Posted by Following the second deadly brown tide in two years, New York conservation officials are planning to list Long Island’s Great South Bay among the state’s “impaired waters,” a move that requires devising a strategy to cut pollution.
The Department of Environmental Conservation put 787 troubled waterways on the list in 2008. The bay between Long Island and Fire Island is the site of a Nature Conservancy project to restore its clam beds, which once produced nearly half the clams eaten in the U.S.
Gov. David Paterson and Sen. Charles Schumer had previously asked the U.S. Commerce Department to designate a commercial fisheries disaster that would make the bay eligible for federal aid. They made the request – which is still pending – in 2008, though its commercial harvest was depleted years earlier.
Source: AP
