A long-awaited agreement between the New York State Department of Environmental and New York City Department of Environmental Protection has been signed.
The consent order is to reduce the impact of discharges into an Ulster County creek. The DEC in late September announced the agreement with the DEP. At that point, the consent order was awaiting the signature of the New York City Comptroller and DEC commissioner. With both signatures now on paper, the consent order to reduce the impact of discharges from the Ashokan Reservoir into the Lower Esopus Creek is in effect. A number of local officials had been calling for the consent order to be finalized as a draft document from the state Department of Health currently out for comment does not address turbidity in the Lower Esopus, which lies outside the New York City watershed. That document contains draft revisions to New York City’s 2007 Filtration Avoidance Determination, or FAD, which would allow DEP to avoid building a filtration system for the Catskill/Delaware watershed.
