Long Island Central Pine Barrens

New York

In 1978, RCA handed over seventy-two hundred acres of Long Island wilderness for one dollar.

naturalhistoricaldisaster

RCA sold seventy-two hundred acres of Long Island woods for a single dollar. That was 1978, land around Rocky Point, handed to the state as part of a growing greenbelt. Seven years earlier, Brookhaven National Laboratory had transferred another twenty-three hundred acres. Piece by piece, New York was assembling what is now the Long Island Central Pine Barrens, more than a hundred thousand acres in Suffolk County. It is the island's largest natural area and its last remaining wilderness. Underneath it sits the aquifer that supplies Long Island's drinking water. Every drop the island drinks comes from ground water wells. There are no reservoirs. The forest above is what recharges the supply. Two of Long Island's four biggest rivers, the Peconic and the Carmans, run almost entirely through the Barrens along with much of their watersheds.

This is the first of 3 parts. The rest runs about 3 minutes and is read to you as you drive past. Hear the whole piece.

What this was written from
RCA transferred 7,200 acres (29 km2) around Rocky Point in 1978 (for a cost of $1)

Written from Wikipedia, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

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