Serious water quality issues continue to arise across Long Island, where health concerns from decades-old landfills and aging sewage treatment plants persist while emerging technologies like battery energy storage systems create new environmental problems.

The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) today announced awards for eight new bulk energy storage projects and 13 large-scale renewable energy projects. Combined, these projects are expected to provide 1.7 gigawatts (GW) of new large-scale energy resources, create more than 1,000 family-supporting jobs and generate over $3.7 billion in private investment. This reinforces New York’s commitment to the development of locally-produced clean energy, energy storage, grid resiliency and economic development.

On a small crescent of shoreline just off the road to Jones Beach, unruly stacks of sandbag fortifications lay slumped on the narrow beach. Most of the hundreds of bags were split and disgorging their contents onto the damp sand below; others were half-buried by overwashed sand.

More than one-third of Long Island schools had at least one water fixture used for drinking or cooking that exceeded the state's standard for lead, according to a new report.

Across Nassau and Suffolk, 1,031 of 22,345 fixtures tested — about 4.6% — exceeded the state standard of 5 parts per billion for lead levels in school drinking or cooking water, according to a study conducted by the Environment America Research & Policy Center, New York Public Interest Research Group and Frontier Group.

Brookhaven faces a November deadline to fix plans for cleaning up a toxic plume south of the town's landfill after the state faulted them for containing a series of errors.

The state Department of Environmental Conservation said it could not accept Brookhaven's draft report outlining five potential cleanup proposals. In an Aug. 5 letter to the town, the DEC said Brookhaven's plan was riddled with factual and mathematical errors.