UNIONDALE _____________
HERALD
Looking to low
er your property taxes? Get Results. Sign Up Today!
BEACONDEADLINE MAR CH
How do you spell ‘learning’?
Stunning night for Queenasia Rosario
Page 10
Page 16
THE LEADER IN PROP ERTY TAX REDUCT ION
Sign up today. It on ly takes seconds. Apply online at mptrg .com/heraldnote or call 516.715.1266
$1.00 FREE
FEBRUARY 1 - 7, 2024
1ST
Maidenbaum Property Tax Reduction Grou p, LLC 483 Chestnut Street, Cedarhurst, NY 11516 Habl
1238895
______________
amos Español
Is the water threatening our health? By BRANDON CRUZ bcruz@liherald.com
Courtesy Greater Uniondale Area Action Coalition
The old ‘Welcome to Uniondale’ sign, south of Stewart Avenue.
Please call us Uniondale, not ‘East Garden City’ By BRANDON CRUZ bcruz@liherald.com
For years, activists and community leaders have been trying to persuade officials to rename the 3-square-mile stretch of Uniondale known as East Garden City — which they say does not actually exist — Uniondale. Now Nassau County Legislator Siela Bynoe, who represents Uniondale, has taken the effort a step further, officially introducing legislation that would “eliminate the use of the term ‘East Garden City’ in Nassau County Gover nment in every instance where the name Uniondale is both legally appropriate and accurate.” This bill, which was introduced in the Legislature on Jan. 19, would eliminate the county’s use of East Garden City in “all county documents of any kind, including but not limited to legislative enactments, maps, software, internal or external correspondence and communications, and all
agency records, county department records, and all records within each branch of county government, whether in digital or printed format.” Since 2000, this small portion of northern Uniondale — between Hempstead Turnpike to Old Country Road — has been referred to as East Garden City in an effort to distance the prime real estate north of Hempstead Turnpike from the neighborhood on the south side, according to community activists like Jeannine Maynard, co-facilitator of the Greater Uniondale Area Action Coalition. These efforts, which Maynard believes are “classist” and “economically racist,” have proved to be profitable for the county’s real estate industry. According to Homes. com, which shows listings and offers information, such as home values, for houses across the country, the average price of a home in the area designated as East Garden City is $223,000 more than those listed just ConTinUed on pAge 9
There are chemicals in your drinking water. That much we’ve known for a while, but the Town of Hempstead’s most recent water quality report, in 2022, revealed that the town found 1,4-dioxane — a powerful chemical that is suspected of causing cancer — in Uniondale’s water. Though the report acknowledged that the concentrations it detected were above the state’s maximum contaminant level for 1,4-dioxane, it assured residents that the water is still safe for consumption and “does not pose a significant health risk.” The Environmental Protection Agency has classified 1,4-dioxane as a “likely human carcinogen.” According to the EPA, even exposure to low levels of the chemical over a lifetime are thought to increase the risk of cancer, while higher e x p o s u re s ove r a s h o r t e r amount of time can “damage cells in the liver, kidney, and respiratory system.” According to Citizens Campaign for the Environment, a nonprofit environmental organization that works to protect public health and natural
resources in New York and Connecticut, the EPA tested ove r 4 , 0 0 0 w at e r s y s t e m s nationwide, and found that Long Island had some of the highest levels of 1,4-dioxane in the country, with some water systems in Nassau and Suffolk counties containing over 100 times the concentration listed in EPA’s cancer risk guidelines. As a result, Yale University announced at the Hempstead Public Library on Jan. 25 that, in partnership with Citizens Campaign, it is planning a Long Island study of the longterm effects of drinking water containing 1,4-dioxane. The study will be led by Vasilis Vasiliou, the chair of Yale’s Department of Environmental Health Sciences. “We know that Uniondale and the Village of Hempstead have 1,4-dioxane in their drinking water above the New York state standard,” Adrienne Esposito, executive director of Citizens Campaign, said. At a public information session last week at the library, residents were encouraged to sign up to participate in the study. It will take years to conduct, and the hope is to have a better understanding of how 1,4-dioxConTinUed on pAge 7