Click here for more details. Water Watch NYC – Everything you ever wanted to know about water in NYC
Filed under Drinking Water, History, NYC Media, NYC Water, Notices/Alerts
Thought this might be of interest. Looks like it is two hours but may be a series, can not tell.
Poisoned Waters
PBS FRONTLINE Tuesday, April 21 – 9 to 11pm eastern
America’s great waterways are in peril, facing a new wave of pollution
that is killing fish, causing mutations in frogs, and threatening human
health. Our waters were supposed to be cleaned up by 1983, but they’re
still polluted by industrial-scale animal waste; legacy pollutants like
PCBs; and a toxic brew of new compounds from our modern life-style. Join
Correspondent Hedrick Smith from Chesapeake Bay to Puget Sound and find
out who’s responsible for the new pollution and what you can do about
it.
See video clips, trailer, press release and webcast materials at
http://www.pbs. org/wgbh/ pages/frontline/ poisonedwaters/
Filed under Drinking Water, Thought you might be interested in this
NEW YORK TIMES http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/17/opinion/17fri2.html?_r=1&th&emc=th
April 17, 2009 Editorial
A Clear, Clean Water Act
Clean water policy is in a terrible muddle, and the country has the Supreme Court to thank for it.
The 1972 Clean Water Act was written to protect all the waters and wetlands of the United States. Two unfortunate Supreme Court decisions narrowed its scope, weakened its safeguards and thoroughly confused the federal agencies responsible for enforcing it. As a result, thousands of miles of streams and millions of acres of wetlands have been exposed to development.
The remedy lies in a Senate bill called the Clean Water Restoration Act, which would reassert the broad reach of the 1972 law. Similar legislation has been languishing for years, and if this version has any hope, it will need a strong push from the White House.
The good news is that Lisa Jackson, President Obama’s new head of the Environmental Protection Agency, cares about clean water issues and isn’t afraid of a fight. She has already moved to restrict pollution from coal mining operations in Appalachia and is promising to crack down on polluted runoff from animal feedlots.
Without endorsing any particular bill, Ms. Jackson agreed last week that the system that has long protected America’s waterways from unregulated development and pollution is paralyzed — and will remain paralyzed unless Congress fixes it. An internal E.P.A. report furnished to Congress last year revealed that the agency had dropped or delayed more than 400 cases involving suspected violations of the law — nearly half the agency’s entire docket. The reason in every instance was that regulators did not know whether the streams and wetlands in question were covered by the law.
Until the two Supreme Court rulings, the Clean Water Act had been broadly interpreted by courts and by federal regulators to shield all the waters of the United States — seasonal streams and remote wetlands as well as large navigable rivers and lakes — from pollution and unregulated development. The assumption was that even the smallest waters have some hydrological connection to larger watersheds and therefore deserve protection. The Supreme Court, however, exploiting ambiguities in the law, effectively decreed that only navigable, permanent water bodies deserve protection.
As a result, at least 20 million acres of wetlands and as much as 60 percent of the nation’s small streams have been left unprotected, while effectively shutting down enforcement actions against developers who have been disturbing or plan to disturb these waters without a permit.
The Clean Water Restoration Act would establish, once and for all, that federal protections apply to all waters, as Congress intended in 1972. Now a new Congress and a new White House must ensure that it becomes law.
Note: see www.cleanwaternetwork.org/ Clean Water Network for more info
Clean Water Restoration Act of 2007 (Introduced in House) http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c110:h2421:
Thank you to Joel R Kupferman National Lawyers Guild- Environmental Justice Committee for the forward.
Filed under Drinking Water, NYC Media, NYC Water
I have included this whole press release, including a pdf version as well as the letter written to the Governor.
This press release focuses on many issues — another water board increase in the double digits, using the excess funds for the general fund and not water uses or a double tax to homeowners, and the conflict over the State giving permits to drill for gas near the watershed potentially endangering the lives of the nine million people who drink that water.
PR09-03-074
March 29, 2009
Contact: Press Office
(212) 669-3747
THOMPSON: CITY FAILING TO ADDRESS EXPECTED WATER RATE HIKES
-Thompson Calls Water Board Failure to Complete Comprehensive Rate Study “Unacceptable”-
As New Yorkers confront another looming water rate increase, New York City Comptroller William C. Thompson, Jr. today proposed changes to the New York City water system to spare water ratepayers steeper future costs while ensuring the safety of the region’s water and sewage systems.
“It’s been a year since the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) commissioner stood before the New York City Water Board and vowed to conduct a million-dollar study to devise a better way to calculate water and sewer charges,” Thompson said.
“Even though that commissioner has since left and despite promises to the Board, to my office, to the City Council, and – most importantly – to the public, that review has not been completed in time to inform this year’s rate-setting process – and yet the Water Board is about to announce yet another hefty hike. One could only imagine that if it were done in time, and released early enough, we could have devised a way to cut down on these costs. This is unacceptable, and outrageous. Where has that million dollars gone?”
This Friday morning – April 3rd – the Water Board will meet to consider raising rates for local water consumers. Last year, the board approved a 14.5 percent increase and predicted that this next one would be another astounding double digit increase as well.
Standing with New York City Council Member David Weprin – who has advocated changes to spare New Yorkers sizeable water and sewer rate increases – Comptroller Thompson championed solutions that the Board should strongly consider to help New Yorkers who are already faced with rising subway and bus fares, utility bills, and grocery prices.
“New Yorkers are facing tough times,” Weprin said. “They are losing their jobs and their homes; they are paying more for less across the board – enough is enough. It is time for the DEP to be accountable to the residents of New York City. We must make changes to our water system, at the same time ensuring the safety of our drinking water, but not on the backs of struggling working families. I will oppose any attempt to increase water rates, especially a year after a double-digit increase and water lien sales authority, in order to protect our City’s working families who are struggling.”
The Water Board leases the water and sewer infrastructure from the City. The Board’s rental payments to the City are based on a formula that, until recently, simply reimbursed the City for water-related debt service on bonds issued before the Water Authority was created. Since 2005, however, the formula has led to rental payments in excess of the underlying city expense.
Thompson charged that this formula is forcing water ratepayers to subsidize the City’s General Fund, because “excess rent” flows into that fund and is used as general revenue. In Fiscal Year 2009, such “excess rent” will total nearly $123 million, and this is predicted to swell to more than $207 million by Fiscal Year 2012.
Over the last two years, Thompson proposed rebating the excess rent back to the Water Board to offset the cost of running the water system. In Thompson’s plan, the excess rent would have been split equally for two purposes: ½ for pay-as-you-go capital spending, which reduces costs over the long term, and ½ for other water system expenses, which would lessen the need for rate increases.
Additionally, Thompson identified another source of revenue for our water system that might prevent water rate increases: federal stimulus money. Under the terms of the stimulus bill, the New York State Revolving Fund will receive approximately $432 million for clean water projects and $82 million for drinking water projects. However, only half of that money currently is slated to be distributed in the form of direct grants or similar deep subsidies.
In a letter just sent to Governor David Paterson – which you can read at www.comptroller.nyc.gov –, Thompson asked that the State support direct grant allocation of all of this stimulus money in the face of overwhelming needs of the water systems operating throughout the State, and the New York City Municipal Water Finance Authority in particular.
“A direct grant program to the Authority would have an immediate and lasting impact on New York City’s rate base,” Thompson said. “For every $100 million that is granted rather than loaned, debt service costs of more than $5 million per year will be put back in ratepayers’ pockets. This program also will fund capital repairs that translate into new work and new jobs, not only in the City, but throughout the watershed region.”
Thompson further stressed that another means of bringing savings to ratepayers would be to require that the DEP reduce its operating budget by five percent. Because it relies on water and sewer rates instead of tax revenue, the DEP has been exempted from making the same belt-tightening reductions that have been required at other city agencies.
Thompson further proposed that the State must more strongly regulate and enforce proposed gas drilling in the Marcellus Shale formation, a portion of which sits below the City drinking water supply west of the Hudson River.
“Drilling in or near the watershed potentially threatens to contaminate New York City drinking water and necessitate the construction of a water filtration plant whose cost could well exceed $10 billion for construction alone, further increasing water rates,” Thompson said.
The proposed method of gas extra extraction, known as hydraulic fracturing, involves large quantities of highly toxic chemicals and waste water. The State’s Environmental Impact review process must ensure that no permits are issued where there could be contamination of our drinking water, and that any issued for drilling be coupled with sufficient regulatory controls to protect against the risks of these chemicals and waste water produced as a result of the drilling.
Last December, Thompson submitted recommendations to the State as part of its environmental impact scoping process.
“I will continue to closely monitor and participate in the review process to protect our watershed and ratepayers,” Thompson said. “In protecting our drinking water, we protect our ratepayers precisely at a time when they are feeling the squeeze of the current downturn. Our water system cannot continue with business-as-usual in the face of tremendous economic and environmental threats.”
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Filed under Drinking Water, NYC Water