December 13, 2019

The New York City Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) today announced the adoption of updates to its watershed regulations. The updates—which seek to protect water quality while easing the path to compliance for local homeowners and business owners—were finalized after several years of consultation with leaders from watershed towns and environmental advocates.

“Many thanks go to the watershed community representatives, state and federal regulators, and environmental advocates who collaborated with us to identify and craft these common sense regulatory updates,” DEP Commissioner Vincent Sapienza said. “Our work to protect water quality while promoting community vitality in the watershed is an ongoing process. That process is made better because of open, honest and productive discussions with our partners, which led to these updated regulations.”

“Having lived for over 20 years with the new watershed regulations that allowed New York City to avoid filtration, the watershed communities were able to identify revisions to the regulations that would alleviate the burden on watershed residents while maintaining a very high level of water quality protection,” Coalition of Watershed Towns Chairman Mark Tuthill said. “The Coalition was very pleased that DEP, DEC, DOH and our environmental partners recognized that it was appropriate to amend the regulations. The evolving knowledge of what is important for water quality while ensuring sustainable communities and the willingness to adjust programs based on that knowledge is an encouraging sign of the health of the watershed partnership.”

“Continuing what has been one of the nation’s most successful models for pollution prevention and watershed protection, New York City is moving forward with modest revisions to its watershed rules,” said Eric A. Goldstein, New York City Environment Director at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “Adopted after consultation with affected stakeholders, the modifications are responsive to reasonable requests from the upstate communities that surround the city’s irreplaceable reservoirs. Of course, safeguarding the city’s unfiltered drinking water supply is an ongoing challenge and one that requires eternal vigilance.”

The updated watershed regulations became effective on Nov. 29. DEP’s watershed regulations largely focus on wastewater treatment, stormwater runoff, and the protection of watershed streams that feed the City’s reservoirs. The City first established watershed regulations in 1917 to protect its water supply and provide oversight of activities that might cause contamination. Those regulations were modified significantly in the 1990s, and last updated in 2010.

Most of the latest updates simply reflect changes in state and federal law, or improve the clarity of language in the existing rules. However, several substantive changes were made to remove or reduce burdens to watershed economic development without affecting water quality. Those changes include:

• The amended regulations establish a category of small, limited-impact projects for which stormwater pollution prevention plans can be simpler, similar to the existing framework for individual residential stormwater permits. This will make the stormwater approval process more efficient for many small business owners.
• The regulations replace the prior approach for evaluating alterations and modifications of septic systems, and for determining whether systems that have not been used in some time can be brought back into service. The new, more streamlined process will focus primarily on how well the septic system will serve the proposed use, consistent with public health and water quality concerns.
• The amendments eliminate the “hardship” criterion necessary for obtaining a variance from the regulations. Each variance application will now be reviewed on its merits without the requirement to prove a specific hardship.
• The amendments eliminate the description of an East-of-Hudson phosphorus offset program for wastewater plants. That program had a limited term and has already ended.
• In addition, the amendments incorporate the most recent versions of various New York State publications cited in the watershed regulations, including those related to stormwater discharges, design standards for intermediate-sized wastewater treatment systems, and the latest standards of wastewater treatment for residential onsite systems.

The changes were vetted at four public hearings in the watershed and in New York City in 2018.

DEP manages New York City’s water supply, providing more than 1 billion gallons of high-quality water each day to more than 9.6 million New Yorkers. This includes more than 70 upstate communities and institutions in Ulster, Orange, Putnam and Westchester counties who consume an average of 110 million total gallons of drinking water daily from New York City’s water supply system. This water comes from the Catskill, Delaware, and Croton watersheds that extend more than 125 miles from the City, and the system comprises 19 reservoirs, three controlled lakes, and numerous tunnels and aqueducts. DEP has nearly 6,000 employees, including almost 1,000 scientists, engineers, surveyors, watershed maintainers and other professionals in the watershed. In addition to its $70 million payroll and $168.9 million in annual taxes paid in upstate counties, DEP has invested more than $1.7 billion in watershed protection programs—including partnership organizations such as the Catskill Watershed Corporation and the Watershed Agricultural Council—that support sustainable farming practices, environmentally sensitive economic development, and local economic opportunity. In addition, DEP has a robust capital program with $20.1 billion in investments planned over the next decade that will create up to 3,000 construction-related jobs per year. For more information, visit nyc.gov/dep, like us on Facebook, or follow us on Twitter.