An environmental group is suing New York City, alleging it is not following the necessary steps to change the upstate watershed that supplies city residents with water.
“What's disappointing about the Riverkeepers lawsuit is they were involved in all of the negotiations,” said Jeff Baker, an attorney with the coalition representing many communities in the Catskills watershed west of the Hudson River.
Baker said the lawsuit by Riverkeeper against New York City is unfounded.
The story of New York City getting its drinking water from the Catskills watershed goes back decades.
The city entered into an agreement in 1997 with the state departments of Health and Environmental Conservation, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, individual towns and counties, and groups like Riverkeeper.
The city bought hundreds of thousands of acres in the watershed to secure its water supply for millions of people. The agreement said New York City would receive unfiltered water from upstate and would compensate upstate communities for the cost of increased regulations.
New York City also had to get a waiver for federal laws regulating drinking water, called a Filtration Avoidance Determination, which it gets from the EPA or the state Department of Health.
Negotiations about how New York City would continue to acquire land upstate, specifically the areas around streams that feed into the city’s watershed, broke down over the summer.
When the negotiations resumed in the winter, Riverkeeper was not invited back. Baker guesses this is probably why Riverkeeper is bringing the lawsuit.
“And all of the substantive points that they're complaining about — regarding the land acquisition program and amendments to conservation easements — were all agreed to by all the parties at the table, including Riverkeeper,” Baker said.
Riverkeeper did not agree with that assessment and said in their lawsuit that the New York City Department of Environmental Protection is not following the environmental review process at all.
“If Riverkeeper had agreed that this was in the best interest of those nine-and-a-half million New Yorkers who drink unfiltered water from the water supply, our signature would be on the document,” said Riverkeeper Legal Program Director Mike Dulong.
Dulong said the latest deal also does not include the Streamside Acquisition Program, which would protect the watershed’s streams and avoid the unnecessary buying up of land that upstate communities could use to develop.
The lawsuit also says the side-agreement allows for construction, like gravel mining and developing renewables, instead of leaving land undeveloped, and undermines the purpose of the city’s purchase, Dulong said.
Baker said this is “grossly overstated.”
“The conservation easement that was ultimately put in between the city and state was far too restrictive, and it really limited things like minor utility crossing, some necessary road areas, and other things” Baker said.
Dulong said while Riverkeeper supports upstate communities, the city needs to go through all the right processes.
“What has to happen before that takes place is a full environmental analysis of what the impacts of those developments are going to be on these lands that were supposed to have been conserved in perpetuity, forever,” Dulong said.
The New York City Law Department said, “The city is not commenting while the case is under review.”
