The Nassau Inter-County Express, better known as NICE Bus, will bring back the half-hourly N88 from Freeport and hourly N87 from Hicksville for the summer, starting Saturday, May 25, the agency announced last week.

Both bus lines start at the Long Island Rail Road stations in their respective towns of origin. The LIRR is offering package fares for those taking the train to the bus to the beach—$18.50 from Penn Station or Brooklyn and $15.25 from Jamaica.

The buses stop at Jones Beach’s two bathhouses and Central Mall. They will only run on weekends until June 24, when the daily service starts through Labor Day.

The N88 will also run after concerts at the Nikon Jones Beach Theater.

The cash one-way fare is $2.25 and the Metro Card fare is $2.50.

The events range from fundraisers for Superstorm Sandy survivors and family events for the kids to local bars and restaurants offering specials on burritos, margaritas and Coronas—so break out that souvenir sombrero from Cancun.

But, before leaving the house in a poncho, here’s a quick North American history refresher lesson:  Cinco de Mayo is not—like some people mistakenly believe—Mexican Independence Day, which is Sept.16.

The holiday commemorates the Battle of Puebla, when Mexican forces turned back invading French troops in 1862—a symbol of resiliency for the world’s most populous Spanish-speaking nation.

And for those who still remember their high school Spanish 101, here’s a potentially useful bonus factoid—a Mexican saying that may come in handy on the Long Island Rail Road this weekend: “A boca de borracho, oídos de cantinero.”

It translates to “the mouth of drunk, ears of barman.” It basically means ignore the loud drunks.

Saturday
10 a.m.-5 p.m., Cinco de Mayo Dive Meet, Nassau County Aquatic Center, Eisenhower Park, East Meadow, 516-572-0501.

2-4 p.m., Cinco de Mayo at the Long Island Children’s Museum, 11 Davis Ave., Garden City, 516-224-5800.

Cinco de Mayo Kickoff Party, Napper Tandy’s Irish Pub, 275 Rte 25A, Miller Place, 631-331-5454. $4 Coronas and margaritas.

May 4-5: Cinco de Mayo Weekend at The Nutty Irishman. 323 Main St. Farmingdale. 516-293-9700. $4 Coronas, 8-10 p.m.

Sunday
11 a.m.-2 p.m., Cinco de Mayo Festival at the Garden of Eve Organic Farm & Market. 4558 Sound Ave, Aquebogue, 631-523-6608

11 a.m.-2 p.m., Cinco de Mayo at the Long Island Game Farm Wildlife Park. 638 Chapman Blvd, Manorville, 631-878-6644. www.longislandgamefarm.com

12-2:30 p.m. or 3-5:30 p.m., Cinco de Mayo Fiesta Kid’s Fun Skate. United Skates of America, 1276 Hicksville Rd. Seaford, 516-795-5474.

2 p.m., Cinco de Mayo: Serenata Mexicana. The Suffolk Theater, 118 E. Main St. Riverhead, 631- 727-4343. $35.

2-3 p.m., Latin Music. Long Island Museum of American Art, History and Carriages, 1200 Route 25A  Stony Brook, 631-751-0066

2-5 p.m., Mambo Loco at Martha Clara Vineyards. 6025 Sound Ave. Riverhead, 631-298-0075

3-8 p.m., Cinco de Mayo Party, Sandy survivor fundraiser, Knights of Columbus, 2333 Bellmore Ave., Bellmore, 516-785-9407. $40.

3-9 p.m., Cinco de Mayo at Pefecto Mundo Latin Bistro. 1141-1 Jericho Turnpike, Commack, 631-864-2777.

10 p.m.-12 a.m., Cinco de Mayo at Lily Flanagan’s Pub. 345 Deer Park Ave., Babylon, 631-539-0816

Cinco de Mayo Party at Dublin Deck. 325 River Ave, Patchogue, 631-207-0370.

Cinco de Moe’s at Moe’s Southwest Grill, multiple locations. Homewrecker burrito, chips and salsa for $5 and bobblehead Cinco de Moe’s collector’s cups.

Margaritas and Fajitas at Cozymel’s Mexican Grill, 1177 Corporate Dr., Westbury.11 a.m.-12 a.m.

Buy two tacos get one free at Chico’s Tex-Mex Restaurant, 18 Berryhill Rd., Syosset, 516-802-3500. 11 a.m.-11 p.m.

$2 tacos, $5 nacho platters, $3 beers and $4 margaritas and sangrias at Swell Taco, 135 Deer Park Ave., Babylon, 631-482-1299. 12-4 p.m.

$5 margaritas, $3 beers, free giveaways, Don Juan’s, multiple locations.

-Compiled by Danny Mounce

Rep. Steve Israel (D-Dix Hills) at a news conference in Hicksville on Monday, April 29, 2013.

A Long Island congressman is proposing legislation to help reduce a massive backlog of claims in the Department of Veterans Affairs, where vets are waiting an average of 273 days.

Rep. Steve Israel (D-Dix Hills) said his proposed End the VA Claims Backlog Now Act will help about 890,000 veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, including some veterans making first-time claims who wait an average of 327 days.

“It’s unfathomable that the average wait time for veterans to start receiving benefits is 273 days,” Israel said Monday during a news conference at the VFW Hall in Hicksville. “The VA must do better, and that’s why I’m introducing legislation that would greatly reduce this backlog.”

Israel, a member of the House Appropriations Committee, added that for veterans living in a metropolitan area, the average wait for disability compensation is a staggering 642 days—a statistic that evoked gasps from the crowd of veterans in attendance.

This bill would give provisional benefits to those veterans filing for disability if their claims aren’t processed within 125 days. “If it is not adjudicated within 125 days [the affected veteran] automatically gets a 40 percent disability rating, no matter what,” said Israel.

Veterans disability ratings are assigned in 10 percent increments, ranging from 10 percent to 100 percent disabled—the higher the rating the more severe the disability, and the higher the monthly compensation, according to NOLO Network, a legal advice website.

Tireak Tulloch, a Brooklyn native who was deployed to Iraq twice and served a combined eight years in the Marine Corps reserve, credited Israel with signing a petition by the nonprofit Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America calling on President Barack Obama to end the backlog.

Tulloch, a leadership fellow with that nonpartisan veterans’ organization, recalled that Obama has said that it was necessary to shoulder some of the burden that veterans are made to bare and to continue to honor them, bringing strength to both the service men and women and to our nation as a whole.

“We need the president to stay true to these words,” said Tulloch. “As of last week we have over 880,000 veterans with pending claims in the VA system, and of that, over 610,000 [are] in the backlog. This is completely unacceptable and we must do more.”

Israel emphasized that there’s no reason why the bill shouldn’t be met with overwhelming bipartisan support.

“In a few weeks all of my colleagues will be marching in the Memorial Day parades, waving flags and talking about our obligation to veterans,” said Israel. “It’s time to put their money where their mouths are. It’s time to pass this bill.”

The victim was hit shortly after 11 a.m. by the 10:05 a.m. train from Hicksville due in Port Jefferson at 11:10 a.m., according to the LIRR.

The train was cancelled and service was temporarily suspended in both directions on the Port Jefferson Branch while MTA Police investigators are on the scene.

The identity of the victim was not immediately available.

The suspect first walked into the USA Gas Station on Fulton Avenue in Farmingdale, brandished a black handgun at the clerk and stole cash at 3:25 a.m., police said.

The same robber then walked into the Exxon Gas Station on Hempstead Turnpike in Levittown, where he again flashed a black handgun and stole cash, packages of cigars and cigarettes at 3:40 a.m., police said.

Five minutes later, the gunman entered a 7-Eleven on Jerusalem Avenue in Hicksville, where he stole cash and cigarettes, police said.

The victims were not injured and the robber fled. The suspect was described as a black or Hispanic man, 25 to 30 years old, 5-feet, 7-inches tall with a slim build, wearing a black hooded jacket.

Robbery Squad detectives ask anyone with information regarding these crimes to contact the Crime Stoppers at 1-800-244-TIPS. All callers will remain anonymous.

Nassau County police said 19-year-old Gagandeep Singh was driving a BMW when he stopped Honda with four people inside at the 7-Eleven on Hempstead Turnpike in East Meadow at about 4 a.m.

Singh allegedly asked the 21-year-old woman driving the car to get out, showed her a fake FBI identification card and asked her to open the trunk so he could search it, police said.

When police officers arrived, they found Singh had two New York State drivers’ licenses bearing his name with two different dates of birth along with the fake FBI ID card, police said.

Singh was charged with criminal impersonation, criminal possession of a forged instrument, driving while intoxicated and unlicensed operation of a motor vehicle.

He will be arraigned Sunday at First District Court in Hempstead.

Mohammad Riaz, a 34-year-old Westbury resident and owner of Applied Construction Inc., pleaded not guilty Wednesday in Bronx court to money laundering, grand larceny, scheme to defraud and other charges.

Pleading not guilty to similar charges were 39-year-old Mohammad Arshad, his manager from Hicksville, and 58-year-old Zbigniew “Ziggy” Lakomiec, his foreman from Brooklyn.

“Contractors who work on affordable housing cannot ignore New York State’s labor laws,” said New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who alleged the trio schemed to avoid prevailing wage laws by underpaying workers.

Applied Construction was required by law and their contract with the city to pay prevailing wages to workers on a taxpayer-funded affordable housing project on Kingsbridge Terrace in the Bronx between Nov. 9, 2011 and Aug. 30, 2012.

Instead, the trio allegedly paid the workers a fraction of the lawful rate and did not provide supplemental benefits, according to the attorney general. They allegedly tried to cover their tracks by excluding from payroll reports the workers they paid in cash. Some workers who were included on payroll were ordered to back kickbacks to the suspects, authorities said.

Judge Richard Lee Price set bail for Riaz and Arshad at $10,000. Lakomiec was released without bail. All three face up to 15 years in prison on the grand larceny charge.

Remick Menjivar pleaded guilty Friday at Nassau County court to robbery and assault.

Prosecutors said that the 19-year-old and another man, Edwin Flores, 21, of Hicksville, approached the victim in the driveway of his Hicksville home when Menjivar pulled  out a 9mm Republic Arms semi-automatic handgun and demanded the victim’s keys, wallet, and cell phone on March 20, 2012.

Menjivar fled in the victim’s Infiniti G35 while Flores followed in a Toyota Corolla but officers spotted the stolen Infiniti shortly later and tried to pull over Menjivar, who instead drove into the parking lot of the Fayette Elementary School on Merrick Avenue in North Merrick, where he crashed head-on into a patrol car.

The Infiniti then crashed into the school building. Menjivar tried to flee again but was quickly apprehended. Several officers were injured in the chase, including one who suffered a serious head injury.

Flores was arrested in Freeport shortly later. The Corolla he was driving had been carjacked four days prior in Queens. Flores pleaded guilty to robbery last month and is awaiting  sentencing.

Judge William Donnino has promised to sentence Menjivar to 14 years in prison on March  15.

There’s a stretch of Cantiague Rock Road in Hicksville, just north of Hicksville High School, its middle school and Lee Avenue Elementary, where pedestrians aren’t permitted to stand on the sidewalk.

There are no signs stating this, no barricades cordoning the area off, no flashing lights demarcating a construction zone or telling passersby it’s private property. But if you stop there for even a few moments to take a gander at the fenced-off property—three decrepit-looking buildings and their equally decrepit-looking parking lots—any day of the week, during any time of day, 24/7, someone will unquestionably instruct you to keep moving, to shuffle along, scram.

If your intention is to snap a few photos, as mine was at about 3 p.m. on the Sunday before Christmas Eve, you’ll get more than advice; undoubtedly you’ll receive an angry visit by one of several charged-up, plain-clothed men shouting for you to buzz off—they might even chase you away.

There’s really not much to look at, though. Sandwiched between a distribution warehouse on its south, a driving range and children’s playgrounds of Nassau County’s Cantiague Park on the east, and the county’s Department of Public Works headquarters on the north, the three parcels at 140, 100 and 70 Cantiague Rock Road are silent and devoid of life.

The latter’s facade is a beat-up, worn-down brown, with cloudy windows, drawn blinds and the faded outline of its former tenant, Air Techniques, tattooed on its side. At 100 next door stands a naked flagpole, a vast loading dock area long since abandoned and weeds towering several feet high. Several massive metal frames arch above an alley between it and the 140 building, which has part of its exterior wall peeling off and is covered in shredded plastic.

It’s here where an outhouse-shaped guard booth is manned around the clock.

“Off the property,” said an agitated, bespectacled, middle-aged man sporting a moustache when a camera crew and I recently visited to ask a few questions. A mock “Terrorist Hunting Permit” was fastened to his window. “This is private property. Get off the property,” he commanded, refusing to explain who he worked for before slamming the door.

[Click here for more photos of Hicksville's atomic waste site]

There’s a secret in Hicksville. It’s a secret that only a handful of residents of this suburban hamlet know all too well while way too many others haven’t a clue. A secret that has already cost one of the biggest communications companies in the world millions and may end up costing them much, much more. It’s a secret that no matter how tight a lid the security guards stationed there or the site’s owners, Verizon, try to keep on it, the truth is literally leaking out—bleeding into the soil, contaminating the air and poisoning Long Island’s precious groundwater supply.

It’s a revelation that Ronkonkoma resident Gerard Depascale, a father of three and recent grandfather, and his former coworker Liam Neville, of Bayside, Queens fought relentlessly to find out, a reality they live with every single moment of their lives, one the global communications giant is doing everything in its power to control. It’s an ongoing tragedy that a federal judge recently made even more tragic for the plaintiffs; a reality that will undoubtedly affect more families in the future.

This vacant 10.5-acre stretch of land, just north of those schools, separated by a chain-link fence from the public park and situated directly across the street from Nassau BOCES Career Preparatory High School, is a radioactive toxic waste site where nuclear elements and fuel rods were fabricated and processed during the nation’s early atomic energy program in the 1950s and 1960s.

Uranium was burned here. It was released into the surrounding neighborhood from an open “smelting oven,” according to one former worker—or within a “burning building,” according to another. It was also buried here, along with nickel and much more. Unknown amounts of chlorocarbons—Tetrachloroethene, or Perchloroethylene, known as PCE and PERC, respectively—and byproduct chlorinated hydrocarbon Trichloroethylene, or TCE (classified as a human carcinogen by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency), were dumped into unlined sumps and leeching pools, and currently reside in the soil, the groundwater and have volatilized into the air.

People who unknowingly worked atop the site, such as Depascale and Neville, have contracted rare—make that extraordinarily rare and obscure—cancers.

Neville has a rare kidney cancer called membranous nephropathy. Following years of dialysis, he was lucky enough to find a donor and receive a transplant, though now he’s currently facing some complications.

Depascale has an even rarer cancer, called extra-skeletal myxoid chondrosarcoma. It’s Stage Four and it’s in his bone marrow.

Besides the unquantifiable pain and anguish suffered by the two and their loved ones are insurmountable medical bills and an inability to work, not to mention their shortened lifespan.

Depascale and Neville, both former employees of Magazine Distributors, Inc. (MDI), who worked at the 100 building and its warehouse from about 1990 till 2002, when the company suddenly moved (employees were told it was the end of their lease; court transcripts reveal General Telephone and Electronics Corp. (GTE), who merged with Verizon in 2000, “assumed” the lease from MDI after purchasing the 140 property in 1999 for contamination remediation efforts and the 70 location in 2004) are literally battling for survival.

They’re also fighting for justice.

Depascale, his wife Joanne and Neville filed a toxic tort lawsuit against Verizon and its predecessors claiming negligence and liability, among other charges, in Nassau County State Supreme Court in 2007. The case was moved to federal court at the request of the defendants, who argued defense under government contractor immunity law—which protects contractors who perform federal work from lawsuits such as theirs. The jury heard expert testimony from both sides, also learning that an untold number of records relating to the Hicksville site had simply disappeared from GTE/Verizon’s files. Near the end of the trial, the presiding judge in that case, U.S. District Judge Leonard D. Wexler, impaneled an additional two alternate jurors, and according to Neville, ordered that for them to win, the verdict would have to be unanimous.

It was, and on Nov. 12, 2009 after just eight days of testimony, the jury issued its verdict, awarding the trio $12 million on the grounds of causation, negligence and damages, finding they got past the federal contractor immunity.

That detail of this saga has been reported before—as well as the settlement of a 2002 complaint alleging that nearly 300 Hicksville residents who live near the site developed cancers and related injuries because of it.

Unreported is that more than five months after Depascale and Neville’s win, following an appeal by Verizon, Wexler, in the rare instance of a judge going against the will of a jury—ordered the case be retried, on limited grounds, effectively nullifying the award and ultimately, deeming the jury’s verdict a “miscarriage of justice.”

They lost that trial—Neville bleeding through his shirt in the courtroom, though restricted to tell the jury that he or Depascale were even ill. They appealed, Verizon filed a cross-appeal, and now the pair is set to present oral arguments for why Wexler’s order for retrial should be overridden and the jury’s award reinstated before the Second Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals Jan. 15. Yet it’s not simply reparations for their medical debts that they’re fighting for now.

The fate of countless other former residents, former MDI employees and others who’ve worked at the site may literally hang in the balance, since Wexler ordered a stay on another pending class action “medical monitoring” suit that could include innumerable plaintiffs until Depascale and Neville’s appeal has been decided.

A Press investigation—part of an ongoing series into how its industrial and military past is affecting the Island’s current-day environment and residents and consisting of the analysis of hundreds of pages of state and federal records, including investigative reports concerning contamination to the soil, air and water at the site, remediation plans, maps, assessments, internal correspondence and thousands of pages of court filings and transcripts, among others—has discovered that GTE, Verizon and state regulators certainly knew or should have known about the site’s contamination years before Neville and Depascale and the hundreds of others who worked along Cantiague Rock Road ever stepped foot there.

It reveals a twisted and unconscionable game of pass-the-buck when it comes to informing these workers of even the potential for adverse health effects, a game that continues to this day. What’s absolutely indisputable is that many people living around that site and who’ve worked there have developed horrific cancers. And that some have already died from these.

Additionally, the records reveal that despite several state-supervised “voluntary” remediation efforts at the site—the largest conducted by GTE, which one report states included the excavation and removal of at least approximately 100,000 tons of contaminated soil and unearthed, partially filled tanks of radioactive and carcinogenic elements and chemicals—it remains contaminated and its true ramifications on the health and safety of not only Hicksville residents, but all Long Islanders (since we all share drinking water aquifers), may never be known.

Neville, a bachelor, self-professed pessimist, horse bettor and the more outspoken of the pair, staked he and Depascale’s odds in court at 60-40 in Verizon’s favor when I first sat down with them six months ago. Recently, those self-ascribed odds have gotten worse. He says 70-30 now, in Verizon’s favor.

“You ever feel like punching someone in the face and there’s no one there to punch, you’re that angry?” says Neville of how he felt when he learned what was beneath his workplace. “This is a 60 Minutes episode. This happens to somebody else. This doesn’t happen to me. This is insane.”

For Depascale, who has a family to provide for, things have been even worse. Adding even more insult to so much injury, his workman’s compensation claim—which he originally won, is back in court again following two appeals.

“Betrayed,” is how he feels. “They should have told us that that place was contaminated. If I knew about it, at least it would have been my choice to be there, not their choice.

“It’s been a nightmare since I got sick,” he says.

Requests for comment to the plaintiffs’ attorney, Joseph D. Gonzalez, and William H. Pratt, a lead attorney for the defendants in the litigation, went unanswered for this story.