NYS and NYC M/WBE Certified Contractor
Most demolition problems on the North Shore don’t start with the demolition. They start the moment a crew opens a wall in a 1950s estate home and finds pipe insulation they weren’t licensed to touch — and suddenly your project is on hold while you scramble for a second contractor. That’s the gap we close.
Because Muttontown’s housing stock skews older — with a meaningful portion of homes predating 1980 and some Gold Coast-era properties dating back to the 1920s and 1930s — asbestos-containing materials aren’t a possibility on most projects here. They’re an expectation. Floor tiles, ceiling texture, pipe wrap, joint compound, roofing materials — these were standard building components for decades. A demolition contractor without a NYS Department of Labor Asbestos Handling Contractor License cannot legally disturb them. When that contractor is the same one holding the sledgehammer, your project doesn’t just slow down. It stops.
When you work with a contractor who handles assessment, abatement, and demolition under one license and one project team, the job keeps moving. You get one point of contact, one schedule, and one company accountable for the whole thing — from the first hazardous materials survey through final debris removal. For a property in Muttontown where the average listed home runs over 6,000 square feet and values routinely exceed $1,000,000, that kind of accountability isn’t a luxury. It’s the only way to protect your investment.
Green Island Group is a family-owned, full-service environmental contracting and demolition firm based in Bohemia, NY, serving residential and commercial clients across Long Island and the greater New York metro area. We hold the NYS DOL Asbestos Handling Contractor License required to legally perform abatement work in New York State — and our crews are individually certified asbestos handlers, not just supervised laborers.
We’ve worked throughout Nassau County’s North Shore, including properties in the Town of Oyster Bay corridor that covers Muttontown, East Norwich, Upper Brookville, and Oyster Bay Cove. We know the Town of Oyster Bay Building Division at 74 Audrey Avenue is where your demolition permit comes from. We know the dual-jurisdiction reality of working in an incorporated village within a town. And we know that when your Muttontown property sits adjacent to the Muttontown Preserve or backs up to a multi-acre estate lot, the margin for a sloppy job site is zero.
Our 4.7-star review record reflects something specific: clients consistently name individual team members and call out communication as the reason they’d hire us again. That’s not a coincidence — it’s how we run jobs.
It starts with a site assessment. Before any work is planned, we conduct a thorough walkthrough of the structure — or the specific area being demolished — to document what’s there. For any structure in Muttontown that predates 1980, this includes a hazardous materials survey for asbestos-containing materials and lead paint. OSHA 29 CFR 1926 Subpart T requires a written engineering survey before demolition begins, and we treat that requirement as a baseline, not a formality.
From there, we handle permitting. For Muttontown projects, that means working through the Town of Oyster Bay Building Division — navigating both the town-level permit process and any village-level approvals required. If the project involves Nassau County-maintained roads — for dumpster placement, debris removal access, or utility coordination — we handle the DPW coordination as well. You don’t need to figure out which office to call. That’s our job.
Once permits are in hand and the abatement phase is complete with proper NYS DOL documentation, demolition proceeds. We manage containment to protect the areas of your property that aren’t in scope — finished interiors, landscaping, hardscaping — because on a Muttontown estate, protecting what stays is just as important as removing what goes. The project closes with full disposal documentation: manifests, clearance certificates, and permit sign-offs that protect your property record long after we’re gone.
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Every demolition project in Muttontown comes with a layer of complexity that most general contractors aren’t equipped to handle. The age of the housing stock, the scale of the structures, and the regulatory environment in Nassau County all point in the same direction: you need a licensed demolition contractor who can manage the full scope, not just the part that doesn’t require a specialty license.
We handle residential demolition across Muttontown that covers interior demolition — gut renovations, kitchen and bathroom teardowns, basement conversions, structural modifications — as well as full structural demolition of outbuildings, detached garages, carriage houses, and pool houses. These secondary structure projects are common in Muttontown, where multi-acre lots often include structures that have outlived their usefulness or are being replaced. Each one requires its own Town of Oyster Bay demolition permit, its own hazardous materials survey, and its own disposal documentation. We handle all of it.
For projects involving asbestos, the process follows NYS DOL abatement protocols, with certified handlers, proper containment, and air monitoring throughout. Where EPA NESHAP thresholds are met, we file the required 10-working-day advance notice before demolition begins — so your project timeline is built around compliance, not scrambling to catch up with it. When the work is done, post-project clearance testing confirms the space is safe to reoccupy. That documentation goes to you, in writing, every time.
Yes — and in Muttontown specifically, the permitting process involves more than one layer. Because Muttontown is an incorporated village within the Town of Oyster Bay, demolition permits are issued through the Town of Oyster Bay Building Division, located at 74 Audrey Avenue in Oyster Bay. Depending on the scope of your project, you may also need to confirm with the Village of Muttontown whether any village-level approvals apply alongside the town permit.
If your project involves work near or on Nassau County-maintained roads — including dumpster placement or debris removal access — you’ll also need to coordinate with Nassau County DPW. We handle all of this permitting on your behalf. We pull the permit in our name, satisfy inspection requirements, and provide you with the documentation that protects your property record. For a Muttontown home valued well above $1,000,000, having a clean permit history isn’t optional — it’s part of protecting what you own.
The honest answer is: if your home was built before 1980, you should assume asbestos-containing materials are present until a proper survey says otherwise. In Muttontown, where a significant portion of the housing stock includes Gold Coast-era estates and mid-century custom homes dating from the 1920s through the 1970s, this isn’t a remote possibility — it’s the baseline expectation. The EPA estimates roughly 30 million U.S. homes contain asbestos-containing materials, and HUD data shows lead paint is present in approximately 87% of homes built before 1940.
A qualified asbestos survey involves bulk sampling of suspect materials — floor tiles, ceiling texture, pipe insulation, joint compound, roofing — by a licensed inspector, followed by laboratory analysis. We conduct this survey as the first step on every demolition project where pre-1980 construction is involved in Muttontown. If ACMs are found, we develop an abatement plan that satisfies NYS DOL requirements and execute it with certified workers before any demolition begins. You get documentation of everything — what was found, how it was handled, and where it was disposed of.
This is exactly the scenario that stops projects cold when the demolition contractor isn’t also licensed for abatement. If a crew without an NYS DOL Asbestos Handling Contractor License opens a wall and finds suspect materials, work legally has to stop. You’re then looking at finding an abatement contractor, getting them scheduled, waiting on regulatory processing, and potentially dealing with disturbance of materials that should have been handled before the first wall came down.
Because we hold both demolition and abatement licensing, a mid-project discovery doesn’t create a stoppage. The same team that’s executing the demolition is licensed and equipped to handle what they find. We adjust the scope, document the additional materials, and keep the project moving within the existing regulatory framework. In Muttontown’s older housing stock — where surprises behind walls are genuinely common — this integrated capability is one of the most practical things we bring to a job.
Timeline depends heavily on scope and what the pre-demolition assessment turns up. A straightforward interior demolition — gutting a kitchen or bathroom in a Muttontown home — can often be completed in a few days once permits are in hand. A full structural demolition of a detached garage or outbuilding on a multi-acre estate typically takes longer, particularly when asbestos abatement is part of the scope.
The permit process through the Town of Oyster Bay Building Division adds time to the front end of every project — plan for that before scheduling demolition to begin. If your project meets EPA NESHAP thresholds for asbestos quantity, a mandatory 10-working-day advance notice period applies before demolition can start. We build these regulatory timelines into your project schedule from the beginning, so nothing catches you off guard. The North Shore renovation season tends to peak in spring and early summer, so if you’re planning a project for that window, earlier outreach gives you better scheduling flexibility.
A general contractor can handle demolition work in New York State — but only up to the point where hazardous materials enter the picture. The moment asbestos-containing materials need to be disturbed or removed, New York State law requires a separate NYS DOL Asbestos Handling Contractor License. A general contractor’s license does not cover this work, and individual workers performing asbestos removal must hold their own NYS DOL asbestos handler certifications.
In Muttontown, where the housing stock age profile means ACMs are present on the vast majority of pre-1980 projects, this distinction matters on almost every job. Hiring a general contractor who subcontracts the abatement — or worse, one who proceeds without the proper licensing — creates real liability exposure for you as the property owner. If unlicensed abatement work is performed on your property, the homeowner can bear responsibility for the violation. A licensed demolition specialist who also holds abatement credentials closes that gap entirely, and that’s exactly what we bring to every Muttontown project.
After any demolition project involving asbestos or hazardous materials in New York State, you should receive a complete paper trail — and if your contractor isn’t providing it automatically, that’s a problem. The documentation package should include the pre-project hazardous materials survey, the abatement plan, waste disposal manifests showing chain of custody from your property to a licensed disposal facility, and post-project clearance testing results confirming the space is safe to reoccupy.
In Muttontown, where homes regularly transact above $1,000,000 and where a buyer’s inspector will scrutinize the property record thoroughly, this documentation is a tangible component of your home’s value. If you’ve had asbestos floor tiles removed from a 1955 kitchen or lead paint abated from a pre-war carriage house, you want to be able to show exactly how that work was handled — not just say it was done. We provide this complete documentation package to every client as a standard deliverable, not an add-on. It protects you at resale, at permit applications, and any time a future contractor needs to understand what’s already been addressed in the structure.
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