Codger’s Column: Rest in pieces
When the doctor told Codger he had to totally rest for a week, the old scribe replied, “You kidding? On Shelter Island?”
Shelter Island in August is no place to rest. It’s very stressful, like the rest of the United States these days. Out-of-town cars pass on the New York Avenue double lines, important persons in pink-ish shorts jostle you on the IGA checkout lines and the phrase “near shore overlay” throbs in the brain like the bass beat off Sunset Beach on a Saturday night.
And now they want to install cameras on Crescent Beach. Why? To spot ICE troopers with electric gloves handling inappropriately dressed sun bathers? To look for ADU’s being secretly built? To celebrate the return of the four poster? To identify Near Shore Overlays? What’s going on?
People are obviously concerned enough to take action. Codger has recently learned that at least one local landlord secretly installed decibel sensors in their house to monitor noise levels. That was unbeknownst to the renter until the landlord called one night to tone down the noise. Was that even legal?
Now you understand why Codger is not getting the rest he needs. He is supposed to refrain from BLT (bending, lifting, twisting) and not be agitated. Denied such daily calming activities as Rollator strolls to greet and meet the wild turkey family currently basking in Crone’s garden or the reading of heavy books, he is left with the news feed, constant stressful dispatches on his iPhone.
The most nerve-wracking are those which demand empathy, an emotion declared un-American and unprofitable by the current regime. Latest examples of not caring for others is the refusal to help needy and even suicidal sailors trapped in abysmal conditions on an aircraft carrier in the Middle East, as well as abandoning cabinet secretaries and members of the media as unprotected decoys on an Air Force One plane while the President scuttled from danger in a food wagon.
And if you think that’s unsettling, here’s the real reason why Codger can’t even take a nap. There is suspected Iranian cyberactivity targeting hundreds of small-town American water systems. According to a recent New York Times story, more than one hundred municipalities have reported some level of cyber-diddling, from mere shadowy signs of a hacking presence to an actual change of water pressure that might have been caused by external activity. The barbarians are no longer at the gates. They could be on Goat Hill.
Three years ago, during the Biden administration, the Environmental Protection Agency proposed some modest safeguards to protect municipal water systems. But when our very own Lee Zeldin took over the EPA for President Trump, they were brushed off. Since then, there have been more and more reports of cyber incidents. There have been no reports, so far, of major disruptions.
This leads those who follow such events to believe that while something is going on, it tends to be more warning than imminent danger. The Iranian hackers are flexing their cyber muscles, alerting the U.S. of what could lie ahead. You expect Codger to rest through that? Threats to the water supply are pretty serious business, which Codger, a director of the West Neck Water District, takes pretty seriously.
Seriously enough to call Joe Pokorny, deputy CEO for Operations of the Suffolk County Water Authority, the public benefit corporation that runs the water systems for West Neck and for Dering Harbor.
As usual, Joe was patient and placating; SCWA was acutely aware of reports of the possible threats, he said, and not quite at liberty (for security reasons) to reveal all the safeguards it has in place. It would be “impossible,” he said, for the bad guys to introduce “bacterial contaminants” in our water supply through hacking, and the reports of hacking in the Times had mostly to do with the vulnerability of the internet. Only when working remotely from the main office to a well, for example, is the system exposed. But couldn’t that include activity, say, between Goat Hill on Shelter Island and SCWA headquarters?
Joe seemed to think that was unlikely. Codger was somewhat mollified but still left wondering if he was properly responding. Or was Codger responding to paranoid stress? How about putting cameras on the SCWA wells instead of Crescent Beach? That’s over the top. After all, wouldn’t any attack on an American water system would be considered an act of war? Are the Iranians that cocky?
And maybe it’s all a government ploy to keep us tired and confused. The season’s almost over. That’s been terror enough. And anyway, who would try to terrorize such a symbol of everyday American life as a small town like Shelter Island? If you can’t rest here, where can you rest?
