Westchester Hopes It Has Delayed Its Way Into the Federal Stimulus Package

For years Westchester County delayed the nitrogen removal that it is obligated to do at its Long Island Sound sewage plants because the cost was greater than anticipated and the county didn't know where it would get the money. Now the hope is that they've managed to combine the right amount of delay with the right amount of planning so that they're eligible for economic stimulus money from the Obama administration.

Life isn't always fair, but I approve of the idea anyway.

Westchester Gets An Extension to Meets Its Sound Clean Up Goal

New York State environmental regulators have given Westchester County an additional three years, until 2017, to finish upgrading its Long Island Sound sewage treatment plants to meet state and federal nitrogen removal goals.

Westchester contributes only a small fraction of the nitrogen that causes the Sound's hypoxia problem, but it discharges that nitrogen directly into the part of the Sound that is most heavily effected. And conditions were bad last summer. (The maps that show the extent of hypoxia in 2008 are not up yet on the Connecticut DEP website but you can see maps from earlier years here. Click on any of the August maps and look for the black area, indicating the worst hypoxia conditions -- it's the area off Westchester, Nassau and part of Fairfield county.)

Connecticut, New York and the US EPA, with the support of local governments throughout the region, set the nitrogen reduction goal in 1998. The county was an enthusiastic supporter of the Sound cleanup, until it realized how much it was going to cost -- about $235 million. Here's what the Journal News reported:

To make the local improvements, the county would need to borrow the money over 30 years and charge higher rates for the 38,414 households and 6,804 businesses across the four districts.

The bulk of the new rates would go into effect in 2014, with incremental increases starting in 2010.

County officials note that it could have been worse: The state negotiated a smaller project and extended the deadline for completion three years to 2017.

Under earlier terms of the requirement, Westchester would have been required to spend an additional $100 million for the renovations.

New York State granted New York City a three-year extension three years ago. Connecticut seemed to falter on its way to meeting the 2014 goal when state legislators and the governor for years neglected the state's clean water fund (I'm not sure if they're back on track, but it's worth pointing out that Connecticut's clean water fund does provide state money to local governments for the Sound cleanup, something that New York State does not do).

If you need background, it's here, here and here. And there's plenty more here, at the Long Island Sound Study website.

The three-year extension for Westchester came after long negotiations between the county administration and the state. The county Board of Legislators still must approve it. There's a public hearing on Monday, December 8.

Acting Locally: in Westport, It's 'Paper or Paper?' In Westchester, Lawn Fertilizer Restrictions May Be on the Way In.

Westport last week became the first community east of the Mississippi to ban merchants from offering plastic bags to customers (thanks to my friends at Citizens Campaign for the Environment for the heads up). (11:13 A.M. -- Note the correction in the comments section)

And Westchester County will hold a hearing today on a bill that would restrict on the use and sale of phosphorus fertilizers, to protect up-county reservoirs,, prevent all lawn fertilizer use from November through March, and start a county-sponsored public education campaign designed to reduce the use of nitrogen fertilizers, to protect Long Island Sound. If I learn why the law doesn't restrict the sale and use of fertilizers with nitrogen, I'll let you know.

Nitrogen, of course, is the key cause of the low dissolved oxygen problem that hits the western half of the Sound each summer. Essentially all of the Sound off Westchester County had dissolved oxygen concentrations near zero late last month, which means a big part of the Sound was essentially worthless as habitat, as usual. I say "as usual," although Save the Sound notes that this year was probably worse that usual (I'm linking to this story, here, -- where's the apostrophe in the headline? -- because Save the Sound's press release doesn't seem to be online. Wednesday update: it's online now, here).

Helping Westchester Meets Its Long Island Sound Cleanup Goal

If you’ve been following the Long Island Sound cleanup, on this blog and elsewhere, you know that Westchester County has a problem. Years ago, when solutions to hypoxia were first being agreed on and the goal of reducing nitrogen from sewage plants was set at 58.5 percent, New York State told Westchester that nitrogen reduction probably would cost between $30 million and $50 million (I’m working from memory here, mine and someone else’s). Then the county did the actual engineering studies and learned that the cost was a bit higher – more like $355 million to $573 million. Since those costs have to be borne by taxpayers, that’s a problem. (There's background from my blog here.)

The county has known this for some time – at least two years, I think – and has been trying to convince New York State to authorize a nitrogen credit trading program similar to Connecticut’s, which is working well. But New York isn’t interested in establishing such a program for Westchester. For a nitrogen credit trading program to work, one sewer district has to be able to remove nitrogen to the extent that it exceeds the 58.5 percent goal. Let’s say its 58.5 percent goal is to remove 500 pounds of nitrogen a day. But in reality it removes 700 pounds. It has exceeded its goal and gets credit for the additional 200 pounds. Another district that is having a difficult time meeting the goal can then buy those credits, or some part of them.

The official reason New York State isn’t interested in nitrogen trading is that there are no sewage districts in New York with nitrogen credits to sell, according to the state. I’m told that an unofficial reason is that the state thinks that eventually the 58.5 percent nitrogen reduction goal will be increased and it wants to keep whatever gains and particular district makes so it can receive credit for it then.

But I’ve been told directly by two very knowledgeable people, and indirectly by a third who is equally knowledgeable, that there actually are sewage districts that could sell credits to Westchester.

Great Neck, for example, could undertake a nitrogen removal program that could allow Westchester to buy credits for perhaps 200 pounds of nitrogen a day, maybe more. That might allow the county to avoid having to do nitrogen removal on one of its two smaller plants (Blind Brook, which is in Rye, or Port Chester). But the state won’t consider it.

The situation is this. There are two sewage treatment plants in Great Neck, both of which have to remove 58.5 percent of the nitrogen they discharge into the Sound by 2014, just like all the other sewage plants on the Sound (except for New York City, which is big and politically powerful and so was granted a three-year extension).

The operators of the plants in Great Neck can meet their nitrogen reduction goal by either upgrading or undertaking a project to send their sewage to a Nassau County plant on the Atlantic Shore of Long Island, where hypoxia caused by nitrogen is not a problem.

If the plants in Great Neck are upgraded, they will meet their 58.5 percent goal. But if Great Neck chooses the diversion option, it will have eliminated 100 percent of its nitrogen discharge into the Sound, not just 58.5 percent. If it did that, Great Neck should get a reward. The reward could be that Great Neck could then sell the credits for all or most of the nitrogen above 58.5 percent to Westchester County.

I’m told that that could equal about 200 pounds a day. On the one hand, that’s a drop in the bucket. Westchester is required to remove 2,784 pounds of nitrogen a day, and 200 pounds is just 7 percent.

But the cost of nitrogen removal is estimated to be $355 million to $573 million. Assuming the costs are relatively proportional, a 7 percent savings would equal $25 million to $40 million (minus the cost of the nitrogen credits it will have to buy).

Unfortunately for Westchester, the two Long Island plants – one in the town of Great Neck, the other in the village – are planning to merge. One will be shut down and the other expanded and upgraded to handle the wastewater from both. Diversion was studied but rejected. Apparently some engineers in the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation favor closing the plants and diverting the wastewater, but DEC lawyers don’t.

Diversion can be very difficult politically, because people who live near the wastewater plant that the sewage is being diverted to feel as if the extra sewage will someone be a personal burden on them.

Westchester County and New York State experienced a political uproar not logn ago over a plan to take sewage from a treatment plant in Yorktown that empties into the New York City drinking water supply and divert it to a treatment plant in Peekskill that empties into the Hudson River. That plan seemed to be a no-brainer. Treated sewage has to go somewhere. Is it better to put it in the drinking water of the country’s largest city or in the Hudson? After years of listening to people and politicians in Peekskill and elsewhere scream that the diversion plan equaled environmental racism, the county and the state backed off.

Now the county wants to try it again, in a place that is safe politically (nobody on Long Island votes in Westchester), but the state flatly says no.

For what it’s worth, I think they ought to try again, perhaps with some new people negotiating who have cooler heads and haven’t established a personal stake in being right. If there’s a solution that can benefit Great Neck and Westchester, and which will be good for Long Island Sound, it’s worth a shot.

New York Wants to Help Westchester County Meets Its Obligation to Help Clean Up Long Island Sound

I don't see why, if New York City gets an extra three years to meet its nitrogen reduction goal, Westchester shouldn't get the same extension. It's not fair to Connecticut, of course, where exemplary communities like Stamford and Norwalk exceeded the 2014 goal of 58.5 percent reduction in nitrogen years ago, but it's hard to argue that a three-year delay is fine for New York City and its massive nitrogen input but not OK for Westchester with its much smaller nitrogen input.

But after reading this story about Governor Spitzer meeting with Westchester officials, I wonder just how much more time the state will grant Westchester and whether it's really the first step toward letting Westchester County off the hook in terms of its sewage upgrade responsibilities. I agree completely with Nancy Seligson:

Nancy Seligson, a Mamaroneck town councilwoman who is active in the bi-state and federal effort to clean the Sound, said more time would help, but she stressed that the focus should be on finding state and federal money for the work, not to evade the requirement altogether.

"I think it's fine if they could have additional time to try and figure out less expensive ways to accomplish the nitrogen reductions, but I still think the nitrogen reductions have to happen," she said.

One other point worth making about the news story. The phrase "state-mandated" makes it sound as if Westchester County was reluctantly dragged into this from the beginning. While it's certainly true that the previous county administration did everything in its power to resist upgrading sewage plants, the current administration campaigned on a "clean up the Sound" platform. So even though technically the upgrade is a state mandate, it was agreed to in cooperation with Connecticut and the US EPA, and Westchester County was strongly in favor of it, until they saw how much it was going to cost.

Westchester's Treatment Plant Upgrade Dilemma

What should Westchester County do? Its sewage treatment plants discharge 4552 pounds of nitrogen a day into the heart of Long Island Sound's dead zone (click here for summer hypoxia maps and look for the blotches of black and dark red, usually in mid to late August). The county has enthusiastically advocated for the Sound cleanup. But now its says that upgrading its four Sound shore treatment plants so they meet the 2014 goal of a 58.5 percent reduction in nitrogen would cost residents of the four sewer districts from about $472 to $1200 a year for 30 years. Because of that cost, the county wants the state to extend the deadlines for the work, although from this story it's not clear if it wants to extend the interim deadlines or the 2014 deadline.

My solution: change the law so that all of Westchester becomes one sewer district, and then spread the cost among all county property tax payers; in exchange for that, work with New Rochelle and Mamaroneck and Rye so that they make it easier and cheaper for all county residents to use their beaches and public boat ramps.

The other way to look at the cost is like this: property tax payers in the four Sound districts will pay $1.29 to $3.29 a day to do their fair share in cleaning up the Sound. I don't think that cost is so outrageous.

"The future of Long Island Sound is no budget annoyance"

Insiders who follow Long Island Sound issues have known for some time that Westchester's sewage treatment upgrade costs would be scarily high -- why else would the County, which has been working on the sewage issue for almost a decade and which generally moves aggressively on environmental issues, have been so quiet about it for so long? -- but it wasn't until last week that we knew the actual numbers: an estimated $355 million to $573 million (background here and here).

The Times reported the numbers last week, in a story about a dispute between the county and New York State over whether a pollution-credit trading program would work in New York.

An editorial in yesterday's Times professes not to care how Westchester goes about doing its part of the Sound cleanup, as long as it does it. Here is an excerpt:

Westchester may flinch at the threat of localized taxpayer pain, but it should not use that to shrink from addressing an urgent regional problem. The money and means for upgrades must be found, whether indirectly through nitrogen trading or straight from taxpayers’ wallets.

The price will be high but not necessarily ruinous — the early cost estimates for New York City’s sewage-plant upgrades ran to more than $1 billion, until an aggressive search for economizing and efficiency brought the number sharply down. And there should be federal money available for protecting the Sound.

The future of Long Island Sound is no budget annoyance to be haggled down or bargained to death. It took considerable pressure from the federal government to get New York City on the right path, and backsliding is a continual peril. The Sound is as threatened as it is precious — the water is warming and lobsters and salt marshes have been dying, for reasons no one has precisely figured out.

Sharing Long Island Sound's Upgrade Costs: More on Westchester's Dilemma

I wrote yesterday about Westchester County's sewage upgrade dilemma, which boils down to this: the county is facing a huge nitrogen removal cost at its Long Island Sound plants but the way its sewer districts are set up, that cost must be paid by only a relatively small portion of the county's population.

I wrote that I, a county resident who does not live in a sewer district, would consider an increase in my county taxes to pay for the Sound cleanup but first I'd like to have an idea of how much that increase might be.

Edward J. Bateson, chairman of the Town of Fairfield's Water Pollution Control Authority the commission that oversees how Fairfield's sewage system is run -- sent me his thoughts on the issue, and they're similar to mine: Long Island Sound is worth the extra cost. Here's what he wrote:

Apportionment of treatment plant upgrade costs over indirect users of the sewer system is a tough sell.

In Fairfield, CT about a decade ago we dealt with the subject. As a municipality we spread the $38 million upgrade cost over the entire towns' tax base, not just sewer users. I believe we are only one of two towns in CT to take this approach.

I was originally opposed to this. After months of debate I changed my mind. I changed my mind for several reasons. The main reason being that it aint all about nitrogen removal goals, engineering studies and low contract bidders; it is about Long Island Sound. It is our legacy and the example we set for generations to come.

All of us benefit from clean water - even those that do not have their sewage treated at the plants in question. Why should I pay for a highway upstate that I have never used, and probably never will use? Its' what we do. Collaborative resources to advance the publics' best interest. In this case the best interest of the public being a cleaner Long Island Sound.

Westchester County Argues That The Sound Cleanup is Too Expensive

Westchester County has finally said publicly what its officials have known for a long time – that it will take a hell of a lot of money to meet the Long Island Sound cleanup’s nitrogen reduction goals at its two biggest sewage treatment plants, in Mamaroneck in New Rochelle. In fact, they seem to be saying that the benefit is not worth the cost:

“We are all for protecting Long Island Sound, but you’ve got to balance that over what people can afford to pay,” he said.

The cost estimate, according to yesterday’s New York Times, runs from $355 million to $573 million, which is almost as much as one of the original estimates for doing nitrogen removal at every sewage treatment plant on the Sound in New York.

The estimate has county officials making a number of different arguments, all of which are worth considering and all of which provoke strong disagreements.

1. Westchester County argues that New York State should allow a nitrogen trading program similar to the one Connecticut uses. If it did, county taxpayers would be spared the huge sewage plant improvement bill.

2. It points out that the cost has to be paid by the people who live in the sewer districts that empty into the Sound, rather than by all county residents, and so therefore the per household cost is going to be high.

3. It argues that in any case, Westchester’s contribution to the Sound’s problem is so miniscule that it makes no sense to require the county to meet the overall goal of reducing nitrogen by 58.5 percent by 2014.

On point 1, Bryan Brown, one of Sphere’s regular readers, noted here a few weeks ago that nitrogen trading only works if there’s someone to trade with. In Westchester’s case, the county would need a trading partner that has reduced nitrogen beyond its 58.5 percent goal and who would then be able to sell the credits to Westchester. The Times found some experts who agree:

In the five years trading has been conducted in Connecticut, baseline discharges of nitrogen have been reduced to 34,000 pounds a day, from 50,000 pounds a day, with the goal being 18,000,500 pounds by 2014. State officials estimate that the trading program – the largest of its kind in the nation, according to Mr. Grumbles of the E.P.A. – will save $200 million to $400 million, and that the total cost of reducing the state’s nitrogen discharge may ultimately be more than $800 million.

Environmental officials in New York say that carrying out a trading program among the 23 waste-water treatment plants throughout the state involved in the agreement with the E.P.A. would be much more difficult than in Connecticut, particularly for Westchester, which is the second-largest contributor to the problem, after New York City. It would be hard for the county to find other municipalities to trade with.

“There is not a supplier of nitrogen credits in this basin that could satisfy the requirements that Westchester has to satisfy,” said James DeZolt, assistant director in the State Division of Water.

On point 2 – the question of whether the costs should be borne only by those in the sewer districts or by all county residents – officials are wary because it’s politically risky. The sewer districts cover heavily-populated areas – New Rochelle, Mamaroneck, parts of White Plains and Scarsdale, Harrison, Port Chester and other towns – and presumably people who live there would be happy to share the costs. The other presumption, however, is that people who don’t live there would balk. And of course, if you’re going to ask Yonkers residents to pay for fixing the sewage plant in New Rochelle, at some point you’ll also be asking New Rochelle residents to fix the sewage plant in Yonkers. And there are also large, less-populated areas of the county where people do not live in a sewer district at all and so pay no sewer taxes.

I’m one of those people, and my opinion is that I’d like to know more about what the costs might be. Obviously I’m a proponent of cleaning up Long Island Sound. I also think that all of Westchester benefits if the Sound is clean, which might be an argument worth making if you’re trying to persuade people outside the Sound’s sewer districts to share the cost. But it’s hard to do that without some idea of what that cost will be. I could deal with a $50 or $100 a year property tax increase to pay for the Sound cleanup. But if it’s $3,000 a year, I’d have to think harder about it.

As for point 3 – that the county’s contribution to the Sound is negligible – I reject it completely. An argument could have been made 10 years ago that it was unfair to require every sewage treatment plant on the Sound to reduce nitrogen by the same amount. Hypoxia – the environmental condition that nitrogen reduction is trying to correct – is limited to the western half or third of the Sound and is worse off Westchester, Fairfield and Nassau counties.

Obviously the New London sewage plant, 90 miles away, was not playing as important a role in causing hypoxia as the big plants in Queens, the Bronx, Westchester and Nassau, etc. But for political reasons, those overseeing the Sound cleanup thought it would be more acceptable is all the communities were required to do the same amount of nitrogen reduction.

Westchester agreed. As a result, New London and Groton and other cities in eastern Connecticut are all doing their part in solving a problem that’s particularly bad off Westchester. But now that Westchester knows what the costs are, it wants a do-over.

Mr. Schwartz argued that the county’s four treatment plants contributed less than 1 percent of all nitrogen discharged from the Long Island Sound Watershed and that it made no sense for them to have to reduce their nitrogen emissions by at least 58.5 percent.

Here’s what state and county officials say in response:

State officials counter that although Westchester’s contribution may be only 1 or 2 percent, its plants are closest to areas of high concentrations of hypoxia, and some areas most affected are along the shoreline.

Mr. DeZolt said that while plants in other parts of the state, including in New York City, had taken steps to reduce their nitrogen output, Westchester was still in the planning stages.

Mr. Grumbles said trading might not always be the best way to reduce pollution.

“It depends on the conditions and different types of entities that are there,” he said. “We’re not trying to force trading on to any particular area.”

Paul E. Stacey, director of planning and standards for the Connecticut Bureau of Water Protection, said it might be difficult to duplicate the state’s trading program elsewhere.

“In a lot of ways, we had an ideal situation,” he said. “Four facilities might make it more difficult to trade. You really need the market, and we have plants of different sizes. We were lucky.”

Report: Westchester Wants Out of Sound Cleanup

Westchester County wants to be let out of its obligation to help clean up Long Island Sound. The Journal News reported yesterday that the county is asking to be absolved of having to upgrade sewage treatment plants to meet the Sound cleanup’s 58.5 percent nitrogen reduction goal set for 2014 – a goal that all of the treatment plants emptying into the Sound have to meet:

Westchester County officials are asking to be released from the requirements, arguing that the upgrades would be expensive and would bring little or no improvement in water quality….

Westchester has filed plans with the state to improve its plants on Long Island Sound, but County Executive Andrew Spano's administration is grousing publicly about the cost of correcting what they portray as a minute portion of the problem.

While many environmentalists are eager to see the county do the work, Spano and Deputy County Executive Larry Schwartz have sought to downplay the importance of the 4,200 pounds of nitrogen coming daily from four county treatment plants. Schwartz said the plants - primarily the ones in Mamaroneck and New Rochelle - add less than 1 percent of the nitrogen that gets to the Sound from all sources, including the atmosphere.

Officials won't say how much the Westchester upgrades would cost, but Schwartz called it the "mother of all mandates."

"And then the question is, what happens if it doesn't work?" he said.

Unfortunately there aren't any other details about what form the county's request has taken.

Improvements to Harbor Island

Westchester County has laid out a half-a-million dollars to restore six-tenths of an acre of salt marsh and an acre and a half of adjacent upland at Harbor Island Park, which is on the Sound in Mamaroneck:

The Harbor’s west basin, which is used for boat mooring, is located along Rushmore Avenue and the West Boston Post Road. Prior to restoration, fill had created a steep embankment to the water’s edge. The embankment and part of the area above were covered with invasive plants, which provided little ecological benefit and blocked views of the water from the park. A thin band of smooth cordgrass (Spartina alterniflora), an important inter-tidal wetland plant, was clinging to the toe of the embankment.

To restore the tidal marsh, the embankment was cut back to increase the inter-tidal zone's width and create a gentler slope. The newly created low marsh, embankment and flatter areas above the embankment were planted with appropriate beneficial wetland and upland vegetation, such as smooth cord grass in the inter tidal zone, salt marsh hay and marsh elder in the high marsh area and coastal grasses, shrubs and trees on the embankment. Once these plants become established, the restored tidal salt marsh will help improve water quality in Mamaroneck Harbor.

Also, a non impervious public walkway and a tree-shaded observation point were added to allow park users to observe the salt marsh and harbor. A natural stone access way for kayakers was included at the request of neighbors. Three signs will be installed along the walkway describing the coastal ecosystem.

Last Week's Deluge Caused Big Problems in Westchester But Not at the Sewage Treatment Plants

I was skeptical when I read in the paper last week that the heavy rains from the northeaster did not disrupt the treatment process at Westchester's sewage plants. I clearly remember the days (as recently as the late 1990s) when heavy rain damaged equipment and treatment processes, and left the plant in Mamaroneck, for example, unable to properly treat sewage for weeks at a time.

But I'm told now that despite a record amount of water flowing through the plants during and after the northeaster, and even though they had to resort to backup power, all four of Westchester's Sound shore sewage plants performed admirably. No damage, no drop in treatment levels.

The plants are owned and operated by the county. They come under incredible stress because the sewers leading to them (which are owned by the municipalities) are in such poor shape that they get flooded with rainwater, which ought to be flowing not into the sewage treatment plants but through storm sewers and into local streams and the Sound itself.

That situation hasn't changed much in the 25 years since I first learned of it, which leads me to believe that the treatment plants performed better last week because the people running them and working in them wanted them to perform better -- in other words they were diligent about their jobs and took their responsibilities seriously.

If that's indeed the case, they deserve credit.

Update: Here’s an exchange between me and someone who knows about the county’s sewage plants:

Me: "This brings to mind a big storm back in the spring of '98 or '99 (not sure when but Spano was the county exec), that did a lot of damage to the Mamaroneck plant."

“That was in May '98 just after Andy Spano took office in January. That disaster was due to a power failure in Mamaroneck and failure of the Plant's back up generator to start. It was one of two events (the other was the big Yonkers spill earlier that same Spring) that lead to the DEC 98 Consent Order regarding I&I… [inflow and infiltration]”

Me: "The fact that the plants performed well this time, was it because of better equipment or better preparedness on the part of the staff?”

“Better preparedness mostly, although I would also say that Nick Benevento, the current plant supervisor, is first rate and completely committed to his job and he has a good core team. We now have emergency response plans in place, training to the plans and we test all back up generators every month. When Con Ed warned us the power would be cut this time, we engaged the Plant's back up generator (which can also function automatically when necessary) and ASAP brought in a Con Ed diesel generator - at our expense - put it to work and put the plant generator back into its back up role, so that if the Con Ed generator failed (any generator can do that) we would still have a back up. Belt and suspenders.”

This person went on to say that the events in ’98 led to a “never again” attitude:

"I credit Tony Landi, John D'Aquino (retired a few years ago) Adam Zabinski and Tom Lauro and ultimately Andy Spano and Larry Schwartz. The latter two demanded it, and the former four made it happen. Of the four, after tonight's retirement party for Tony, only Tom is left."