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New York City Making Good Progress, But Must Step Up Efforts to Protect Drinking Water

Release Date: 05/31/2000
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(#00111) New York, New York – Overall, New York City has made significant progress in protecting the Catskill/Delaware watershed, but it must step up its efforts to avoid being required to filter its water in the long-term. In May 1997, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) decided to conditionally exempt the city, from federal requirements to filter the Catskill/Delaware system, the source of almost 90% of its drinking water. That decision is set to expire in April 2002. EPA issued this exemption, called a Filtration Avoidance Determination (FAD), based on the city’s commitment to take numerous steps to protect the watershed. The Agency has completed a mid-course review of the city’s compliance with the requirements of the FAD and prepared a report identifying successes, corrections and improvements that must be made, and opportunities for enhancements. The report on the mid-course review reflects public input, obtained through written comments and from public informational sessions and small meetings. The FAD was made possible by a Memorandum of Agreement (MOA), signed by EPA, New York State, New York City, watershed towns, villages and counties, and environmental parties on January 21, 1997. The MOA is broader in scope than EPA’s FAD. It includes elements that apply to the Croton System, which supplies the other 10% of the city’s water, as well as the Catskill/Delaware Systems. Today’s mid-course review focuses only on the conditions of the FAD. EPA’s Regional Administrator, Jeanne M. Fox, who signed the 1997 FAD, said, "The city has done well in a number of areas, but in others they are falling far behind. They must turn things around or risk being required to filter." The report, which will set the stage for EPA’s next filtration avoidance decision, scheduled for April 2002, gives the city high marks in a number of areas. The city: continues to provide safe, clean drinking water that meets all federal drinking water standards and samples regularly for Giardia and Cryptosporidium, for which there are currently no federal Maximum Contaminant Levels, has worked with a local corporation to repair or rehabilitate nearly one thousand septic systems in the Catskills, has developed and implemented a ground-breaking disease surveillance program, which serves as a national model, has successfully implemented an extensive watershed sampling program and distribution system sampling program, has implemented a very successful program to reduce pollutant runoff from farms, with more than 90% of the farms located in the watershed enrolled in a Whole Farm Program, met and exceeded land acquisition solicitation goals in priority areas surrounding key reservoirs, and successfully acquired approximately 20,000 acres in the watershed, including 5,389 acres - 38% of land solicited - around the West Branch Reservoir, increased compliance with current state permits, correcting violations at sewage treatment plants in the watershed, with a drop in significant non-compliance from 30% to 8%, and upgraded all six city-owned sewage treatment plants in the Catskill/Delaware watershed, which accounted for 40% of the total sewage treatment plant discharges into the watershed. Thirty-four non-city-owned sewage treatment plants, not yet upgraded (see below), account for 60% of the treatment plant discharges. However, the city is falling behind in some critical areas, which must be substantially addressed prior to EPA’s next decision on filtration. The two most critical areas in which the city must significantly better its progress are: acquiring land or conservation easements around the Kensico Reservoir, where nearly all of the water from the Catskill/Delaware system flows before it enters the distribution system and where the City has only purchased 17 acres out of an available 1000 acres; and upgrading the treatment technology at the 34 non-city-owned sewage treatment plants located in the Catskill/Delaware watershed (the city is also required by a Watershed MOA to upgrade the sewage treatment plants in the Croton system, bringing the total to more than 100). EPA is recommending that the city: expand to the Rondout and West Branch Reservoirs its successful Waterfowl Management Program, designed to reduce the amount of waterfowl fecal matter (a source of coliform) that enters the reservoirs, develop a strategy to further reduce non-point source pollution, such as storm water runoff and failing septic tanks, in the Catskill/Delaware drainage basin east-of-Hudson, expedite completion of Stream Management Plans and demonstration projects to reduce water turbidity (cloudiness), aggressively review all permit applications that come into the Army Corps of Engineers under its Nation-Wide Permit program for wetlands fill resulting from development and construction, and set a goal of increasing wetlands acreage in the watershed, strengthen public outreach efforts to communicate with communities affected by watershed issues, develop a long-term mechanism to better detect and correct failing septic systems, get more involved at an earlier stage in the State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA) process, which requires local agencies to study environmental impacts of development actions, and map impervious surfaces in the watershed, conduct an analysis of its entire watershed monitoring program to ensure that the program can detect trends and measure pollutant reductions watershed-wide, and reinstate its Annual Water Quality Report (last published in 1993), to integrate the tremendous amount of data that are collected throughout the watershed, and get as much of this information out to the public as possible. The 1997 FAD still requires the city to design a filtration system for the Catskill/Delaware if it is unable to protect drinking water quality in the long-term. The city is on schedule in meeting these design requirements. EPA can, at any time, require the city to filter its system if the Agency determines that the quality of the drinking water is threatened. The city appears to be adequately protecting the Catskill/Delaware drinking water source for the time being and EPA does not expect to make any filtration decisions until the current FAD expires in 2002. "Right now, the city continues to provide safe drinking water and so far, there has been no need to require filtration," Ms. Fox added. "We’re only half way through this current FAD, and clearly there is plenty of work still to be done."