New Filtration Waiver Poses Challenges for NYC Water Supply
Published by the Natural Resources Defense Fund
The New York State Health Department has issued a new waiver that will allow New York City to continue to avoid having to filter its Catskill and Delaware drinking water supplies—staving off, at least for now, the multi-billion dollar costs of filtering the primary water supply for more than 9.5 million downstate New Yorkers.
The Health Department’s determination marks another step down the long road to safeguarding the nation’s largest municipal drinking water supply deep into the 21st century.
But now comes the hard part: New York City must successfully implement the dozens of strategies and programs outlined in the State’s 117-page waiver document, or risk having the Health Department (or the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency) revoke the waiver.
New York City’s Pepacton Reservoir is one of six that will not have to be filtered under new NYS waiver—provided comprehensive pollution prevention measures are advanced.
Eric A. Goldstein
New York City’s Catskill and Delaware water supplies are one of only five major U.S. drinking water systems that have received waivers from the federal Safe Drinking Water Act’s requirement that all surface drinking water supplies must be filtered to remove health-threatening impurities.
Under that statute and its implementing regulations, water providers can obtain a filtration waiver only if their water supplies continue to meet high standards and they implement comprehensive watershed protection programs to preserve the high quality of their source waters. (The four other big cities with filtration waivers are Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, and Boston.)
The State Health Department’s action is the latest in a series of filtration waivers that New York City has obtained for its six, huge West-of-Hudson River Catskill mountain reservoirs since the early 1990s. This wavier is scheduled to last until 2027, provided the waiver conditions are met and that tap water continues to meet water quality standards.
The new filtration waiver is a detailed blueprint that outlines measures New York City must achieve to prevent pollution from entering the reservoirs in the first place.
The waiver continues many of the strategies that state and federal regulators have imposed under previous filtration waivers. These include the purchase from willing sellers of fragile watershed lands that drain into the upstate reservoirs, programs to capture sewage and other pollutants discharged within the watershed boundaries and initiatives to ensure environmentally sound economic vitality for residents in watershed towns.
Significantly, the new filtration waiver sets forth new requirements designed to enhance New York City’s current watershed protection program. These include:
- New willing-seller watershed land acquisition efforts, with an expanded emphasis on the purchase of streamside buffer lands and buy-outs of properties located in hazardous watershed floodplains;
- Additional funding for rehabilitation and replacement of septic systems owned by government facilities and non-profit organizations located within watershed boundaries, as well as additional funding for residential septic system overhauls and sewage line extensions;
- A renewed focus on, and renewed funding for, implementation of Best Management Practices on hundreds of working farms within the watershed;
- Expanded stream management projects throughout the watershed, including such measures as revegetating streambanks and comprehensive streambank rebuilding projects to reduce erosion and turbidity discharges;
- A comprehensive, independent analysis by a team from the National Academy of Sciences to analysis the effectiveness of NYC’s overall watershed protection program; and
- A full-blown, public review of implementation of the new filtration waiver after 5 years, to be administered by the state and with the likely outcome being further refinements and additions to the city’s watershed plan and filtration waiver in 2022.
NYC’s Catskill and Delaware drinking water supplies, priceless and irreplaceable, need not be filtered for now. But this is no time for complacency.
DEP
Issuance of the latest waiver was supported by leading environmental organizations, including NRDC, Riverkeeper and the Catskill Center for Conservation and Development, whose staff participated in the negotiations leading up the State’s determination.
While NRDC is supportive of the new waiver, we have emphasized that the watershed protection program on which the waiver is based is not self-executing. It will require diligent efforts by New York City’s Department of Environmental Protection and by Mayor De Blasio in City Hall to ensure that adequate funding, personnel and staff are available and deployed to implement the comprehensive new requirements in timely fashion.
It will also be necessary for New York City to continue to strengthen the cooperative partnership between the city and upstate watershed communities to advance the dual mission of enhancing pollution prevention strategies while working to provide a sustainable economic future for watershed residents. This includes continuing support for organizations like the Catskill Watershed Corporation and the Watershed Agricultural Council, which have proven to be strong partners in New York City watershed protection efforts over the years.
As we enter 2018, one of the most important responsibilities of the De Blasio administration must be to safeguard New York’s priceless and irreplaceable upstate water supply so as to avoid the kind of decline in this system that now is now dragging down New York’s other most critical asset—it’s public transit system.
Read the full article at: https://www.nrdc.org/experts/eric-goldstein/new-filtration-waiver-poses-challenges-nyc-water-supply
