November 25, 2019

Thank you Chair Constantinides and members of the Committee on Environmental Protection for the opportunity to testify today. I am Vincent Sapienza, the Commissioner of the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP). I am joined today by Jane Gajwani, the Director of the Office of Energy at DEP and Anthony Fiore, the Deputy Commissioner of Energy Management at DCAS.

We appreciate the importance of this hearing topic, “Effectively utilizing water resources for energy generation, safety, and conservation.” As you know, DEP owns and operates the country’s largest water and wastewater utility; safely delivering more than a billion gallons of clean drinking water every day to about half the population of New York State and treating over 1.3 billion gallons of wastewater each day at one of our 14 Wastewater Resource Recovery Facilities (WRRF). Our department’s purpose is to keep all New Yorkers healthy by providing clean drinking water and safely processing wastewater. We are dedicated to water and energy conservation and are diligently expanding our capacity to generate green energy.

Demand Management Program

Water conservation, or demand management, is a critical program at DEP. Since 2013, DEP has achieved savings of more than 10 million gallons of water per day (MGD). In June 2018, DEP released One Water NYC: 2018 Water Demand Management Plan, highlighting DEP’s success in implementing water conservation projects across the city and Upstate with our wholesale customer utility partners. Over the past six years, DEP has implemented several demand management initiatives, such as installing efficient toilets and spray showers in city properties and by offering discounts to residential customers on new, efficient toilets. We also launched voluntary Water Challenges with hotels, restaurants, hospitals, and universities, as well as our own wastewater resource recovery facilities. Since the release of the 2018 Water Demand Management Plan, DEP has continued to build on past success, using established partnerships to identify and implement new conservation projects, and to continue ongoing programs to ensure that we reach our water conservation goals. Not only does this program help to optimize our water supply, it also reduces wastewater flows, as well as the energy and greenhouse gas emissions associated with pumping and treating water and wastewater.

Hydropower in the Water Supply System

Hydropower is an important piece of our clean power portfolio, which also supports economic development in the host municipality and generates revenue for New York City. In addition to the upcoming Cannonsville Hydropower Plant, there are already four hydropower plants in operation in our water system, with a rated capacity of nearly 58 MW of power in total. We are studying the feasibility of building micro-hydro systems at appropriate locations.

DEP is moving forward with projects at two sites that were identified in the 2013 report titled Evaluation of Hydroelectric Potential. The first site is the Croton Lake Gate House in Westchester. We have received Excel grant funding from DCAS to assess the feasibility of installing a small hydroelectric turbine at this location. The second is the Catskill-Delaware Interconnection at Shaft 4 in Ulster County. We are advancing the design of turbine technology at this site, where water from the Delaware Aqueduct can be moved into the Catskill Aqueduct.

Our upstate water supply is actually “electricity positive,” in that the amount of hydroelectric power exceeds the amount of electricity purchased from the grid for water supply operations. The projects we are developing now will further increase this positive balance.

Other Renewable Power Supply Systems

As we have discussed at previous hearings, DEP is working on a comprehensive energy and carbon neutrality plan. We utilize traditional renewable systems, such as solar photovoltaic, hydroelectric, and wind; we are currently exploring the feasibility of geothermal and other zero-emissions systems as well. The largest solar installation on a city-owned property (1.3 MW) is on a DEP WRRF on Staten Island. We are working with DCAS on a power purchase agreement to install nearly 5MW of solar canopies above the process tanks at the Wards Island WRRF, and, if successful, plan to roll out similar installations across the remainder of our WRRFs going forward. We also have several small and mid-size systems in Brooklyn and Staten Island, and are designing additional installations on an ongoing basis. We have installed four small-scale wind turbines in three boroughs: two in Queens, one in Brooklyn, and one in Staten Island. We plan to install more solar and small-scale wind turbines and are evaluating the feasibility of large-scale turbines, as well.

One of our most valuable strategies for achieving carbon and energy neutrality goals and power resiliency efforts is the utilization of the biogas we produce through the wastewater treatment process. Biogas (also called digester gas) can be used to generate heat and electricity. Our greatest opportunity to achieve energy neutrality is to increase the generation and use of this resource.

Today, we have achieved nearly 30% beneficial use of our digester gas. That number will jump to 60%, with the upcoming completion of three projects: Newtown Creek’s gas conditioning system, an engine efficiency retrofit at Owls Head, and the North River’s cogeneration system.

DEP produces 3.6 billion cubic feet of biogas annually and beneficially uses some of this gas for power and heating purposes on-site at the WRRFs. Since 2016, we have been incorporating municipal food waste into the digestion process to generate additional biogas and are currently diverting over 150 tons per day of food waste. I am proud to say that DEP has the largest post-consumer food waste co-digestion system at a WRRF in North America, and we have become a national leader in the area of food-waste-to-energy.

As we noted this past February, DEP has partnered with National Grid to construct a biogas conditioning system on-site at Newtown Creek. This will send DEP’s biogas into a nearby natural gas pipe to heat local residences and businesses.

While we continue to look for opportunities to use traditional renewable energy systems, one of our top priorities is increasing the volume of biogas produced at our facilities and beneficially using all of that gas to offset fossil-derived fuels.

Proposed Legislation

Before my colleagues and I take your questions, I want to comment briefly on the bills being considered today.

• Intro 417 institutes a financial incentive program to award up to $1000 to anyone who provides information to DEP that leads to the test and detection of a leaking tap. While we appreciate the Council’s recognition that leaking taps are important, we do not believe that this incentive program is necessary. We believe the current system is sufficient. During the last fiscal year, more than 99% of the 3,000 leaks on private water services were called in to the 311 complaint line, with DEP responding in an average of 12 hours. It is already in property owners’ interest to promptly report such leaks to limit damage to their assets.
• Intro 419 would require DEP to undertake projects to generate, capture, and utilize energy from the City’s water supply, wastewater resource recovery facilities, and natural bodies of water. This bill would amend the 2012 law that led to the creation of the Evaluation of Hydroelectric Potential report to require that similar reports be produced once every ten years. DEP can have such an evaluation produced every ten years, though we should note that the evaluations are not likely to change significantly unless there are technological breakthroughs.
• Intro 834 would require that DEP use potable water hoses during capital projects. We have verified that DDC, which manages the City’s water main capital projects, implemented this policy in 2017. DEP follows this procedure for our own repair projects. DEP supports the policy’s continuation.
• Intro 1182 relates to the Department of Citywide Administrative Services (DCAS). This bill would require the City to identify and report on vacant or underutilized municipal properties, including closed-and-capped solid waste landfills and brownfields, that would be suitable for renewable energy generation. DCAS is supportive of conducting a study that would elucidate City properties that may be able to host renewable energy. The City owns approximately 12,500 tax lots of which about 5,900 are classified as ‘vacant’ by the Department of Finance Building Classification system. Of these 5,900, about a thousand have limited use for any purpose, because they comprise interior or accessway lots that are either extremely small or are used as pedestrian thruways. From the remaining 4,800, about 2,100 are regulated as waterfront, wetland or mapped streets.

DCAS believes that a comprehensive, study will illuminate, which of the remaining 2,700 ‘vacant’ tax lots are capable of hosting renewable energy generation technology, and will also help us determine which lots are truly in a current and future state of underutilization. Being able to distinguish those tax lots that are going to be unused or underutilized for the indeterminate future as compared to those that have some future use plan can help DCAS and other agencies focus their efforts on developing in-City renewable energy generation potential. We look forward to working with Council on these bill and on the larger efforts of increasing the share of clean, renewable resources that power our City.

Thank you for this opportunity to testify on this important topic. My colleagues and I are happy to answer any questions that you have.