Suffolk County Executive Ed Romaine is lobbying New York State for the county to get its fair share of money and resources. With that push, he said, come plans to address some of the most pervasive issues on the South Fork: the suffocating traffic on County Road 39, gaps in public transportation services, water quality improvements, and long-term plans for individual towns to handle municipal solid waste.
“My biggest complaint,” Mr. Romaine said in a Zoom call with reporters on Friday, “is we need to get our fair share of funding” from the state. “We seem to be shortchanged. I just don’t see that money flowing . . . as it should for necessary projects.”
One of his top priorities is pushing the Suffolk County Water Protection Act bill, which will be on the November ballot as a voter referendum that Mr. Romaine said will boost Suffolk’s ability to pay for clean water projects countywide. A similar bill was rejected by the Suffolk Legislature in 2023 while Steve Bellone was still county executive, but was put forth again this year with success. The measure would increase sales tax by one-eighth of a cent to create a water quality restoration fund.
“This will give us the funding and ability to go and start really putting sewer infrastructure on steroids,” Mr. Romaine said, adding that 70 percent of Suffolk County houses are on cesspools.
This is “part of the problem with water quality for ground and surface water. We’re looking to change that,” he said, by increasing the installation of innovative/alternative septic systems.
He is also looking to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to give more money to Suffolk for trains and buses. Nassau County gets $108 million, he said, while Suffolk, which is more than three times the size of Nassau, only gets $40 million. Priorities include electrification of the trains east of Ronkonkoma, which run on what the county executive called “dirty diesel,” and track sidings on the Long Island Rail Road’s Montauk branch that would allow more trains to operate here.
“Where’s the electric? Where’s the service, particularly to the South Fork, where we can provide better transportation? Same thing with the buses,” Mr. Romaine said.
Related to that, he said, is the need to alleviate the daily traffic nightmare on County Road 39 and Montauk Highway. Train and bus service needs to be expanded, and schedules coordinated, so that people have more options, otherwise “we’ll be tacked to the automobile forever.” It may also come down to expanding the width of the road — likely a very expensive proposition — or installing traffic circles at backed-up intersections, Mr. Romaine said.
“We have to take a very careful look at things we can do” on County Road 39, he said.
With the Brookhaven Town landfill now set to close in 2027, Mr. Romaine, who was supervisor in Brookhaven prior to being elected county executive, has begun brainstorming a wider approach to the problem of where municipal solid waste will end up.
“It is one of the regional issues that we should be dealing with. I’ve already had two meetings — that is a start — with all 13 towns,” including Nassau townships. “We are in the middle of working, drafting a regional solid waste plan. We’ve given up on the [state] Department of Environmental Conservation, who should be doing this but are not. They are more interested in being regulators instead of innovators.”
In Suffolk, one component is the expansion of glass recycling to create aggregate products to be used in sustainable construction. “Doing and finding ways to create markets and use products that we now discard is something we believe is very important to the future of Long Island,” Mr. Romaine said.
He said he also feels that when waste is ultimately carted away from Long Island, it should be done by rail, not by truck. “It is cheaper, faster, and better, and would not tax our roads,” he said.
“I am going to exercise whatever leadership I can over solid waste,” Mr. Romaine later continued, “in conjunction with the towns, understanding it’s not the county’s responsibility . . . but we are going to come together and work as a unit to form a regional plan that will make sense.”
Mr. Romaine said his “only goal is to get more for Suffolk County.”
“Why are we being shortchanged?” Mr. Romaine asked. “I don’t care if I piss off the governor. . . . We’re not being treated fairly as far as funding is concerned. . . . I am going to be raising my voice loud and clear that we deserve this kind of funding.”
