New York Proposes $8B Plan For Clean Drinking Water

The challenge to keep New York’s drinking water safe for all continues. On March 12, State Senate Republicans made a motion to spend almost $8 billion on clean water and sewer projects. The proposal also included a $5 billion infrastructure bond and creation of an institute to set state standards for unregulated contaminants.

According to Newsday, Senate Majority Leader John J. Flanagan said that, “contaminated water supplies and infrastructure failures jeopardize public health and constrain the economy across the state.”

In a statement, Flanagan said, “The Senate’s budget plan takes bold and necessary steps toward providing the resources our state desperately needs to ensure the long-term safety of our drinking water and wastewater infrastructure.”

This effort is part of the “one house budget” proposal that was released on March 13. The budget “would address the decades-old issue of septic tanks on Long Island that threaten drinking water supplies and surface waters, according to a Senate report released last year after a series of public hearings chaired by Sen. Kemp Hannon.”

“360,000 homes in Suffolk County are not connected to sewers and the state needs to spend about $80 billion over 20 years to adequately upgrade the water infrastructure,” per Newsday.

State Senate Democrats presented a new, seven-point plant earlier this month. The plan called for the regulation of contaminants, testing of all water supplies, and provisions for stronger infrastructure upgrades.

According to previous reporting from Newsday, Sen. Andrea Stewart-Cousins said that “the plan would serve as a strategy to protect water locally in the face of an uncertain federal regulatory landscape in Washington, D.C., where at least one bill has been filed to eliminate the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.”

“It’s clear we need to take action now,” Stewart-Cousins said during a news conference at the Long Beach Water Authority. “We need to ensure these water resources are protected.”

Newsday reported earlier this month that “Long Island’s drinking water supplies detected perfluorinated compounds in Westhampton Beach, and 1,4-dioxane was found in trace amounts in 36 of 38 water suppliers sampled.”

More than 70 percent of the sampled drinking water “had detections of 1,4-dioxane at a 1-in-1 million cancer risk after prolonged exposure.”

Senate Republican spokesman Scott Reif told Newsday, “The Republican state budget plan includes support for $2 billion in clean water funding proposed in Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo’s executive budget to be used in the short term. The $5 billion Clean Water Bond Act would need to be approved by voters, likely in 2018.”

He added that which projects would be funded and how the money will be divided has not been decided yet.

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