Meeting Long Island Restrictive Environmental Standards

A narrow strip of land stretching along the Atlantic Coast from New Jersey to Massachusetts, Long Island, NY provides a unique access to millions of residents of neighboring states, not only for permanent homes, but also vacation and recreational facilities.

This area, however, provides municipal treatment only in population centers. With low population density and flat topography, large municipal plants are not financially feasible. All drinking water for Long Island's 3 million residents, and visitors, comes from underground aquifers, but because of concerns of elevated nitrogen levels in the groundwater, county and state mandates have forced engineers to search for alternative wastewater solutions other than septic tanks. This was found in the form of Cromaglass Batch Treatdenitrification Systems.

These patented process modules have been tested and monitored to reduce total nitrogen by up to 80%. As a result of inspecting operational systems in other New York State and Pennsylvania locations, Suffolk County and New York DEC staff personnel have now given permits for construction in their jurisdiction stretching for nearly 100 miles along an area previously served only by septic tanks or large tertiary sewage treatment plants.

The first contractor/developer to use a Cromaglass community systems program on Long Island was Larry Gargano (Greenview Properties) in his Greenview Court, a senior luxury rental community located in Oakdale, NY. Important in bringing these systems to the developer's attention was Jack Naylor, P.E. and the Cromaglass area representative, Lou Kircher and his company, E3 Environmental of Garden City, NY.

Mr. Naylor has had extensive experience with sequential batch reactor systems use in Long Island and is very well respected by regulatory offices. Due to difficulties with available treatment alternatives on previous projects, he researched the Cromaglass technology carefully by making visits to the manufacturing facilities and projects where these systems had years of proven performance. A strong advocate of solid state control systems, Engineer Naylor was impressed by the Cromaglass PLC system controller, and the CromaWatch remote monitoring program.

Specifications for the Greenview Court project included two (2) Cromaglass Model CA-120 Modules withdenitrification componentry and one (1) 5,000 gallon aerated sludge processing tank.

On Long Island, a moratorium had been in place for projects developing less than 15,000 gpd as the technology available had proved to be inadequate to meet the nutrient removal (Total nitrogen <10mg/L) requirement. This requirement has been in place since 1973 and the Cromaglass system was the first system deemed capable of meeting it. Approval by the state and county of these Cromaglass systems was an important element in removal of the building moratorium with limitations on nitrogen content of sub-surface groundwater having been established by water quality regulations of US EPA.

These same nitrogen regulations have led to increased Cromaglass installations in other states such as Pennsylvania, Arizona, Wisconsin, Massachusetts and Nevada. Included in the projects of these states have been state parks and several commercial/industrial properties.

This has then led to more freedom for the individual and overall construction industry, by allowing construction on sites previously closed to development.

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