Vol. 79, No. 32
NYS grant for water treatment The New York State Environmental Facilities Corporation (EFC) recently issued the Plainview Water District (PWD) an additional $1.73 million in funding made available through the New York State Water Infrastructure Improvement Act (WIIA). A recent change to the EFC’s criteria awarded the District these additional funds above and beyond the $373,000 initially secured by the District for installing state-of-the-art treatment of Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC). This latest award brings the total grant funding the District has secured to more than $5 million in the past two and half years. “We are pleased and thankful that Governor Cuomo heard Long Island water providers’ requests to change the grant program to allow more funding to be made available to each District for necessary treatment upgrades,” said Marc Laykind, Chairman of the Board of Commissioners. “The District works tirelessly to provide high-quality drinking water to every corner of our service territory and the presence of emerging contaminants is making this mission much more costly. With more than $2.1 million received in grant funding for this project, plus additional reserve funds, the Plainview Water District has fast tracked plans to build a Granular Activated Carbon filtration system and begin pumping water from a well that has remained offline since October 2017. This planned treatment system is currently needed to address the increasing levels of volSee page 11
Friday, August 9, 2019
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Local business gives girl new outlook BY GARY SIMEONE
Gardenia Cucci (left), executive director at the One 2 One Foundation with Jessica Bixby (Myleanna’s mom), Myleanna and Eric Schaffer, CEO of A Step Ahead.
It was a dream come true last Friday at A Step Ahead Prosthetics service in Hicksville. An eightyear-old girl from upstate New York was at the facility to receive a final fitting for her brand new prosthetic leg. “Her name is Myleanna Siedlecky, and she was at our facility to receive a new adaptive sports prosthesis for the lower half of her left leg,” said Eric Schaffer, CEO of A Step Ahead and a certified prosthetist. “She is one of many kids we’ve seen here at A Step Ahead, whose life is made better after receiving a new prosthetic device.” Myleanna, who is from Windsor, New York, was at the facility with her mother and grandmother to receive the new prosthetic device, which is known as a blade. Blades are specialized devices meant to replace legs and feet amputated below the knee. She lost the lower half of her leg after an unfortunate lawnmower riding accident in 2017. Schaffer said that she ended up at the facility after the charity organization, One2one Foundation, contacted them, looking for candidates to be outfitted with an adaptive sports prostheses. “We do a lot of work with One2one, and ended up choosing Myleanna’s profile from a pool of other candidates,” said Schaffer. “She was chosen primarily for monetary reasons, as these types of prosthetics are not typically covered by insurance and because she was in the market for an adaptive sports blade.” He added that when she came to the facility, she was still in a conventional walking prosthesis, which made it hard for her to run and jump and do other things kids her age normally do. “Sometimes in life you just need the right set of tools to experience the satisfaction and advantages that other people might take for granted. With this new device, she can look forward to playing basketball, soccer and other activities unimpeded.” Gardenia Cucci, executive director at One2one Foundation, said that many donors were instrumental in helping to raise funds for the little girls new prostheses. “The causes are originated by our donors and many of them feel strongly about our youth in need of prosthetics program,” said Cucci.
Bilingual Authors Tea at OCR School PAGE 6 A feeding collaboration in Bethpage PAGE 3