By Karl Grossman

The Democratic primary in New York City—to be held September 10—is less than a month away and the outrageously arrogant pair of Anthony Weiner and Eliot Spitzer continue  to punch away. Weiner continuing his over-the-top behavior while Spitzer has been inundating the New York Metropolitan Area with television commercials.

Even in New York City, a town used to aggressive people, Weiner’s performance in recent times has been something else as he has tried desperately to deflect disclosures about his sending women naked photos of himself--particularly of his penis--and raunchy online messages using the name “Carlos Danger.” And this for more than a year after he resigned from Congress with a vow to deal with his serial sexting habit.

“I said that other texts and photos were likely to come out and today they have,” declared Weiner at an initial press conference somehow believing this would quell the new uproar over his behavior.

After a stay out of politics following his quitting Congress in 2011 because of disclosures then of his sexting, Weiner came back in full force this May announcing he was running for New York mayor. As he campaigned determinedly, he rose in the polls and became the front-runner--until the new sexting disclosures.

Meanwhile, Spitzer, who resigned suddenly as New York State’s governor in 2008 for what he termed “personal failings” after disclosures of his being a regular client of a high-priced prostitution ring, announced last month he was running for the Number 3 job in New York City government, comptroller.

Spending lavishly from his family’s fortune made in New York City real estate, Spitzer has gone to what has been his main campaign device through the decades—the slick and constantly repeated political TV commercial. And he has risen in the polls to being ahead of Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer. 

The kick-off TV commercial in the Spitzer media blitz had him declaring, “Look, I failed. Big time.” But, the spot went on, having been “sheriff of Wall Street” when he was New attorney general between 1999 and 2006 should entitle him with “a fair shot” to return to governmental office. Saturating New York airwaves currently is the Spitzer commercial that says “the people of this city are about to welcome back an old friend.” The headline about this in the New York Daily News: “Eliot Spitzer TV Ad Spins Disgraced Politician as an ‘Old Friend’ to New Yorkers.”

Weiner and Spitzer have become gags in New York City politics--indeed, punch lines on the national level.

Andy Borowitz’s humor blog on The New Yorker website about the initial press conference last month was titled “Weiner Continues Sexting During Apology.” It claimed--in jest, of course--that “Weiner stirred controversy today by continuing to send dirty texts throughout a press conference devoted to apologizing for his behavior. Mr. Weiner was halfway through his apology when reporters noticed him remove a phone from his pocket and aim its camera lens unmistakably in the direction of his pants. After seeing the candidate snap a photo of the pants region and then send a text, reporters bombarded Mr. Weiner with questions, asking him if he had in fact just sexted. ‘Yes, I did, but I swear this was the last time,’ he said. ‘This behavior is now behind me.’ Mr. Weiner then concluded his press conference by removing his shirt and snapping a quick shot of his naked torso.”

Serious issues about stability are, of course, being raised. Representative Jerry Nadler of Manhattan, a colleague of Weiner in Congress, said: “I think he should pull out of the race. I think he needs serious psychiatric help.” 

Dan Janison in his Newsday column commented: “Politics is just one business, of course, where ruthlessness can be a character reference and hypocrisies are inevitable. But a prospective public servant’s ability to act sensibly also is worth considering.”

Gail Collins in her New York Times column wrote: “Nobody knows what drove Spitzer to jump in. Did Weiner’s entry trigger a case of disgraced-politician competiveness?” 

And Frank Bruni in his New York Times column opined that Weiner was “angling for a gigantic promotion. In the narrative he’s constructed, his mortification has made him a new man, so we’re supposed to give him an extra measure of our trust and hand him the reigns of the most important and most complicated city in the country. I know we like our mayors brash, but we needn’t accept delusional in the bargain.” 

As for Spitzer, Bruni skewered his record as governor charging—accurately--that he “was shaping up to be a self-righteous, self-defeating disaster of a governor.” 

As governor for little over a year, starting in 2007, Spitzer proclaimed himself a “steamroller”--and in his dysfunction exhibited the sensitivity of such a machine. 

On Long Island, where I live and have done investigative reporting for many years, a major issue when Spitzer was governor was what was seen as his support of a scheme to place in the Long Island Sound a floating facility the size of an ocean liner holding up to eight billion cubic feet of highly explosive liquefied gas. The governor of Connecticut, other officials and people there--and people and most officials on Long Island--strongly opposed this “Broadwater Energy” project of Shell Oil and Trans Canada Pipelines.

Under the federal regulatory process, the government of New York State, because the mammoth gas barge would be closest to it, could veto the scheme. As the state’s attorney general, Spitzer might have insisted Wall Street play straight, but as governor when it came to Broadwater he, according to my sources, was aggressively trying to undermine the negative positions of state agencies and give the state’s OK to Broadwater. The scandal which forced him out of office deprived Spitzer of that opportunity. His successor, David Paterson, who had been lieutenant governor, as a first action announced the state’s firm no to Broadwater, ending the scheme.

Adrienne Esposito, executive director of Citizens Campaign for the Environment, commented about this demonstrating that “a unified public can take on big business and big money and win. It’s exhilarating to know that democracy is alive and well in America.”  If Spitzer had remained governor, the outcome would have likely been different. 

As for Weiner’s record in office, a spotlight in recent weeks has been on how in his 12 years in the House of Representatives he got only one bill passed. 

The Weiner and Spitzer cases have somewhat combined, and Dr. Kenneth Sherrill, professor emeritus of political science at Hunter College, states that “the two of them, in two different races, may have the effect of pulling each other down” by giving Republicans a chance to present Democrats as morally challenged. 

Weiner’s travails and the outspoken support for him by his wife, Huma Abedin, long a top aide to Hillary Clinton, are also spilling over on Clinton running for president in 2016.

Further, Weiner in one campaign stop defended public officials doing sexting. It began with Peg Brunda, amid a throng of reporters and with cameras rolling on Staten Island, confronting Weiner and telling him that as a teacher and assistant principal in the New York City school system for 30 years, “if I conducted myself in the manner you conducted yours, my job would’ve been gone.” Weiner responded: “In the privacy of your home?” She replied: “In the privacy of my home.” And she declared: “I don’t quite understand how you would feel you would have the moral authority as the head administrator in the city to oversee employees when your standard of conduct is so much lower than the standard of conduct that’s expected of me.” Later, at a press conference, asked whether as mayor he would hire a schools chancellor or a police commissioner with his sort of sexting problem, Weiner said: “People have their personal lives. It is unconnected to their professional duties, of course. I’m not going to judge someone’s personal life.” 

Also, Weiner extended his crude conduct to age at an AARP-Univision mayoral forum August 6 when, after Doe Fund founder George McDonald, 69, seeking the Republican nomination for mayor, said “I would appreciate if you would never touch me,” Weiner, 48, responded with: "What are you going to do about it, grandpa?" 

There has been a history in the United States in recent years of scandal-scarred politicians being forgiven by the voters. President Bill Clinton managed to survive his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky, beat impeachment and has now become an elder statesman of the Democratic Party. South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford abruptly resigned in 2009 after he disappeared for a week and it was disclosed that he was in Argentina pursing an affair with a woman therebut he was elected to a seat in Congress earlier this year.  In an article last month on this, The New York Times related that “all across the country” politicians “tainted by scandal, some of them seemingly mudded beyond saving,” have gone on to survive politically.

Still, can Weiner and Spitzer make it when their behavior, perhaps forgivable to some, is so combined with a lack of stability and an absence of sensibility--and crazy arrogance?

Amidst the Weiner mess, his campaign manager resigned, and Andy Borowitz, on The New Yorker website, followed this with: “One day after his campaign manager quit, the mayoral candidate Anthony D. Weiner named his penis to the post, telling reporters, ‘He was already making most of the major decisions, anyway.’ In announcing the new appointment, Mr. Weiner lavished praise upon his penis, calling him ‘a tough hombre’ who ‘cares about the struggles of ordinary, middle-class New Yorkers.’ After one reporter questioned the wisdom of naming his penis to such an important role in the campaign, Mr. Weiner dismissed that concern, saying, ‘Look, he’s gotten me this far.’ While Mr. Weiner’s decision to give the top job to his controversial appendage raised eyebrows among political observers, insiders said the move merely reflected his headline-grabbing member’s already prominent role in the campaign.” 

By Karl Grossman

The fight over fracking has come to Long Island. Although there are no shale deposits here to exploit for gas by hydraulic fracturing —known as fracking—the ocean off Long Island could be the site of a terminal that opponents charged at a recent public hearing is aimed at sending gas fracked in the U.S. to foreign nations.

Meanwhile, the powerful documentary Gasland II—which concludes with documents showing the U.S. gas industry seeks to export much of the gas fracked in the U.S.—was screened at the Hamptons International Film Festival. It received a standing ovation from the packed audience at Guild Hall in East Hampton. Afterwards, there was a panel discussion organized and led by actor Alec Baldwin. It included Josh Fox, director, narrator and writer of Gasland II and the earlier documentary, Gasland, which in 2011 was awarded an Emmy and nominated for an Academy Award. I was also on the panel.

The Suffolk County Legislature has now passed two bills on fracking: one to block water utilized in the process from being sent to any sewage plant in Suffolk for disposal, and a second barring “the use of hydraulic fracturing brine” on county property or roadways.

Fracking uses massive amounts of water sent under high pressure, along with 700 chemicals, into shale deposits to fracture them and release the gas held in them. Some of the chemicals are “known carcinogens,” notes the first bill. It warns of fracking wastewater being discharged from sewage plants to then “feed into Long Island’s sole source aquifer.”

As to “fracturing brine,” this is also a fracking “waste product,” notes the second bill,  and “some businesses that perform hydraulic fracking would like to dispose of such brine by providing it to local governments as a road de-icing agent for use in the winter.”

The hearing July 9 on the proposed offshore gas terminal was held in Long Beach. A $300 million project of Liberty Natural Gas, it would be set up 19 miles south of Jones Beach. Although the company claims its purpose is to import gas, speakers challenged this at the crowded hearing run by the U.S. Maritime Administration and Coast Guard.

Catskills Citizens for Safe Energy issued a statement declaring that the U.S. gas industry through fracking “is now producing so much gas” that it “plans to export half of it…overseas.” Although the terminal’s “sponsors claim that their facility will be used to import gas,” an amendment was made last year to federal regulations that allows for “export as well as import.” The planned terminal “off Long Island would be perfectly situated to export fracked gas…to Europe and Asia. If that happens, then fracking in Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia will be ramped up, and the pressure to frack New York might prove to be irresistible.” There has been a New York State moratorium that has expired on fracking. Governor Cuomo is considering whether to now permit it.  

Gasland II puts the fracking situation in sharp and comprehensive focus. Josh Fox began investigating fracking after his family got a $100,000 offer to frack on land on which his father built a house in the woods of Pennsylvania. What he uncovered and presented in his first documentary, Gasland, was literally explosive. People all over the U.S. whose property is used for fracking have their well water loaded with gas. What comes out of their water faucets is shown repeatedly in Gasland bursting into flames when lit with a match.

Gasland revealed the identity of the toxic chemicals used in fracking. And it chronicled the serious health impacts to people along with the environmental devastation from fracking.  

I commented on the panel July 5 at Guild Hall that when I heard that Fox was doing Gasland II, I could not see how he could follow his astounding earlier documentary—but that he broadened it “with perfection” and it is as important and powerful as the first film.

In Gasland II, now being aired on HBO, Fox not only widens his examination of the health and environmental disasters caused by fracking but exposes how governments—led by the Obama administration—have eagerly allowed fracking to happen and expand. Gasland II spotlights fracking as a major contributor to climate change. It reveals the gas industry’s hold on governments. As U.S. Representative Brad Miller of North Carolina says in Gasland II about industry influence over Congress: “Try ownership, really.” It tells how the gas industry’s lead PR firm pushing fracking was a pioneer in claiming cigarettes are safe. It provides expert analysis about fracking being unnecessary—how safe, clean, renewable energy can provide all the power we need. It presents data linking fracking to earthquakes. Gasland II shows again and again peoples’ drinking water on fire. It cites fracking as also releasing radioactive poisons held in the shale. A rape of the planet and an attack on peoples’ health is underway. Gasland and Gasland II—must-see documentaries. 

By Karl Grossman

“We’re at the tipping point,” says Peconic Baykeeper Kevin McAllister. Indeed, considering what has happened to many of the bays of Long Island this spring and summer, we’ve tipped downward. It is imperative for public health, the environment and economy here that this be reversed. The problem in a word: nitrogen. The leading cause of changes to our bays—their turning red and brown from various forms of algae—is human waste containing nitrates moving from septic tanks and cesspools.

It began ominously in May with the waters of western Shinnecock and Quantuck Bays turning red. They had been hit with red algae—a particularly nasty strain called Alexandrium that produces a neurotoxin which can cause numbness and temporary paralysis in humans, and in rare cases can be fatal. 

The red algae influx caused the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation to close this stretch of south shore bays on Long Island’s East End to shellfish harvesting and warn residents not to consume shellfish from them.  It’s “a human health hazard,” explained Dr. Christopher Gobler, associate professor at Stony Brook University’s School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences.

Earlier, waterways to the west were hit with the same red algae. Northport Bay has had to be closed to the taking of shellfish for four of the last five years as a result. 

Alexandrium is a cold water species and when water temperature reaches 70 degrees it dissipates. And it did—but to be replaced in Shinnecock and Quantuck and adjacent bays with brown tide. Once sparkling, clear blue water first became red, then coffee brown.

In July, brown tide struck Great South Bay, the massive body of water between Fire Island and the south shore of the mainland of central Long Island. A few decades ago, the Great South Bay was pristine and extremely fruitful—some 60 percent of hard claims consumed in the United States came from the Great South Bay. My family spent many a glorious day out in our boat clamming in the then clear waters of Great South Bay. 

Brown tide isn’t harmful to humans but it devastates shellfish and also marine vegetation by blocking sunlight. In 1985, it all but wiped out another nationally-famed Long Island shellfish, the Peconic Bay scallop. It also decimated the eel grass where scallops live and grow. Slowly, very slowly, with massive seeding of bays with scallop spawn, the Peconic Bay scallop has begun to make something of a comeback.  This year there was a fairly good crop.

But it has been touch-and-go. Since 1985 brown tide returned several times to portions of the Peconic Bay system and arrived at other Suffolk bays—including, in earlier influxes, the Great South Bay.  

Baykeeper McAllister speaks about septic tanks and cesspools discharging nitrates into the groundwater of Long Island—into the sole source aquifer on which all of Long Island is dependent for its drinking water. Then the nitrate-loaded groundwater moves to bays and other waterways. “The travel time is slow, a couple of feet a day. But eventually it will get there.”

McAllister is calling for the shift to “state-of-the-art denitrification systems,” advanced waste systems now available and being utilized all over the U.S. These systems, he says, should be mandated for all new construction and, when a house is sold, a “retrofit” should be required of the existing septic tank and cesspool system to a denitrification system. The Peconic Baykeeper’s analysis of the situation and plan for action is summarized in a report, “Nutrient Pollution: A Plague to Our Waters.” It’s available here.

The call of the Peconic Baykeeper must be heeded at the state, county, town and village levels.

Dr. Gobler and his colleagues have also concluded that nitrogen is the key cause of what is occurring. This past April, at a symposium on the campus of Stony Brook Southampton, they presented their extensive research. “We now know the problem and the solutions,” announced Dr. Gobler.  The solutions included reducing new housing density and use of the new denitrification systems. “They’re just as effective as sewage treatment,” he emphasized.

In a recent academic paper, Dr. Gobler noted that from 1987 to 2005, levels of nitrogen in Suffolk County groundwater jumped from 40% to 200%. “These are large changes for such a brief period of time,” he wrote. And the reason: the “human population explosion” on Long Island  and how peoples’ waste is disposed of.

In the wake of this summer’s influx of brown tide in the Great South Bay, Dr. Gobler said: “There are two important lessons this brown tide teaches us about Great South Bay.  “Firstly, extraordinarily heavy summer rains that deliver of excessive nitrogen derived from sewage and septic tanks can have a series of serious negative impacts on the bay, including harmful brown tides. Second, the extra flushing provided by the new ocean inlet formed by Hurricane Sandy is sparing the eastern regions of Great South Bay and western Moriches Bay from the worst of this event. But clearly, this flushing is not enough to counteract the heavy loading of nitrogen from land.”

Dr. Gobler noted that since the new inlet was created on Fire Island, there has been higher salinity, lower nitrogen, stronger flushing, and less algae in eastern Great South Bay. You can learn more about the attributes of the new inlet by visiting SaveTheGreatSouthBay.org

What Long Island’s waters have been undergoing is a classic case of the admonition of the cartoon character Pogo: “We have met the enemy and he is us.”

We must move to make peace with nature for the sake of the bays and marine life and our lives. “And if we don’t wake up and restore these waters, we’re going to be hit in the pocket book,” warns Baykeeper McAllister. A Long Island of red and brown waters will be a far, far less attractive place for people to live.

Have the lessons of Superstorm Sandy been learned? 

I’d say no.

Indeed, governments from the federal level on down have largely reverted to the folly of decades ago when—with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in the lead—the notion was you could take on Mother Nature on the shoreline and win.

There’ve been some efforts at what is now being termed “strategic retreat” from the shore. But, otherwise, riding high is what’s become a post-Sandy slogan: “Stronger than the Storm.” It’s a variant of what former Suffolk County Executive John V. N. Klein decades ago called the Army Corps construction of stone jetties called groins along the Westhampton oceanfront—“hand-wrestling with God.”

Suddenly back is the Army Corps’ of Engineers scheme of 50-years ago—advanced when I came into journalism on Long Island—to dump massive amounts of sand along the shore from Fire Island Inlet to Montauk Point. In the original scheme, too, were those groins Klein opposed. 

Public works czar Robert Moses in 1962 combined the Army scheme with his plan for a four-lane highway on roadless Fire Island. Writing about all this was my first major story as a reporter. Creation of a Fire Island National Seashore stopped the Moses road. And, as more became known about the science of coastal geology, the Army Corps plan was challenged and stalled (although the Westhampton groins got through)—until now.

Like a bad penny, it’s returned—and far more than pennies are involved. The price tag now for the Army scheme to mainly involve dumping sand (most of which will wash away in succeeding storms) on 83 miles of south shore Long Island is $700 million in taxpayer dollars. Congress has approved the scheme’s comeback. Governor Andrew Cuomo supports it.

A pioneer in coastal geology is Dr. Orrin Pilkey of Duke University who after Sandy struck wrote an op-ed piece in The New York Times headed “The Need to Retreat From the Beach.” He stated: “As ocean waters warm, the Northeast is likely to face more Sandy-like storms. And as sea levels continue to rise, the surges of these future storms will be higher and even more deadly. We can’t stop these powerful storms. But we can reduce the deaths and damage they cause…Yet there is already a push to rebuild homes close to the beach and bring back the shorelines to where they were.”

Dr. Pilkey said “this ‘let’s come back stronger and better’ attitude…is the wrong approach to the increasing hazard of living close to the rising sea. Disaster will strike again. We should not simply replace all lost property and infrastructure. Instead, we need to take account of rising sea levels, intensifying storms and continuing shoreline erosion.”

Building on the shore has being going on with intensity. The Economist magazine recently ran an article “You’re Going to Get Wet.” It noted: “Even as seas have risen over the past century, Americans have rushed to build homes near the beach. Storms that lash the modern American coastline cause more economic damage than their predecessors because there is more to destroy.” 

There have been some sensible post-Sandy government efforts to buy out people whose beach houses were flattened by Sandy rather than having them rebuild and their beach house flattened again. But, overall, the response to Sandy has been to push for what R Street, a Washington, D.C. think tank, describes as “Beach House Bailouts.”  Of sand-dumping on the shore, Eli Lehrer, R Street president, says it “creates a false sense of security that tends to induce development in the very areas where it’s most likely to be destroyed by nature’s worst.”

More than massive sand-dumping is back in Sandy’s wake.

Efforts at “hard stabilization”—through revetments, groins and similar structures—long shown to protect one section of beach but at great cost to another, are now seen again by some as a tool. Post-Sandy attempts by beach house owners in Southampton Village to go this route has made national news with a Page 1 New York Times story headed: “Dispute in Hamptons Set Off By Effort to Hold Back Ocean.” Southampton Village officials have taken a fancy to this approach.

There’s no holding back the ocean. Learning to live with Mother Nature, not wasting limited public money in a losing fight against her on the shoreline, is key.