NYC official to meet with town leaders about creek
Lawmakers want the city to take responsibility for the impact of discharges from the Ashokan Reservoir.
The supervisors of towns along the Lower Esopus Creek have gotten a commitment from New York City that there will be discussions about the muddy water being discharged into the creek from the city’s Ashokan Reservoir, and Ulster County lawmakers want the city to take responsibility for the impact of the discharges on the creek, its banks and its wildlife.
Town of Ulster Supervisor James Quigley said a meeting among the town leaders and New York City Department of Environmental Protection Deputy Commissioner Paul Rush is being arranged, though a date has not been set.
Among other things, the towns want the DEP to improve communications with local residents about reservoir-related issues. In a recent email to the Freeman, a city spokesman said it is the responsibility of municipalities and environmental groups to obtain such information and that those entities have failed to be specific about what they’re seeking.
“At one point, [stakeholder group] members asked for data, but they were not clear on what data they wanted,” Adam Bosch wrote. “So we asked them to put it in writing so that we could get the right thing. We collect billions, if not trillions, of [pieces of] data each year.”
Ulster County lawmakers, meanwhile, wrote in a recent letter to DEP Commissioner Vincent Sapienza that the effects on the creek of the muddy discharges from the reservoir
“have been damaging and measurable,” and that “for more than a decade, the ... DEP has abdicated responsibility and denied a correlation between turbid water management in the Ashokan and ... compromised water quality in the Lower Esopus.”
The letter said the effects of the discharges “can be readily observed by an unaided and untrained eye.”
The discharges, which prevent turbid and muddy water in the reservoir from reaching customers’ taps in New York City, turn the Lower Esopus Creek a chocolatey brown from where it starts in Olivebridge to where it ends 32 miles downstream, at the Hudson River in Saugerties.
New York City sends up to 600 million gallons of muddy water per day from the reservoir into the Lower Esopus, which passes through the towns of Olive,
Marbletown, Hurley, Ulster and Saugerties. The city is seeking permission from the state to continue the practice indefinitely.
The letter to Sapienza, signed by 22 of the county Legislature’s 23 members, said the DEP must “continue to explore turbid water mitigation solutions in the Ashokan Reservoir with particular concern and regard for the adverse effects on Ulster County residents, visitors and economic viability.”
The only legislator who didn’t sign the letter was Republican Craig Lopez of Wawarsing.