Calling All Waterway Advocates! Mark your calendar for Nov. 15, 6 - 8 PM. NYC DEP’s Annual, Citywide CSO Meeting is our chance to sound off on the City’s deeply flawed sewage overflow control plans.
The City's proposed CSO Long Term Control Plans will not make our waterways safe for recreational activities. They will leave hundreds of millions of gallons of sewage overflows in each waterbody annually, on dozens of occasions per year. Many of the plans do not reduce overflow volume at all and instead call for diverting raw sewage into the East River or dumping chlorine into raw sewage before discharging it to rivers, creeks, and bays.
We need to let the City know on November 15th that this is not good enough for the City of New York! Click here to register for the meeting.
As explained in recent SWIM news alerts, e-blasts and tweets, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) has approved a series of deeply flawed CSO Long Term Control Plans to address the more than 20 billion gallons of sewage that flows into our waterways each year. The approved plans are for: Alley Creek & Little Neck Bay, Bronx River, Flushing Bay, Flushing Creek, Gowanus Canal, Hutchinson River, and most recently Westchester Creek.
Two more proposed plans are under review by DEC, and two more remain under development by DEP. Coney Island Creek and Newtown Creek are under review. DEP is developing plans, due in December 2018, for Jamaica Bay and the “East River and Open Waters” ( including Hudson River, Harlem River, Upper New York Bay, Lower New York Bay, and the western portion of Long Island Sound).
DEP’s CSO Long Term Control Plan approach envisions that, by 2035, the city will decrease total sewage overflow volume only by about one-third as compared to levels three decades earlier. Most of that reduction has already occurred today -- which means the next two decades would bring little improvement to most waterways in the city!
SWIM Resources for Advocates
Check out SWIM’s Fact Sheets outlining the problems with each of the city’s plans and SWIM’s Principles for Clean Waterways in NYC (signed by 29 SWIM Coalition Member Organizations and Supporters so far) which we are distributing to elected officials citywide, for how the city and state should protect our waters from sewage and polluted runoff.
Click here for additional talking points you can use to educate your community and your local elected officials.
Photo Courtesy: KorinTangtrakul 2016