After All Things
Small business recovery
The groundwater in Nassau County is getting saltier. A new age cutoff to register for kindergarten takes effect in Connecticut. A group of Brookhaven residents claim discrimination over Fire Island beach access. And a Greenwich food bank serves as an example for other pantries around the state.
- Broadcast on:
- 27 Aug 2024
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- other
I'm Suzanne Bona. Well, not only can listeners donate their cars to benefit public radio, I have donated a car to public radio. I personally donated a Honda Civic. It was in the process of getting a new car, and I thought, you know, I'm gonna walk the walk because I've been talking the talk all this time. We say it all the time, it couldn't have been easier, and it felt great. It was actually really awesome to donate your car. Just go to WSHU.org. Connecticut officials say small businesses can apply for $25,000 grants to repair damage done by last week's flooding. Mike Abe owns the 67 family diner in Seymour. He says the diner was destroyed in the flood and needs all the help it can get. We need to come back. We need to open 67 family diner as a mother of Seymour. Everybody knows 67 family diner, and we need to come back with stronger and the better. $5 million is available in total. The money can be used to cover cleanup, lost inventory, and lost wages. Governor Lamont says he wants FEMA to declare a major disaster declaration to unlock further funds. (gentle music) You're listening to, after all things, WSHU's daily news and culture update from the Long Island Sound region. The groundwater in Nassau County is getting saltier. A new age cut off to register for kindergarten takes effect in Connecticut. A group of Brookhaven residents claim discrimination over Fire Island beach access, and a Greenwich Food Bank serves as an example to other pantries around the state. Those stories and more are ahead. I'm Sabrina Garone. (gentle music) (gentle music) The groundwater in Nassau County is getting saltier. That's according to a study that found pumping fresh water out of wells has left room for saltwater to seep in. WSHU's Desiree Diorio reports. It's called saltwater intrusion. Water for homes and irrigation comes from the sole source aquifer underneath Long Island. As fresh water is pumped out, ocean water replaces it, reducing the supply of drinking water. The report from the US Geological Survey says even if pumping fresh water stopped completely, it could take generations to reverse. Coastal areas like Oyster Bay and Long Beach are at the highest risk. They might need new sources of drinking water in the future. Nassau County's population growth over the past several decades has increased the demand for fresh water. And warmer temperatures mean rain evaporates more quickly and less rain seeps down into the aquifer. Desiree Diorio, WSHU News. A new age cut-off to register for kindergarten is taking effect as kids head back to school in Connecticut. WSHU's Shelley Hasman-Cadish reports. Children now have to be five years old by September 1st to register for kindergarten under a new law that takes effect for the 2024-25 school year. The previous cut-off date was January 1st, one of the latest registration dates in the country. Supporters say the new date brings Connecticut in line with other states according to her's Connecticut media. Some parents say it unfairly burdens low in middle-income families with an extra year to pay for preschool. The law allows for some exemptions for parents who follow a waiver process. Shelley Hasman-Cadish, WSHU News. Brookhaven town supervisor Dan Panico wants to make Ho-Hum Beach on Fire Island more accessible to residents. Right now, only Bellport Village residents and summer renters can take a ferry over to get there. Panico is chartering a water taxi this week through Labor Day weekend free to Brookhaven residents. He says he's getting pushback on that. - I offered the option of a non-resident fee for people to come and enjoy the beauty of the water. For the children of North Bellport to enjoy the simple pleasures of building a sand castle on the beach. - Panico and the Brookhaven NAACP believe that restricting access to the beaches absurd and could be discriminatory. He says the town is assessing its legal options. The neighbor-to-neighbor food pantry in Greenwich has a unique way of serving those in need. That story is coming up in just a bit. - Local support for After All Things comes from Hartford HealthCare, the only health system in the Northeast with all its hospitals receiving A grades for safety from the LeapFrog group, the nation's leading independent safety watchdog group, HartfordHealthCare.org. (gentle music) - New York Attorney General Leticia James has issued a warning to businesses against price gouging of essential items in Suffolk County. That's after a federal emergency was declared following last week's severe weather. James asks New Yorkers who see higher prices on essential goods and services to report the businesses to her office. Stop & Shop says it will stop selling tobacco products at the end of the month. The company has more than 80 stores across Connecticut, making it the state's largest grocery chain, and it also has about 50 stores on Long Island. They've also recently announced dozens of store closures, including five in Connecticut and four on Long Island. Annual visitors to Connecticut State Parks have nearly doubled four years after the pandemic, and that's spiked the cost of operation. Deep officials say operational revenue is provided to the department by the Passport to Parks program. They say there'll be an increase in the cost of park vehicle registration at the start of the next fiscal year. In Greenwich, a community food pantry offers residents in need the opportunity to shop for fresh food. The Connecticut mirrors Laura Tillman has done in-depth reporting on this. She spoke with WSHA's Molly Ingram about whether the rest of the state can replicate that. It's part of the collaborative podcast, Long Story Short. - So your story focuses on the neighbor-to-neighbor food pantry in Greenwich. How did you find this food pantry and what makes it interesting? - Yeah, so I was interested in the issue of food insecurity. It's one of the issues on my new human services beat, and I spoke with someone in Stanford who actually told me if you're really looking for kind of the gold standard of food pantries in Connecticut, I would look at Greenwich. So that's what led me there. Greenwich, as most of us know, it's a very wealthy area. It has a tremendous amount of resources, and there are a lot of people locally who are supporting this pantry. Some people, as I was reporting this story, kind of asked me, does Greenwich even need a food pantry? But the cost of living in Greenwich is incredibly high. So a lot of the people who might work for wealthier families in the community, work at restaurants, jobs where they're not earning those hedge fund kind of salaries. They also are trying to survive in Greenwich, many of them because they want their kids to attend the excellent schools, excellent public schools in Greenwich. So the cost of living is very high and it's pushing people kind of to the edge of their budgets and beyond. So one of the things that was remarkable was just to see that Greenwich has kind of really rallied around this pantry, and that takes the form of volunteerism. There's high school students volunteering at the pantry as well as people from corporations who come in retirees, just kind of a very wide swath of the community. And then there are people fundraising. There are people who have taken it upon themselves to even donate their special item each month. So one person might say, you know, I'm going to fund every kid who's going back to school to get a brand new backpack, or I'm gonna fund every household to get a new set of sheets this month. So there's just a very impressive way that the community has kind of stepped up for this pantry. And they're also doing a lot of things that other pantries are striving to do like they're striving to serve as much fresh food as possible. A lot of pantries, I think the image that many of us might have in our minds of a food pantry is canned good, but food pantries today are really striving to serve people, you know, the healthy, freshest food that they can. And in Greenwich, they're trying to even get that to 100%, meaning that a family could come in and take home 100% fresh food and no canned food at all if they want to. That's pretty extraordinary. When I told other pantries about that percentage, they were kind of in awe of that. - And so they were in awe. Is this something that they think that they can replicate? Is this something that other food pantries across the state may be able to actually do? - I think that a lot of them are actually working to get more fresh food. And in the summer in particular, some of the percentages at other pantries that I talked to, you know, it's beyond 50%. In some cases, they're able to supply people 60% fresh food or even 75% fresh food on occasion. But to be able to do it consistently like Greenwich does, I'm actually working on a solution story where I'm going to go a little bit more into, you know, how Greenwich has been able to do that particular piece of it. Keep fresh food coming. But I think that there's some interesting things happening with food pantries right now in terms of, you know, there's more awareness that food waste is actually a problem that supermarkets need to solve, restaurants need to solve in terms of climate change, that we don't want all of this food just rotting in dumpsters and landfills that could be feeding people. So there is a real effort to also get all of that fresh food to pantries before it goes bad. And I think also another thing that happens at Greenwich is there's sort of a grocery store style shopping experience. So you go in, you have a cart, there are a isles, there's kind of a refrigerated section and a produce section. And there are a lot of efforts in different places to make these things happen. But I think that part of the differences with the budget that Greenwich has, if they run out, if those resources aren't enough, they can always just buy more. And most pantries can only kind of afford so much. - And on the money piece in your story, you mentioned that Connecticut doesn't contribute as much to its food pantries as neighboring states. What did you find there? Why is that? - I think part of what happened is that during COVID, there was this huge flood of free food that came from the federal government. So Connecticut food share was receiving tens of millions of pounds of food from the federal government to distribute in 2021 was kind of the height of these numbers. And then once the pandemic ended, that food went away. But the numbers have stayed nearly as high in terms of the demand, in terms of the number who are using these resources. And so New Jersey, for example, has stepped up and said, we're gonna fill that gap. We're gonna use our state budget. They're giving $85 million to supplement what these pantries are able to do. Without that money to make up for the fact that the federal food is no longer available. Connecticut is not doing anywhere near that. Connecticut food share gets $850,000. So 1% of what New Jersey is giving. And New Jersey has three times the population of Connecticut, but it doesn't have 100 times the population of Connecticut. So it is a big difference. - Thank you so much, Laura. I really appreciate your time today. - Thank you, I appreciate it. - Laura Tillman is the Connecticut Mirrors Human Services Reporter. I'm Molly Ingram in for Ebong Udama. - Thank you so much for listening to After All Things supported by Hartford HealthCare. For the latest news from Connecticut and Long Island, you can listen on the radio, stream online at WSHU.org or download the WSHU app, which is also where you can get more great podcasts from WSHU like long story short. And as always, if you have any thoughts or story ideas you'd like to share with us, please feel free to reach out. Our email is news@wshu.org. I'm Sabrina Garone. Enjoy the rest of your day. I'll speak to you tomorrow. 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