Creek gets attention in filtration waiver
NYC could be required to consider impact of discharges from Ashokan Reservoir
For the first time since putting the Ashokan Reservoir into use 102 years ago, New York City might be required to consider the economic and environmental impacts of releasing turbid water from the reservoir into the Lower Esopus Creek.
Language stating that such impacts on communities along the creek must be taken into account is included in the final draft of the new Filtration Avoidance Determination for the city, made public Friday by the state Department of Health.
The Filtration Avoidance Determination, or FAD, must be renewed by the state every 10 years and contains rules by which the city must abide in order to continue being exempt
from the costly process — estimated at up to $40 billion — of filtering its drinking water supply at the upstate source.
The Ashokan Reservoir, in central Ulster County, is the city’s largest water source.
The language regarding turbid, or muddy, water that periodically is released from the reservoir into the Lower Esopus Creek is an outgrowth of a 2013 order issued by the state Department of Environmental Conservation, which outlined when such water could be released and how much could be discharged into the creek.
The draft of the new FAD states that “impacts to the Ashokan Reservoir, Lower
Esopus Creek and Kensico Reservoir [which is in Westchester County and receives water from the Ashokan] will be considered” and that the city “will evaluate a suite of alternatives that could be executed.”
“Where potential adverse impacts are indicated, reasonable and practicable measures that have the potential to avoid, mitigate, or minimize these impacts will be identified,” the draft states.
The FAD that’s currently in effect states New York City “is required to ... analyze the potential environmental and socioeconomic impacts” of turbid water releases, but it makes no mention of the Lower Esopus Creek, which winds for 32 miles from the reservoir’s west basin in Olive to the Hudson River at Saugerties, passing through numerous
Ulster County communities along the way.
From October 2010 through February 2011, and during roughly the same period in 2011-12, New York City discharged up to 600 million gallons of turbid water per day from the reservoir into the Lower Esopus Creek, by way of a “waste channel,” to avoid the cost of having to deal with the muddiness father along the water’s route to the city.
The result was a creek as brown as the chocolate river in “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” and the loss of recreational uses of the waterway.
In October 2012, the state fined New York City $2.74 million for making the 2010-11 discharges without approval, though the fine largely comprised the cost of programs the city will fund if an environmental
review of the creek is conducted.
The draft of the new FAD was developed over the past year by the state Department of Health in conjunction with the New York City Department of Environmental Protection, which operates the city’s upstate reservoirs, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the state Department of Environmental Conservation.
Adam Bosch, spokesman for the city Department of Environmental Protection, said the department would not comment on the FAD until the document is finalized.
Last October, Bosch said the city should not be required to consider the impact of turbid water discharges on Lower Esopus Creek communities because they are not part of the watershed from which the
Ashokan Reservoir draws its supply.
“The FAD relates only to activities in the watershed that New York City is required to take to meet objective water quality standards for unfiltered surface water supplies,” Bosch wrote in an email at the time. “[The] matter of releasing water from Ashokan Reservoir into the Lower Esopus Creek is separate from those activities .... ”
Michael Dulong, an attorney for the Hudson River advocacy group Riverkeeper, said Friday that studies of the Lower Esopus Creek should be conducted before the new FAD is allowed to take effect.
“We have asked the [state] Department of Health to do a full environmental impact statement before it does the FAD,” he said.
“Typically .. the point of
the [state environmental review] process is to take a look at the impact before a governmental agency takes an action,” Dulong said. “What’s happening here is the Department of Health is putting off the study of those environmental impacts until after it issues the final FAD. It is a point of contention and something we’re going to take a closer look at.”
The state Department of Health is accepting written comments from the public on the draft FAD until Sept. 5. They may be emailed to fadcomme nts@health. ny.gov or sent by U.S. mail to NYC Watershed Section, Bureau of Water Supply Protection, NYS Department of Health, Corning Tower, Room 1110, Empire State Plaza, Albany, N.Y. 12237.