DEP announces that diversion of sewage to  Peekskill

and Yonkers will not proceed

 

 

At the February 14 Northern Westchester Watershed Committee  meeting, NYC Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) Commissioner Emily  Lloyd announced that DEP was no longer pursuing sewage diversion from Yorktown  to Peekskill or from New Castle to Yonkers.  Diversion was stalled.   Since DEP felt that their top priority was to provide safe drinking water, they  had decided to go ahead with the upgrade of the Yorktown plant.  DEP might  grant a variance to increase the plant's SPDES permit if Yorktown could show  that it had done everything possible to reduce stormwater impacts and to reduce  Infiltration & Inflow (I&I) to the maximum extent practicable. The  commissioner also emphasized that the variance is not for accommodating future  growth.  DEP is reluctant to abandon diversion but has to be  pragmatic.  DEP's top priority is water quality.

 

Deputy County  Executive Larry Schwartz said that he and County Executive Andy Spano had met  many times with the Westchester County Board of Legislators and with Mayor  Amicone of Yonkers and that there was not support for diversion; it is  dead.

 

Deputy DEP Commissioner Michael Principe reassured the audience  that pharmaceuticals could be taken care of by technologies that are being  developed and which could be included in the variance. 

 

NYS  Watershed Inspector General James Tierney added that modern sewage treatment  technology is excellent. It will be used in the upgrade and produces a very  clean effluent.

 

The next step is for the involved parties to work out the  conditions for DEP to grant the variance, and the extent of the increase in the  SPDES permit.

 

The diversion battle has been long ongoing. CWCWC got involved back in the late nineties in opposition to sending Yorktown sewage to Peekskill and Putnam County sewage to Garrison. CWCWC has always favored treating sewage locally, whenever possible, as being environmentally preferable to diversion. Since then, we have been joined by many allies without whom we could not have won this battle. Special thanks and credit must go to George Oros, member of the Westchester County Board of Legislators; Drew Claxton, Councilwoman on the Peekskill Town Board; Oreon Sandler, whose engineering expertise proved invaluable, board of directors of CWCWC; Suzannah Glidden, who was the driving force behind mobilizing the opposition, board of directors of CWCWC and chair of HAB; Paul Moskowitz, board of directors of CWCWC; Steve Kaplan, board of directors of CWCWC and member of Clearwater; John Raymond, board of directors of CWCWC and INTERLOC; Nortrud Spero, board member of FCWC; David Pannett, Yonkers; Sam Spady, NAACP, New Rochelle.