March 11, 2022

Good morning, Chair Gennaro, Chair Moya, members of the Committee on Environmental Protection, and members of the Subcommittee on COVID Recovery and Resiliency. My name is Pam Elardo, and I am the Deputy Commissioner of the Bureau of Wastewater Treatment (BWT) at the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP). I lead a team of nearly 1800 personnel who operate 96 pump stations and 14 Wastewater Resource Recovery Facilities that work twenty-four/seven to treat over 1.3 billion gallons of wastewater each day. BWT’s Laboratory Operations section has led the DEP portion of the COVID wastewater monitoring program since it started on August 31, 2020. I am joined today by my colleagues Dimitri Katehis, PhD, PE, Executive Director of Wastewater Treatment and Resource Recovery Operations; Françoise Chauvin, PhD, Chief of Laboratory Operations; and Dr. Celia Quinn, the Deputy Commissioner of Disease Control at the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (Health Department).

We last spoke to the Council about this program in October 2020, when the Council considered the bill that became Local Law 28 of 2021. At that point, we had been conducting weekly testing for several months, and we worked closely with the Council on the final language that was enacted. The Local Law required a wastewater testing program to be piloted and for a report assessing the program to be issued. That report was sent to the Council on February 17, 2022. It was written by DEP in consultation with the Health Department. The report is available on the DEP website. The website also links to the Open Data portal, where we have begun posting our wastewater testing data, so that it can be accessed by researchers, scientists, and health professionals around the world.

I would like to note that this work is a new horizon for us, and we at DEP originally had no capability in this area. Because of laboratory resources and our staff expertise, and with help from experts in the community, we found that we were well-positioned to advance the science and the capability quickly. We devoted time and other resources to developing these new capabilities.

We now have a tool and effectively a “new science” whose reliability and realm of application expanded dramatically over the past two years, thanks to our effort, and the efforts of the national and global communities. We believe that, over time, this tool has the potential to become part of the routine arsenal that water and wastewater utilities use to inform and support public health.

The wastewater testing pilot started in spring 2020, shortly after the COVID-19 pandemic began in New York. DEP has been testing for genetic material (RNA) of SARS-CoV-2 , the virus that causes COVID-19, in wastewater twice per week at all 14 Wastewater Resource Recovery Facilities (WRRF), effectively covering the entire city. The dataset is sent to the Health Department, where it serves as one of several data streams that inform COVID-19 tracking.

In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, we began engaging with national experts, including academics from the City University of New York (CUNY), New York University (NYU), Stanford University, University of Michigan, and leading wastewater utilities from across the country. We continue to work with CUNY and NYU today. These partnerships helped us identify and refine our testing methodologies. We have used the same collection and analysis processes since August 2020. While the legislation’s pilot period has concluded, the testing program continues.

Because there has been such a focused effort in this field, development that would normally take many years was condensed into the past 24 months. The advances have been remarkable, but the tools are still developing and there is still much more to learn.

In order to ensure that DEP and Health Department retain a leadership role in utilization of this tool, we will continue to support the effort led nationally by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), in particular research and development activities, to fully recognize the potential of this new technology. We are excited to contribute the city’s data and expertise toward the CDC’s efforts. The CDC has been a very strong leader in developing and applying this new tool. Specifically, at this time, we are contributing to the CDC’s efforts in two ways.

First, we are sending our samples to a contract laboratory selected by the CDC. Our samples will be analyzed using the same method as that used for 500 sites nationwide, an invaluable contribution to the research.

Second, we are participating in the National Wastewater Surveillance System (NWSS) Utilities Community of Practice (Utility CoP), a collaborative for promoting the exchange of best practices, knowledge, and training in the area of wastewater surveillance for utilities. The group’s goal is to accelerate the adoption and implementation of wastewater-based epidemiology to support public health decision-making.

DEP and the Health Department continue to assess how wastewater data can be used to inform public health decisions. The data DEP collects are not a crystal ball. The wastewater data alone cannot currently be used to predict that a wave of infections is coming, or dictate how the city should respond. I understand that the existing robust Health Department surveillance systems, including COVID-19 testing and reporting, genome sequencing of individual patient specimens, and surveillance, continue to be critical to monitoring COVID-19 and other infections. However, initial data from this wastewater testing pilot showed the potential for wastewater data to be a harnessed as another important monitoring tool.

This is a burgeoning scientific field that could potentially be used to identify future disease outbreaks and trends or other signals of public health interest. We are not at that point yet, but we are encouraged about how far the program has come in just two years and are optimistic about how it may be helpful in the future. We look forward to continuing to work with the Health Department and other experts on this program.

Thank you again for the opportunity to testify today. My colleagues and I are happy to answer any questions that you have.