 25-acre, privately-owned island in Milton Harbor has been the subject of scrutiny by concerned locals, government officials and environmental groups such as Long Island Soundkeeper and Save The Sound. Few, if any, safety, sanitary or building codes are enforced on Hen Island. The question is why?

Why, for instance, was Ron Gatto, the eminent lead investigator of the Westchester County Environmental Enforcement Unit, removed from the Hen Island case after he reported environmental, safety and health issues serious enough to close the island? Or should we ask “who” removed him?

Why did Gatto’s successor to the Hen Island case, Westchester County Deputy Health Commissioner Len Meyerson, find no such health issues even though some open, untreated sewage pits exist less than 10 feet from the shoreline? According to Meyerson, two inspections determined no sewage was leaking into Long Island Sound. When queried by a local reporter he glossed over the issue thusly: “...Mother Earth is the best way of making sure that the pollutants are removed from human waste, from sanitary waste water.” In other words, once sewage effluents are diluted by the Sound, there’s no problem.

Due to the prevalence of cisterns that collect standing water, residents of Rye’s Hen Island consider it ground zero for mosquitoes in Westchester. They have identified it as particularly problematic when it comes to the risk of breeding virus-bearing mosquitoes.

The 26-acre island, which lies off the coast of Milton Harbor in the City of Rye and is only accessible by boat, is made up of 34 privately owned seasonal cottages on the Long Island Sound, is without a central sewage system or electricity, and with no running water, people get their water from cisterns that collect rain from rooftops.

Why does Caren Halbfinger, director of public health for Westchester County advise Westchester residents to remove all standing water yet she advises Hen Island residents to cover their mosquito breeding cisterns?