Tiny Monsters, Human Devils & a Poison Park (Water Wars 2.0) by Jack Heart

First published October 4, 2014

The Sun Rising Over Robert Moses Bridge

By the mid-eighties the Great South Bay of Long Island was no longer a source of income for the generational family’s that had fished its waters for two hundred years. It was just a few miles to the east of New York City but in the early seventies you could almost walk across the clam boats plying the ten mile stretch from Massapequa to the Robert Moses Bridge.

Anyone, if they worked hard enough with a rake or thongs, could pull two hundred dollars a day or more from the muck below its murky shallow water. Thousands did, from wooden flat-bottomed skiffs, open boats crudely built at eighteen to twenty-two feet long.

The plywood box around the center console where the controls were located was the boats only concession to the elements. Every canal in every working-class neighborhood was full of them. By the time I graduated Copiague High School in 1977 the Bays fisheries had already begun to collapse. Seventeen percent of my graduating class joined the armed forces right out of high school; setting a national record at the time.

The sewers had come to southwestern Suffolk County. “Progress” works out well for the rich and the poor, not so well for the working man whose job it usually takes. The construction of the Southwest Sewer District was rift with scandals. Rigged bids and contracts doled out to the nonexistent company’s of political cronies insured an environmental disaster. A processing and pumping station was built on Bergen point in Lindenhurst and an outlet pipe was run through the bay and over Gilgo Beach three miles out into the ocean. The pipe leaked like a sieve.

The Bays clams were no longer harvestable because of pollution levels and an economic catastrophe ensued along its shores. The area of Lindenhurst’s Venetian Shores was particularly hard hit because almost all its residents were clam diggers. Nobody who lived down there wanted to be anything but what their father and grandfather had been before them. Every day the sun rises over Bergen Point looming on just the other side of Santapogue Creek.

On it stands the great temple; Southwest Sewer District # 3 – Bergen Point Wastewater Treatment Plant, a vast sewage treatment complex, a shrine to the Gods of money and political corruption bought and sold. The cronies actually had the nerve to build their golf course right next to it.

For over fifty years Long Island had been the home of the now defunct Plum Island Animal Disease Center. Biological weapons for attacking livestock were developed there all through the cold war. According to online encyclopedia Wikipedia “when Pakistani neuroscientist Aafia Siddiqui, a suspected al-Qaeda member, was arrested in Afghanistan in July 2008, she had in her handbag handwritten notes referring to a “mass casualty attack” that listed various U.S. locations, including the Plum Island Animal Disease Center (1).”

Any cursory examination of the micro organism that finished off Long Islands shell fish industry has to leave one wondering just how secure the research center was.

Tiny Monster

In full bloom Aureococcus anophagefferens is commonly referred to as Brown Tide. It is a devastatingly Harmful Algal Bloom (HAB) that first appeared in 1985 in the Great South Bay. It is toxic to almost all other forms of marine life. It wiped out the scallop industry still flourishing on the east end of the Island and finished off the clams, oysters and even the eel grass that provided spawning grounds for the Great South Bays remaining fisheries (2).

It would return again and again over the next twenty-five years as if to make sure they’re still dead.  Long Island’s inland waterways, extending from Jones Beach Causeway to West Hampton Beach, are now naught but a ten foot deep, fifty mile long, dirty puddle. 

The cells of A. anophagefferens contain both nucleus and chloroplasts so in the endlessly pedantic pseudoscientific world of taxonomy A. anophagefferens is classified as a pelagophyte alga. Algae unlike bacteria have a nucleus. All life forms possessing a cellular nucleus; animals, plants and fungus, are classified as eukaryotic.

Metaproteomics utilizes mass spectrometry to examine of all the proteins present in the microbiota of a given environment. For mapping genes it is the state of the art in microbiology. Metaproteomic studies of A. anophagefferens have shown it has more genetic material by far than any of the phytoplankton’s it competes with. Its genes vastly enhance its ability to harvest light from turbid water along with the excessive dissolved (under 0.45 micrometers) carbon compounds and nitrogen resultant from lawn fertilizers and sewage.

A. anophagefferens has ravenous requirements for selenium which in its pure form almost never occurs in nature but as a byproduct of processing metal sulfur ores. Organisms that need selenium have special genes to metabolize it called selenoproteins; defined as any protein that includes a selenocysteine. A. anophagefferens has at least fifty-six genes encoding selenocysteine containing proteins, at least twice the amount previously known to occur in any other eukaryotic organism. Those fifty-six genes include nearly all known eukaryotic selenoproteins as well as selenoproteins only described in bacteria and several that have never been described at all, in any organism. Selenoproteins are quite common among animals but are never found in plants or fungi except for one genus of green alga; Chlamydomonas, perhaps the most studied microorganism on earth.   

A. anophagefferens appetite for molybdenum, copper, and nickel is just as insatiable. It has twice the number of genes to encode molybdenum than the best of competing phytoplankton. Four times more for copper which it can use for nutrition or as an anti microbial weapon against it’s would be predators. It is the only phytoplankton with a homolog of the CutC copper homeostasis protein which optimizes cellular trafficking of copper and makes the deadly bacteria; E. coli so resilient. It has three nickel-requiring ureases, more than any of its competitors. These are used for converting urea, widely used in fertilizers and the chemical industry, into carbon dioxide and ammonia and allowing it to meet its daily nitrogen requirements from urea alone. It’s believed that one of the reasons competing phytoplankton are unable to do this is because they lack A. anophagefferens high affinity nickel transporter that allows it to synthesize urease enzymes.

A. anophagefferens never dominates in deep water estuaries or the open ocean where these elements are deficient. Its minuscule proportions, only about the size of bacteria, allow it to be more economical with its resources than competing phytoplankton. But its diminutive stature should fool no one. A anophagefferens is a microscopic Rambo. It has no less than five enzymes for catalyzing toxic alkaloids and a membrane attack complex gene, found in no other organism, believed to serve as defense against predatory microbes and protistan grazers. It has two to seven times more genes than competing phytoplankton that are involved in the synthesis of secondary metabolites which usually serve as a deterrent against herbivores in plants. It is seldom grazed on even during blooms (3). 

In 2012 Aureoumbra lagunensis, a pelagophyte alga, jumped from the shallow lagoons in Texas which had been the only place it was known to occur and decimated the Mosquito Lagoon and the northern Indian River Lagoon along the east coast of Florida (4). Both A. anophagefferens and A. lagunensis produce the unique marine sterol; 24-propylidenecholesterol, once thought to be a marker only for A. anophagefferens.

Other pelagophyte algae are known to produce unusual sterols; a subgroup of steroids found in plants, animals and fungi. But A. anophagefferens produces sterols that can only be described as “novel” by the National Center for Biotechnology Information. Not only is it not produced by any other pelagophyte; Delta (22)-24-propylcholesterol found in Sarcinochrysidales, an order of A. anophagefferens, is not known to occur in any other algae (5).

Quoting Wikipedia, A. anophagefferens also has an “unusual exocellular polysaccharide-like layer (6).” Exocellular polysaccharides are produced by Cyanobacteria, such as Microcystis aeruginosa; the neurotoxin generating bacteria that was the topic of Water Wars 2.0 part 1.  It is believed the bacteria use’s its slimy secretion to trap water in order withstand the environmental adversity attendant to dry conditions. This trait is currently being studied as an application for the production of polymers in industry (7).

The secretion of these exopolysaccharides, by the curious genus of algae known as Chlamydomonas, was first studied all the way back in 1956 and published in The Canadian Journal of Microbiology (8). In1939 a German researcher; Dr. Hans Gaffron, began a thirty year study of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii in an effort to industrially produce clean hydrogen by harnessing the organism’s ability to stop producing oxygen in its photosynthetic process and convert to producing hydrogen. Chlamydomonas reinhardtii is currently genetically engineered for the production of pharmaceuticals. Kits for doing so are sold on the open market for 285$ a piece (9).

Since A. anophagefferens unprecedented debut in the Great South Bay it has enveloped Americas east coast in a death shawl all the way down to Virginia. Thought to be transported in the bilges of ships it’s now a recurring problem on the coasts of South Africa and northern China.

Recent studies have shown that the genes that allow A. anophagefferens to dominate everything in its environment switch on when waterways become murky and nutritionally depleted. Dissolved Organic Carbon (DOC) is the nutrients that occur in estuaries and bays when decomposing organic matter drains from intertidal zones and is washed from wetlands by rain. Overdevelopment of inland waterways rings the dinner bell for A. anophagefferens by replacing naturally occurring DOC with pollutants attendant to urban sprawl. Sewage and lawn fertilizers have an overabundance of dissolved nitrogen consisting of complex, high molecular weight compounds that can only be utilized by A. anophagefferens incredibly efficient genetic processes.

Like tiny monsters, born in the methamphetamine fueled delirium of some Hollywood script writer, when deprived of phosphorous A. anophagefferens will dine on arsenate; a naturally occurring arsenic that chemically resembles phosphate. It then reduces the arsenate to arsenite; a more toxic form of arsenic and secretes it back into its environment (10).

Long Island draws its tap water from aquifers. That means it’s almost three million inhabitants are reliant on rain water to percolate through its soil to fill underground reservoirs called aquifers. Only about 50% of the total precipitation reach’s these aquifers to “recharge” them. To be pumping the water you have been pumping out of them into the ocean is infrastructural suicide.

Coupled with the risk it posed to an irreplaceable national resource the Bergen Point Wastewater Treatment Plant was opposed during the sixties by practically every environmental scientist who ever heard of it. Yet by the seventies a thoroughly entrenched and a by then already legendarily corrupt republican party had ramrodded it into legislation.

In 1966 Long Island contributed 6% of the United States total Commercial Fishing catcheven though by then the oyster industry, for which Blue Point Oysters are named after, had already declined by 99%over the previous 50 years. Its trash fish such as Menhaden and scup were being processed on the North Fork into a high protein feed for farm animals and had given the nation the edge in global poultry production. There were plans for an improved version called Fish Protein Concentrate to be used to feed the world’s poor (11). It’s all just a forgotten dream now. Long Islands Ocean is just as barren as her bays. Nobody ever said it better than her native son Billy Joel in

Long Island is a real life metaphor of an America gone bad; where news and law enforcement agencies have become an extension of criminal enterprise masquerading as government. In 1979 Suffolk County sewer czar John Flynn would be shot dead by his top lieutenant hours before he was scheduled to turn himself in on fraud charges (12). Others would go to jail but the Republican Party featuring notorious acts like the Brookhaven GOP, collectively known as Crookhaven, would continue its felonious rampage all across Long Island.

Human Devils

On Jan. 21of this year newly elected democrat Monica Martinez, representing Suffolk County’s 9th Legislative District, carried through with her campaign promise to clean up the impoverished districts parks. She called the parks department questioning why the recharge basin of Roberto Clemente Park in Brentwood, a Black and Hispanic neighborhood, was littered with building debris.

Parks commissioner Joseph J. Montuori Jr. immediately ordered the park cleaned up. But only after his Parks dept. henchmen Brett A. Robinson hastily arranged a meeting for him in a sleazy Italian restaurant with Islip Conservative Party leader Michael Torres and Tom Datre Jr. – son of prominent Islip political fundraisers Tom and Clara Datre.

From January 24-26 one of the multiple hauling companies owned by the Datre family set to work carting off the debris. But apparently the temptation to profiteer by preying on seemingly defenseless non English speaking victims was just too much for these “Islip Young Republicans” to resist. Two months later the Datre’s son and grandson were back and dumped even more debris than they had originally removed. In early may “Datre/Daytree” corporate offices in Ronkonkoma were raided by agents of Suffolk County District Attorney Thomas Spota in connection with the dumping of approximately 50,000 tons of asbestos, pesticides and heavy metal laden garbage at the park (13).

According to Mr. Spota in April of 2013 Iglesia de Jesucristo Palabra Miel church ran out of funds and requested Islip Township to finish a renovation job on town soccer fields which had been being financed by the churches congregation. The town “donated” the job and shortly thereafter “well intentioned and unsuspecting” representatives of the church met with individuals who told them that they would bring in the top soil required for the seeding free of charge. A procession of trucks began arriving and dumping large chunks of metal, bricks and broken glass. They did not stop coming, in spite of protests from the congregation, till they had raised the grade on the soccer field three feet and partially filled the nearby twenty-five foot deep recharge basin, all free of charge of course (14).

The Town of Islip has formally blamed Daytree at Cortland Square; a company headed by Clara Datre. Officials said forty-eight tractor trailer loads were captured on video surveillance dumping in the park in one day in March. Calling the scene “an environmental nightmare” Mr. Spota estimates that eleven hundred tractor trailers have been dumped at the park. Police had to actually be placed at the gates of the park to stop the carnage (15). Tom and Clara Datre are prolific fundraisers for Islip’s Republican and Conservative parties. Their office is located in a building owned by the law firm of Islip GOP boss Frank Tantone. Clara Datre ran for town supervisor as a Republican in 2007 (16).

The good works of the Islip GOP are not just confined to charity for the economically disenfranchised. They are patriots too. A few miles away in the far more affluent Islandia six homes were constructed for combat veterans, returning from Afghanistan and Iraq, by the Long Island Builders Institute (LIBI). The half million dollars homes were sold for 199 thousand dollars to family’s selected from a pool of over a hundred veterans who applied. Tom Datre was the then president of the Long Island Home Builders Care Development Corp; the charitable arm of the LIBI.

“One of the many hurdles facing returning veterans is finding an affordable place to live and anchor their lives” he is quoted as saying a year ago. “We hope our program can help fulfill this need.” Clara Datre became the first female president of LIBI in 2012 (17). Eyewitnesses recall seeing a constant stream of Datre trucks dumping demolition debris into the initial forty foot deep excavation for the site. The debris was found by Mr. Spota’s office and agents of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to be the same toxic waste they used to redecorate Roberto Clemente Park (18).

Other impromptu Islip GOP toxic waste dumps have been located on a private lot in a residential community in Central Islip and a wetlands area in Deer Park that drains into the Great South Bay (19). To complement the asbestos which is turning up in concentrations as high as 44% Mr. Spota has so far found evidence of petroleum byproducts, zinc, iron, lead and cobalt which is extremely deadly. The heavy metals go along with the chlordane, DDT and Dieldrin, all pesticides banned in the United States.

On June twentieth Chuck Schumer; senior United States Senator from New York and a member of the Democratic Party wrote a letter to Gina McCarthy head of the United States EPA imploring her to throw the full weight of the federal government behind Mr. Spota and the New York EPA’s investigation. He noted that the situation in Islip “is particularly concerning in the case of Veterans Way due to its proximity to the Nichols Road South wellfield, a source for municipal drinking water (20).”

When Mr. Spota announced that asbestos was present in the parks “topsoil” on May sixth Montuori resigned immediately but Robinson had to be fired three days later. Although Robinson began his career as a political hack running on the GOP ticket, at the time these heinous crimes were committed he and Montuori were both members of the Conservative Party. In Islip, as with the rest of the country, the Conservative Party is a subsidiary of the GOP.

Tantone and Torres were on the transition team for Islip’s GOP supervisor; Tom Croci, whom returned from a one year deployment in Afghanistan in early July. The Conservative Party was gifted the parks department after they delivered 12 % of Croci’s votes; his winning margin was 0.7 % (21). Yet news agencies seem all too willing to absolve Croci of this act of environmental terrorism committed by the very people he appointed out of gratitude for putting him in office.

One week after he was fired Robinson was knocking on doors gathering signatures for Islip Town Board member Anthony Senft’s State Senate bid against, ironically enough, well known environmentalist Adrienne Esposito who is running on the democratic ticket. Under close scrutiny for his role in what Ms. Esposito has labeled “environmental racism” Senft dropped out of the race for the pivotal third District seat in the New York State Senate.

Undaunted and certainly shameless, Croci’s taken his place as the only member of the Islip GOP not likely to be put in jail for a very long time by Mr. Spota. The effects of asbestos poisoning take twenty to thirty years to manifest as mesothelioma an often fatal form of cancer (22).

As Ms. Esposito has pointed out “children were playing in this park with their families as dust was blowing around (23).” The Islip GOP may have committed the greatest act of mass murder in America since 9/11 itself. Yet no one seems to know that it has even taken place.

Croci may very well defeat Ms. Esposito in the November fourth elections. As of September third Newsday and Channel 12 News, Long Islands local news outlets and the parties most culpable for the media blackout of the outrageous crimes listed above, ran a Siena College Poll inexplicably claiming Croci had a 56% – 29% lead on Ms. Esposito. After noting that this is perplexing because the “district is 35% democrat and 31% republican” Newsday provides Steven Greenberg, “spokesman for the Siena College Poll,” a mainstream media pulpit to make the wildly inaccurate statements that “Esposito isn’t well known to voters” and “Croci has strong and positive name recognition (24).”

By as early as 2005 Ms. Esposito was listed among the one hundred most influential Long Islanders by Long Island Business News (25). She has been appearing almost daily in both Channel 12 and Newsday environmental features for the last twenty-five years. In 2008 she appeared alongside Governor David Patterson when he announced his monumental decision to shutdown Broadwater (26); an unpopular attempt to use the Long Island Sound as a Liquefied Natural Gas Terminal by Shell Oil and the TransCanada Corporation regardless of the environmental consequences or the wishes of the residents along its shoreline.

Ms. Esposito was instrumental in Mr. Patterson making the decision that probably cost him his governorship and is one of the few victories the American people have ever had against big oil. Her fame has only grown since and her list of accomplishments fills pages and pages of Google searches in every conceivable field of conservation. Croci’s name appears only in conjunction with his role as Islip Town Supervisor not exactly “strong and positive name recognition” in light of the crimes committed in the name of that office.

The fact that Newsday would print a blatant lie like that, to be spread all over the internet and media, is indicative of just why Long Island is in the state of decay that it is in. Long Island just like Ohio is a microcosmic study of just how damaging the corporate controlled media has been to America.

_________________________________

Sources

(1) – “Plum Island Animal Disease Center.” Wikipedia, 22 Sept. 2014. Web. 4 Sept. 2014. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plum_Island_Animal_Disease_Center>.

(2) – “Damaging Brown Tide Re-emerges across Entire South Shore of Long Island.” General University News. Stony Brook University, 15 Oct. 2013. Web. 13 Sept. 2014. <http://commcgi.cc.stonybrook.edu/am2/publish/General_University_News_2/Damaging_Brown_Tide_Re-emerges_across_entire_South_Shore_of_Long_Island.shtml>.

(3) – “Niche of Harmful Alga Aureococcus Anophagefferens Revealed through Ecogenomics.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. US National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health, 23 Feb. 2011. Web. <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3060233/>.

(4 ) – “Volume 27, July 2013, Pages 29–41.” Harmful Algae. ScienceDirect, 1 July 2013. Web. 14 Sept. 2014. <http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1568988313000619>.

(5) – “Aureococcus Anophagefferens.” Wikipedia, 16 Mar. 2014. Web. 4 Oct. 2014. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aureococcus_anophagefferens>.

(6) – “Sterol Chemotaxonomy of Marine Pelagophyte Algae.” PubMed. US National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health, 7 July 2009. Web. 14 Sept. 2014. <http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19623555>.

(7) – De Philippis, Roberto, and Massimo Vincenzini. “Exocellular Polysaccharides from Cyanobacteria and Their Possible Applications.” FEMS Microbiology Reviews Volume 22, Issue 3, Pages 151–175, September 1998. Wiley Online Library, 17 Jan. 2006. Web. 20 Sept. 2014. <http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1574-6976.1998.tb00365.x/full>.

(8) – Lewin, Ralph A. “EXTRACELLULAR POLYSACCHARIDES OF GREEN ALGAE.” NRC Research Press. Canadian Journal of Microbiology, 7 Feb. 1959. Web. 21 Sept. 2014. <http://www.nrcresearchpress.com/doi/abs/10.1139/m56-079#.VB8G4FfEYbU>.

(9) – “Description.” GeneArt® Chlamydomonas Engineering Kit. Life Technologies, 1 Jan. 2014. Web. 21 Sept. 2014. <http://www.lifetechnologies.com/order/catalog/product/A14258>.

(10) – “Like Weeds of the Sea, ‘brown Tide’ Algae Exploit Nutrient-rich Coastlines.” Featured Research. ScienceDaily, 5 Sept. 2014. Web. 17 Sept. 2014. <http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/09/140905153013.htm>.

(11) – “The Status And Potential Of The Marine Environment 3-27.” Report of the Oceanographic Committee to The Nassau and Suffolk Regional Planning Board. Nassau and Suffolk Regional Planning Board, 7 Dec. 1966. Web. 29 Sept. 2014. <http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/CZIC-gc1021-n7-s78-1966/pdf/CZIC-gc1021-n7-s78-1966.pdf>.

(12) – Grossman, Karl. “Flyn Murder: Tragic Chapter In A Long Saga.” Suffolk Closeup. The Suffolk County News, Page 28, 21 June 1979. Web. 27 Sept. 2014. <http://fultonhistory.com/Newspaper4/Sayville NY Suffolk County News/Sayville NY Suffolk County News 1979 Apr-Nov 1979 Grayscale/Sayville NY Suffolk County News 1979 Apr-Nov 1979 Grayscale – 0363.pdf>.

(13) – ARMAGHAN, SARAH, and SARAH CRICHTON. “Michael Torres, Islip Conservative Leader, Was Consulted on Brentwood Park Dumping, Say Sources.” Suffolk Long Island. Newsday, 4 Aug. 2014. Web. 27 Sept. 2014. <http://www.newsday.com/long-island/suffolk/michael-torres-islip-conservative-leader-was-consulted-on-brentwood-park-dumping-say-sources-1.8964326>.

(14) – “Probe into Dumping at Brentwood Park Set to Widen, Says Source.” Media Coverage. Make The Road New York, 12 May 2014. Web. 27 Sept. 2014. <http://www.maketheroad.org/article.php?ID=3489>.

(15) – “Town Of Islip Readies Lawsuits Over Illegal Dumping In Roberto Clemente Park.” News. CBSNewYork, 8 May 2014. Web. 27 Sept. 2014. <http://newyork.cbslocal.com/2014/05/08/town-of-islip-readies-lawsuits-over-illegal-dumping-in-roberto-clemente-park/>.

(16) – ARMAGHAN, SARAH, and SARAH CRICHTON. “Michael Torres, Islip Conservative Leader, Was Consulted on Brentwood Park Dumping, Say Sources.” Suffolk Long Island. Newsday, 4 Aug. 2014. Web. 27 Sept. 2014. <http://www.newsday.com/long-island/suffolk/michael-torres-islip-conservative-leader-was-consulted-on-brentwood-park-dumping-say-sources-1.8964326>.

(17) – ARMAGHAN, SARAH, and SARAH CRICHTON. “Veterans Way in Islandia under Investigation as Possible Dump Site.” Towns Long Island. Newsday, 13 May 2014. Web. 27 Sept. 2014. <http://www.newsday.com/long-island/towns/veterans-way-in-islandia-under-investigation-as-possible-dump-site-1.8013278>.

(18) – CRICHTON, SARAH, and SARAH ARMAGHAN. “Debris Dumping Described at Site of Homes for Veterans.” Suffolk Long Island. Newsday, 16 May 2014. Web. 27 Sept. 2014. <http://www.newsday.com/long-island/suffolk/debris-dumping-described-at-site-of-homes-for-veterans-1.8050170>.

(19) – “Editorial: Residents Relying on Gov’t to Fix Islip Dumping Nightmare.” Opinion. Newsday, 18 June 2014. Web. 27 Sept. 2014. <http://www.newsday.com/opinion/editorial-islip-dumping-nightmare-needs-to-be-fixed-1.8480348>.

(20) – “SCHUMER: ILLEGAL TOXIC DUMPING COULD CREATE SERIOUS HEALTH HAZARDS FOR RESIDENTS IN TOWN OF ISLIP; CALLS ON EPA – NATION’S PREMIER ENVIRONMENTAL WATCHDOG – TO INVESTIGATE DISTURBING PATTERN OF HAZARDOUS MATERIAL CONTAMINATION THAT HAS NOW BEEN FOUND AT MULTIPLE SITES IN TOWN.” Press Release. Senator Charles E Schumer United States Senator For New York, 20 June 2014. Web. 20 June 2014. <http://www.schumer.senate.gov/Newsroom/record.cfm?id=352942>.

(21) – “Editorial: What Was Role of Politics in Islip Scandal?” Opinion. Newsday, 5 Aug. 2014. Web. 28 Sept. 2014. <http://www.newsday.com/opinion/what-was-role-of-politics-in-islip-scandal-editorial-1.8972039>.

(22) – “Asbestosis Symptoms.” Asbesto.com. The Mesothelioma Center, 5 Sept. 2014. Web. 28 Sept. 2014. <http://www.asbestos.com/asbestosis/symptoms.php>.

(23) – Chang, Sophia. “Call For New Probes.” Newsday 9 May 2014, Top Stories sec.: A5. Print.

(24) – Roy, Yancey. “Croci Leading in Poll.” Newsday 3 Oct. 2014, Top Stories sec.: A7. Print.

(25) – “Top 100 Most Influential Long Islanders.” Libn.com. Long Island Business News, 30 Dec. 2005. Web. 4 Oct. 2014. <http://libn.com/2005/12/30/top-100-most-influential-long-islanders/>.

(26) – “Adrienne Esposito Speech at Broadwater Victory Rally.” Citizens Campaign for the Environment. YouTube, 10 Apr. 208. Web. 4 Sept. 2014.

.