Leaders of the Long Island Science Center are urging Riverhead officials to drop efforts to seize their planned future headquarters, arguing they have the resources to open up and play a key role in the town square revitalization project.

Tara Smith reports in NEWSDAY that officials from the nonprofit science museum made their case at a town meeting this past Thursday, arguing they have the funding to redevelop the Main Street property and play a pivotal role in the project.

Riverhead has already taken steps to seize the property, arguing the space is a key part of the planned town square development. The Riverhead Town board will hold a hearing on May 21 to condemn the building as "not safe or habitable," and a flood risk, according to town documents.

The town also plans to seize by eminent domain a bar on Main Street, Craft’D, and convey the property to a private developer to build a hotel there.

The nonprofit science center bought the vacant building — a former Swezey's Department Store — in 2020. It currently operates a pop-up in Tanger Outlets. Initially, the center planned a $15 million facility with a rooftop deck overlooking the Peconic River.

Operators of the science center say it can open by August 1. Developers would then start work on a second phase — adding a planetarium and rooftop greenhouse.

Town officials have questioned whether the science center can afford to develop the site and expressed skepticism about the plans during Thursday’s meeting.

Supervisor Tim Hubbard said Thursday there’s “no better place” for the science center than in the town square, but he wants assurances the museum can open and renovate the building.

On Friday, Hubbard said the town could halt eminent domain proceedings if the science center makes a strong enough case.

“We can pull the plug on that … if what they’re showing us can be a viable development,” he said.

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The Nassau County Police Department recently joined New York's interagency joint task force combating "ghost vehicles" that use hidden, defaced, or obstructed license plates to avert cameras. Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman said the county will focus enforcement efforts near the Nassau-Queens border, and that the county's first operation as part of the task force last month resulted in five arrests and 12 impounded vehicles. Alfonso A. Castillo reports in NEWSDAY that toll evasion costs the Metropolitan Transportation Administration about $50 million in lost revenue annually and state officials said the problem presents an existential threat to faith in the tolling system. That concern has been heightened with the implementation of congestion pricing, which since January has charged drivers for entering 60th Street and below in Manhattan.

Suffolk County Police Commissioner Kevin Catalina told Newsday that his department is "certainly open to" conversations about joining the task force. But, Catalina also pointed out that his county doesn’t have the same financial incentive to crack down on ghost vehicles as other jurisdictions.

"I think the NYPD is particularly interested because it’s a revenue source. We don’t have the tolls out here that New York City does. We don’t even have a red light camera anymore," Catalina said. "We’re interested in the way it would affect Suffolk County. And that would be if these cars are committing crimes in Suffolk County, and the license plates are preventing us from solving those crimes."

After being in place for 14 years, Suffolk's red light camera expired in December. However, the county still has a school bus camera program that collected about $45 million in ticket revenue in 2022 and 2023, according to annual reports.

In 2023, when Suffolk still had a red light camera program, police ticketed more than 5,200 vehicles for fake, obscured or covered plates.

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The long-anticipated solar array atop Southampton Town’s landfill in North Sea is now complete. Beth Young reports in EAST END BEACON that the 11,000-panel array is atop portions of the former Majors Path landfill and is expected to produce 8.6 million kilowatts per year, enough to power more than 700 households. Over the course of a 20-year lease, the project is anticipated to provide $1.65 million in revenue for the Town of Southampton, along with energy credits that will reduce electric bills for local ratepayers enrolled in a Community Solar program.

The town opened the 131-acre site as a landfill in 1963, where it accepted waste until 1995. Under New York’s 1983 Long Island Landfill Law, local “dumps” started closing or converting into transfer stations that still took recyclables but held regular refuse to be trucked offsite.

The federal Environmental Protection Agency placed the landfill on the Superfund program’s National Priorities List in June 1986. By 1992, the town had removed over 100,000 cubic yards of material and capped multiple disposal sites, known as cells. The remediated status and continuous monitoring allowed for limited redevelopment.

With encouragement from the EPA, four years ago, Southampton Town began researching and planning construction of the solar facility over Cells 1, 2, and 3, comprising 17 acres in total.

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The Riverhead Business Improvement District Management Association {BIDMA} - the nonprofit group that’s been organizing and producing downtown events for many years under contract with the Town of Riverhead has announced it will no longer produce two signature events that draw throngs of people to downtown Riverhead each year. In an emailed statement Friday night, the BIDMA said it “will no longer be producing the Alive on 25 street festival and Halloween Fest as the Town of Riverhead has assumed operations for these events.” Denise Civiletti reports on Riverheadlocal.com that the announcement follows a tense discussion at the BIDMA board of directors meeting March 19 between town officials and BIDMA board members regarding the group’s finances. The organization said it was unable to move forward with downtown event planning because the Riverhead Town Board had not yet approved its 2025 budget and event schedule. As a result, BIDMA board members said, the Alive on 25 summer street festival was at the risk of cancellation. The Town Board has not yet passed a resolution approving the BIDMA’s 2025 budget and event schedule, and there is no such resolution on the Town Board’s agenda for its upcoming meeting tomorrow. The Riverhead Business Improvement District is a special taxing district established by the Town of Riverhead in 1990 to benefit properties within the district, an area that encompasses most of downtown Riverhead. The Town Board is the governing body of the Business Improvement District and contracts with the BID management association each year to establish a budget controlling how district taxes are spent.

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Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has made comments over the years suggesting Lyme disease was likely created or released from the Plum Island Animal Disease Center. Lisa L. Colangelo reports in NEWSDAY that infectious disease experts, as well as the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which runs the Plum Island Animal Disease Center, dismissed the possibility that Lyme was created as a biological weapon. The bacteria responsible for Lyme disease has been found in specimens dating back well before the establishment of the government research lab on Plum Island — including in tick samples and in a 5,300-year-old mummy.

Plum Island is about a mile off Long Island's North Fork. The first cases of what would be called Lyme disease were identified on the other side of Long Island Sound in Lyme, Connecticut, in 1975.

Scott Campbell, Suffolk County's chief entomologist, tied the area's large tick population to the number of deer. "Where deer populations grow typically these tick populations grow as well," he wrote in a text message. "Deer populations have increased westward in Suffolk County so we are seeing [an] increase in tick numbers as a result."

For the last 70 years, Plum Island has served as a highly guarded federal animal research facility to protect the nation’s livestock and other animals from African swine fever and foot and mouth disease, which can devastate the food supply. Operations at the aging facility are being transferred over the next few years to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's newly constructed National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility in Kansas.

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Owners of some Long Island international grocery stores, many of which specialize in imported foods, said tariffs would raise prices and harm sales. Many owners were relieved by the 90-day delay on double-digit “reciprocal” tariffs, though a 10% tariff on goods from most nations is still in place. Experts said the stores, many of which are independently owned, are more vulnerable to tariffs than supermarket chains with greater resources. Nicholas Spangler reports in NEWSDAY that according to the Yale Budget Lab, a non-partisan policy research center, the tariffs in place now will raise food prices 2.9% over the long run, with fresh produce prices set to increase 5.4% before stabilizing at 3.7% higher. With no shift in the import shares of different countries, the tariffs will result in the equivalent of a loss of purchasing power of $4,400 per household on average in 2024 dollars. As consumers and businesses shift purchases in response to the tariffs, the price increase will settle to 1.6%, for a $2,600 loss per household. The Trump administration has said tariffs will incentivize Americans to buy American products.

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The auto dealerships that line Riverhead’s Route 58 commercial corridor are bracing for the impacts of 25% tariffs on imported autos and auto parts — though precisely what those impacts will be remains uncertain.

“I don’t know one car dealer that says, ‘Gee, this is a great idea.’ We look at the future and worry,” said Bill Fields, general manager at Apple Honda.

Denise Civiletti reports on Riverheadlocal.com that the auto tariffs, announced by President Donald Trump March 26, remain in place despite the 90-day pause on many other tariffs the president announced Wednesday.

Fields said 70% of the cars Apple Honda sells are manufactured in the United States. Honda is among the top three auto manufacturers in the nation, he said.

But no vehicles assembled in the U.S. are built with 100% domestic content, according to a study released last week by the Center for Automotive Research. The 25% tariffs on imported auto parts will cost U.S. automakers an average of $4,239 per vehicle, according to the same study.

The average tariff cost per imported vehicle is estimated to be $8,722, the Center for Automotive Research said in its report.

“The tariffs are going to make a lot of these cars hard to afford,” Fields said.

He said he’s also concerned about the supply chain disruptions that the tariffs may cause — and the effect those disruptions will have on vehicle inventory, as well as service and repairs. Auto dealers have finally emerged from the shortages caused by supply chain disruptions during the coronavirus pandemic of 2020.

Tom Williams, general manager of Riverhead Ford and Riverhead GMC, said, “Any car that is in stock in any of the four stores that we have are not affected by tariffs.”

“Cars coming in down the pipeline in 90 to 120 days may very well be affected by [tariffs], and they will cost you more money,” Williams said.