December 14, 2009

Welcome to Environmental Advocates of New York’s online newsletter from the State Capital, your source for environmental news. We update you every other week with insider news and observations carefully gleaned from the halls of the Capitol.

NOT Quite READY FOR “DRILL” TIME

As part of Environmental Advocates of New York’s ongoing investigation into how staff and resource shortages at the State’s primary environmental agency impact air and water quality, we’ve turned up some startling facts. Most recently, our research uncovered that the Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) has insufficient staff not just to monitor water pollution, but also emerging threats to water quality, such as natural gas drilling by means of hydraulic fracturing or “fracking.”

Due to these issues, and a host of others, a coalition of groups including Environmental Advocates, NRDC and others, have called on Governor Paterson to hold off on natural gas drilling until he can be sure New York’s drinking water is protected.

Natural gas drilling is water intensive and requires 2.5 to 8 million gallons of water per well. Fracking also produces salt-laden, toxic wastewater that New York’s treatment plants aren’t prepared to handle. The DEC’s Division of Water will need increased staff and resources to oversee the safe handling and disposal of this industrial waste. But that’s unlikely.  

Since 1990, 72 staff positions have been cut at the DEC’s Division of Water, while responsibilities to protect drinking water, fisheries and aquatic habitat have nearly doubled. Click here to read the report.

A hiring freeze and retirement incentives have forced the DEC to do more with less over the past two years. The agency protects water quality by setting standards for dam safety, regulating water pollution from factories and sewage plants, and controlling storm water runoff from construction sites and factory farms. Currently, New York has only nine staff to oversee the safety of 5,663 dams. By the end of the 2009-10 State Fiscal Year, the DEC’s Division of Water will have lost an additional 30 staffers. Permitting natural gas drilling presents new challenges for which the agency isn’t prepared.    

And the Deficit Reduction Plan recently agreed to by state leaders won’t help matters by making an across-the-board 11 percent cut to the DEC’s budget.

Additional staff and resources are desperately needed. For instance, one result of DEC staff shortages is the agency’s failure to meet federal requirements for water pollution oversight. Under the Clean Water Act, New York is tasked with protecting water from industrial polluters, sewage treatment plants and runoff by means of the State Pollutant Discharge Elimination System program. However, the permit program is flawed due to staff and resource shortages, leading to a crisis—more than 1,000 polluters have not undergone the federally required five-year review of their permits in more than a decade; some permits have not been reviewed for more than 20 years. In 2008, the DEC was forced to test 94 percent fewer effluent samples than it had in 1990 due to staff shortages. 

Without staff to inspect industrial, municipal, construction and farm water discharges, the health of New York’s waters, as well as that of New Yorkers, is at risk. The State needs to dedicate additional resources to the DEC and environmental protection. Without the employees to do the work, water quality cannot be monitored and new contamination from sources such as natural gas drilling cannot be prevented. New York State dedicates hundreds of millions of dollars every year to clean up the State’s legacy of toxic contamination. By dedicating resources to enforce existing laws today, New York can avoid expensive and dangerous situations in the future. 

Defending Drinking Water  is the third in a series of briefs that takes a detailed look at DEC operations, appropriations and staff levels.

Click here to read more, and listen here.
 

IT'S (ALMOST) LAST CALL 

On December 31^st, the public comment period on draft regulations to guide what may be the greatest environmental threat that New York State has seen in decades—natural gas drilling in the Southern Tier and Catskills—will come to a close. Click here to send your comments to Governor Paterson and Department of Environmental Conservation Commissioner Grannis. Click here to read the draft guide.
 

R.I.P. JAMESTOWN, NY'S "CLEAN" COAL PLAN 

On Friday, December 4^th, the United States Department of Energy announced funding for “clean” coal projects using Carbon Capture and Sequestration (CCS) technology. Three projects received almost $1 billion in federal funds, but a hotly debated proposal in Jamestown, NY, wasn’t among them.

Environmental, health and energy groups have been fighting Jamestown, NY’s dirty “clean” coal plant proposal for years, noting the projected high cost of power from the plant and the fact that the community can meet its energy needs more cheaply and cleanly.  

      Analyses have concluded that power from the plant would cost between 15 and 20 cents per kilowatt hour. This is far in excess of the cost of alternatives strategies for meeting Jamestown ratepayer’s electric needs. And 90 percent of Jamestown’s ratepayer electric needs are currently met by low-cost hydropower from the New York Power Authority. Thus, the City’s self-generation needs, now met by an older coal plant, represent only a small fraction of its overall load.

      The project suffered a series of setbacks this summer. In June, environmentalists prevented project-enabling state legislation drafted by the Paterson Administration from being passed in the State Legislature. In August, it was reported that the project’s principal corporate backer, Praxair, Inc., shifted its support from the Jamestown project to one in Holland, MI.

Click here to read more in the Buffalo News. 

Click here to read the coalition’s press release.
 

MEANWHILE, IN ALBANY  

While the national news is full of stories of the global climate summit in Copenhagen and the EPA’s recent endangerment finding regarding global warming pollution (read more here, and here), in Albany the news is all about state lawmakers coming to agreement on the Governor’s Deficit Reduction Plan. 

On December 2^nd, lawmakers agreed to about $2.7 billion in budget cuts, including a $90 million raid on revenue generated by New York’s role in the regional plan to reduce climate-altering power plant pollution (the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, or RGGI), a $10 million sweep from the Environmental Protection Fund, and 11 percent cuts to state agencies.  

While we understand New York’s dire financial straits, we’re not happy about any of these cuts. New York’s environmental agency is already stretched to the breaking point (see our lead story), the Environmental Protection Fund is behind on its financial commitments, and raiding revenue generated by the nation’s first-ever plan to reduce global warming pollution to plug New York’s budget hole hurts consumers and the environment.  

Click here to read about plans to reduce the deficit and here.

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