Today, New York City and NY State released a proposed new plan to address the city’s 30 billion gallon-per-year sewage overflow problem. It would, for the first time, make “green infrastructure” solutions a core part of the city’s program for achieving compliance with the Clean Water Act. That’s a big deal, and a welcome development.
Of course, we’ll be looking closely to make sure the proposal, as a whole, is strong enough to safeguard water quality throughout the city’s waterways and ensure accountability for results over the long haul -- our top objectives in this effort, for which NRDC and our coalition partners have been advocating for many years.
And, as we’ve done (successfully) in other places like Philadelphia, we’ll let the city and state know if we think the proposal should be strengthened in particular ways to ensure those goals are met.
We look forward to engaging with City and State environmental officials on the details of today’s proposal, to make it as strong as it can be. We are confident we can forge a consensus on smart, cost-effective investments that clean-up our waterways while greening our neighborhoods and improving health and quality of life for all New Yorkers.
In other words, we can jointly make New York’s budding green infrastructure program into the largest and most effective one in the nation!
After all, who doesn’t want a cleaner, greener New York City?
(Stay tuned here for more on this developing story -- I’ll share more analysis of the proposal as we have the chance to study it in the coming days and weeks.
We also encourage all interested New Yorkers to join us at a public hearing the state has scheduled on the proposal for November 9. The state will also accept written comments until at least November 18.)