Yesterday, New York-based Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and a coalition of others, including Save the Sound, a program of Connecticut Fund for the Environment, filed a lawsuit in New York State Supreme Court in Westchester County against the State of New York for failing to take the necessary steps to clean up urban stormwater runoff, the leading cause of water pollution in New York.
“Urban runoff is a key driver of bacterial, nitrogen and other pollution that closes our beaches and creates a dead zone in Long Island Sound,” said Roger Reynolds, senior attorney for Connecticut Fund for the Environment. “In order to protect both water quality and the multi-billion-dollar regional economy, it is critical that we hold both New York and Connecticut to standards that will reduce the contamination flowing into the waterway. Over the next two years, Connecticut will invest $280 million in the Clean Water Fund to move clean water projects from the drawing board to implementation, but both states need meaningful standards to protect and preserve the Sound and its ecology or we won’t see any improvement.”
The lawsuit claims that the Clean Water Act permit for operation of statewide municipal storm sewer systems, issued by New York’s Department of Environmental Conservation in April, fails to meet the requirement to reduce polluted urban runoff because it would generally allow existing levels of runoff pollution rather than mandating reductions. Under the Clean Water Act, the permit must sufficiently reduce pollution to achieve New York state water quality standards. Additionally, the permit fails to ensure necessary measures are taken to meet pollution reduction targets for Long Island Sound.
Protecting Long Island Sound is critical for the environment, our economy, and our quality of life. An eight-billion-dollar regional economy, Long Island Sound’s marine trades industry and tourism economy struggle under the burden of pollution. In 2008, Save the Sound released NRDC’s annual beach water quality report, Testing the Waters, which found Connecticut beach closing and advisory days up 25 percent to 135 days from 2007—primarily due to water contamination. Shellfish beds suffer a similar fate; between 2004 and 2009, beds in the Bridgeport area were closed 50 percent of harvestable days due to unchecked pollution that created a public health risk. Marine life is also stressed by excess nutrient runoff which creates the Sound’s “dead zone,” an oxygen-deprived area in the western sector of the estuary that expands each summer, killing anything that cannot move out of its way.
“As summer starts, New Yorkers are heading to the beach, getting in kayaks and breaking out their fishing poles,” said Larry Levine, attorney at the NRDC. “But many of New York’s waterways— including Long Island Sound, our Atlantic beaches, and hundreds of lakes, rivers and streams across the state—are polluted from urban runoff and the state isn’t doing what is required to clean them up. Green roofs and other smart water practices are available today and will provide environmental and economic benefits that are simply not possible if we continue business as usual.”
Connecticut’s Department of Environmental Protection is in the process of updating its own Clean Water Act permits addressing stormwater runoff, which are expected to be completed in the next several years.
