NYC should focus on safer drinking water - study
Date: 17-Sep-99
Country: USA
The report, by the independent National Academy of Sciences, encouraged
the city to go beyond simple chlorination to control dangerous
pathogens, bacteria and viruses, and to replace septic systems
throughout the watershed with systems that are more effective at killing
germs.
Hevesi, whose office funded the report, said that while such moves would
be costly to implement, the amount is smaller than the billions of
dollars it would take to build a new water filtration facility, as some
environmental groups have urged.
The report "shows us how to keep our water clean enough so that we will
not have to filter," Hevesi said in prepared remarks. "We must keep
working to avoid filtration because it is extraordinarily expensive and
provides incomplete protection."
A filtration system of the scale needed for New York City would cost
about $6 billion to build and $350 million a year to operate, according
to Hevesi.
The study's septic system recommendations would generate capital costs
totalling $264 million and operating costs of $10 million a year if
every system were to be replaced. Right now the city is only replacing
failed septic systems. In addition, the city roughly estimated other
recommendations by the academy would cost another $250 million to
implement.
The city gets its drinking water from two upstate watershed systems,
which serve nine million people and produce up to two billion gallons of
water each day.
An agreement reached in 1997 by New York City and upstate communities
allows the city to avoid filtering water from one of the two watersheds
until at least 2002. The report praised that agreement, which costs the
city about $2.2 billion, saying it should help maintain existing
high-quality drinking water over the next several years.
New York City plans to spend about $1 billion over the next 10 years to
implement its watershed plan, with part of the money earmarked to help
communities that may suffer economically because of restrictions on new
development.
To preserve environmentally sensitive areas in the watershed, the city
also has budgeted $250 million over 10 years to buy 355,000 acres of
land held by private owners.
