Bethpage park toxic cleanup, road repairs, 9/11 responders, Epstein, more

Oyster Bay must confront toxic past

Oyster Bay’s town managers of the 21st century are dealing with the failures of the town’s 20th century managers [“Toxic metals at Bethpage Park hidden: lawsuit,” News, Sept. 8]. Those earlier failures may have been the product of ignorance, denial, hopes for the local economy, or Grumman’s fog of war drifting across the domestic landscape.

There were, and are, toxic sites like Bethpage Community Park in Oyster Bay Town nationwide. The Environmental Protection Agency was created to deal with their collective, compounding legacies of pollution. The history lesson is that the locals are now being thrust back into pre-EPA times but can no longer plead ignorance or deny the reality of corporate disregard for public interests.

Today’s towns must consider what is being buried today. Current tests reveal the past’s hexavalent chromium, a known carcinogen, but today’s tests must also seek to prevent today’s “forever chemicals” from becoming a new legacy of pollution. This will be costly, but the public should willingly bear that cost because it is in the shared interest of themselves, their children, their neighbors, and their property values to do so.

— Brian Kelly, Rockville Centre

Road fixes crumble as funds misused

Finally, an explanation for the terrible condition of our roads [“High wealth, bad roads,” News, Sept. 7]. I have been writing a town council member and the highway department for years about our terrible roads. I have had two potholes cause flat tires in the past four years. Each required a new tire.

My neighborhood roads were last paved when the sewer system was connected in the early 1970s. Since then, every pothole has been filled and tamped down with a shovel. It’s patches all the way down the streets. Of course, these slapdash patches crumble each year, and I have to contact the town, so they repair them.

The roads are dangerous to bicycle riders and dog walkers. If the roads were patched properly, they should last for years. It’s more expensive to return every year to fix the roads than to pay once and have them fixed properly.

This misallocation of repair funds is responsible for the roads’ condition.

— Robert Cheeseman, Wantagh

9/11 responders suffer as panel stalls

The World Trade Center Responder Steering Committee had monthly meetings with federal health officials for the past 24 years — until President Donald Trump took office this year [“9/11 health panel hasn’t met under Trump,” News, Sept. 7].

Sadly, 9/11 survivors are still developing sicknesses as a result of exposure to toxins that were in the air.

Ironically, Trump apparently wishes to take charge of the National September 11 Memorial & Museum. In the past 24 years, none of the three other presidents proposed to take control.

Perhaps Trump will get wind of the odious negligence his Department of Health and Human Services has been exhibiting in this situation and will properly rectify the situation.

Then, after this mess for which he is responsible is then corrected, he can take all the credit for fixing it and note he is worthy of being in charge of the memorial site.

— Phyliss Grodofsky, Merrick

Release of Epstein files vital for justice

Unless Congress acts to force the release of the significant Jeffrey Epstein files, the women who are sexual abuse victims will experience another trauma as they try to fight the richest, most powerful people on Earth from dragging them through the courts for years [“Epstein survivors push for release of files,” News, Sept. 4].

Our legal system has failed these women when they were most vulnerable. The reports of abuse go back to the 1990s. Hopefully, there are still politicians who have a moral compass and do what is right. How can President Donald Trump call this a Democratic hoax when Ghislaine Maxwell and Epstein were convicted of crimes involving children?

Is Trump protecting anyone, and if so, why?

He denies truth and favors doubt and confusion. We are living in dangerous times.

— Anthony Brancato, East Meadow

Adopting 6- or 8-man football could help

East End schools could potentially solve their difficulties fielding football teams if they are allowed to adopt six- or eight-man football programs “Suffolk IV loses another team,” Sports, Sept. 6]. This is a common form of the sport among smaller, often more rural schools throughout the country.

This would allow many smaller schools to field their own teams without having to combine with each other and give the teams a reason to exist other than to pad statistics and win-loss percentages of the often much larger schools they are currently forced to play. Most important, it would give more kids a chance to play.

— Edward Vinski, Bridgehampton