Every year, the NYC Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) holds a public meeting to provide updates on the City's water quality improvement plans, specifically, the CSO (Combined Sewer Overflow) Long Term Control Plans (LTCP). The annual meeting provides an opportunity for waterway stakeholders across the City to convey their concerns about the various plans to City and State officials and raise public awareness of current conditions in their local waterways.
Click here to register for the 2018 meeting:
Wednesday, December 5th 6:30-8:30 PM
CUNY School of Law, 2 Court Square West
Queens, NY 11101 map At this year's meeting, we're expecting to hear updates about:
the City's sewer overflow alert system;
the green infrastructure program;
the status of each of the 10 individual CSO LTCP's; and
details about the upcoming multi-waterway Citywide CSO Long Term Control Plan. This plan impacts every borough in NYC! See details below
Important Details :
NYC DEP has developed CSO Long Term Control Plans (LTCP) for ten individual waterways so far. Many of the proposed plans, when implemented decades from now, will not get enough sewage out of these waterways to make them compliant with federal health standards for primary contact. In fact, each waterbody will still receive hundreds of millions to over a billion gallons of sewage overflow annually, with dozens of overflow events per year! The "Citywide" Open Waters CSO Long Term Control Plan: NYC DEP is currently developing its final and most complex LTCP, the Citywide Open Waters Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO) Long Term Control Plan ("Citywide Plan") for the Hudson River, Harlem River, East River, Upper and Lower New York Harbor, Arthur Kill and Kill Van Kull around Staten Island and the western portion of Long Island Sound. The Citywide plan impacts every borough in NYC! Advocates across the city will need to monitor this plan closely as it gets developed by DEP. DEP has requested deadline extensions for the Citywide plan twice. Here is a recent letter SWIM sent to DEP and the NY Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) in response to the most recent request for extension. We think the State needs to outline some specific milestones for DEP to meet as they develop this plan over the next 15 months. Stay tuned for more updates on this subject throughout the year in 2019.