Riverkeeper, Catskill/Delaware Watershed

Organization: Riverkeeper, Inc.
Project Leader: Alex Matthiessen, Hudson Riverkeeper & Executive Director
Project Staff: Marc A. Yaggi, Senior Watershed Attorney;
Leila Goldmark, Watershed Attorney;
Chris Wilde, Watershed Attorney;
Bill Wegner, Watershed Analyst
Link: http://www.riverkeeper.org/
Regulatory Organization: New York City Department of Environmental Protection
Regulatory Organization Leader: Christopher O. Ward, Commissioner
Links: http://www.ci.nyc.ny.us/html/dep/html/watersup.html
http://www.epa.gov/OWOW/watershed/ny/nycityfi.html
Geographic Area: United States, Croton, Catskill, and Delaware Watersheds, New York State

Each day, New York City's Drinking Water Supply Watershed supplies up to 1.5 billion gallons of unfiltered drinking water to almost 10 million New Yorkers in New York City and parts of Westchester, Putnam, Orange and Ulster Counties � almost half the population of New York State. The watershed, located in the Catskills and Westchester, Putnam, and Dutchess Counties, is approximately 2,000 square miles in size and is home to approximately 250,000 people. This critical natural treasure also provides unique wildlife and fish habitat, historic architectural and cultural resources, and spectacular landscapes. The catastrophic consequences of not protecting the watershed are economic and social as well as environmental.

Riverkeeper has been working on preserving and protecting the New York City Watershed since 1987. During that time, Riverkeeper built a concerted campaign that educated the New York City public and persuaded State and City political leaders to address the precipitous decline of the City's once legendary drinking water. The campaign involved cultivating media, and organizing over 60 civic and public interest groups including labor unions, real estate managers, housing, gay rights, minority rights, arts, and environmental groups into a cohesive coalition that forced City officials to begin protecting water quality. In 1989, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency declared that any drinking water authority using reservoir water had to build a filtration plant unless managers could find alternative means to control pollution within their watersheds. New York City estimated that filtration would cost a budget-breaking $6-$8 billion; these costs would be strapped onto the backs of the poor. Moreover, filtration does not remove all pollutants and can fail. Riverkeeper advocated watershed protection as an effective alternative.

In 1995, Riverkeeper's campaign reached a milestone when Governor Pataki agreed to hold negotiations with numerous stakeholders on the future of the City water supply. These talks involved 92 parties, including officials from state, federal, municipal, and county offices, 70 upstate towns and villages, along with water consumer and conservation groups led by Riverkeeper. The negotiations spanned more than 250 meetings lasting 21 months. In January 1997, the historic New York City Watershed Memorandum of Agreement (the MOA), an 1,800 page agreement that obligates New York City water consumers to pay nearly $1.4 billion (a bargain compared to the cost of filtration) to protect City water, was signed into law.

The MOA designates funds for, among other things: provisions for purchasing open space, upgrading all watershed sewer plants to state-of-the-art microfiltration and phosphate removal (to reverse the process of eutrophication) technology, repairing thousands of private septic systems, improving stormwater infrastructure, and implementing best management practices on watershed farms. It includes tens of millions of dollars for upstate towns and counties to conduct their own watershed cleanup programs, and $60 million to assist in the environmentally sensitive economic revitalization of Catskills communities. The MOA also includes regulations that limit dangerous development practices around waterbodies.

As part of the agreement in 1997, federal EPA officials agreed to give the City a five-year temporary waiver on the requirement to construct an enormously expensive filtration plant. On November 26, 2002, EPA renewed the Filtration Avoidance Determination (FAD) for New York City's Catskill/Delaware Watershed. Although the FAD is a long way from addressing sprawl in the East-of-Hudson watershed, the final document includes many improvements and significantly increases watershed protection over the plan EPA proposed in its draft. The 2002 FAD contains more concrete requirements and deadlines for watershed programs.

Nevertheless, the East-of-Hudson watersheds of the New York City drinking water supply are suffering from an onslaught of sprawl development. Developers are pushing into every remaining unoccupied corner of the watershed, building roads, strip malls, office complexes, apartment buildings and residential subdivisions. In the process, they are paving wetlands with parking lots and roadways, filling fragile streams, building in stream, lake and wetland buffers, excavating hillsides and clearing forestland.

Despite its shortcomings, experts in the field agree that the Watershed Agreement stands as a progressive model for drinking water protection. But without aggressive implementation and enforcement, the Watershed Agreement will fail. Riverkeeper serves as a watchdog to ensure proper implementation and enforcement of the Agreement.