NYC DEP requested (last month) a 15 month extension on the delivery date for the Citywide and East River/Open Waters CSO Long Term Control Plan. The NY State Department of Environmental Conservation has approved the City's request for extension to March 2020 with conditions and has issued a call for public comment. Here is a copy of the State's letter to DEP approving the request for extension and outlining the conditions. Here is a link to the information about where to send public comment letter to DEC. Comments are due January 4th!
SWIM and our members have been pressing DEP to provide the public with a final draft of their proposed CSO Long Term Control Plans for many years. Several stakeholders brought this up at DEP's December 5th annual CSO Update Meeting earlier this month. Last year at a City Council public hearing, a DEP official, when asked by City Council Member Donovan Richards why they hadn't been providing a final draft to the public for comment before the sending their plans to the State, said "there wasn't a good reason for it" and committed to sharing a final draft plan with the public going forward. DEP officials are now saying it won't be feasible to share a full final draft of their proposal for the Citywide Open Waters LTCP. At the December 5th annual meeting earlier this month, DEP said they will share a "summary"of the proposed plan with the public for our review and comment before they send it to the State. While this is progress, it is not the public process that advocates have long called for.
Here is a link to a recent article about DEP's request for extension on the City Limits blog.
Here is a link to SWIM's November comment letter to DEC and DEP regarding the request for extension. In our November, 2018 comment letter, we requested that DEC establish a specific set of enforceable milestones that DEP must meet within the extended timeframe and that DEP be required to share a full draft of the proposed plan with the public for our review and comment before they send the plan to the State. We will send another comment letter for the January 4th deadline. We'll post the letter here in late December.