Thanks to my pal Sharon Moran in Syracuse for giving me the alert about this article:
http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2010/08/onondaga_creekwalk_nearing_com.html
Friday, August 6, 2010
Saturday, July 17, 2010
TCF ShortDocs Challenge: Book Odds
As I continue to work on editing the recordings, I collaborated with my brother Farsheed on creating a short stand-alone piece for Third Coast's ShortDocs Challenge, which featured audio samples from my favorite band, The Books.
This piece, titled B-A-B, was submitted under the category "I didn't know that". Sisters Joyce Brilbeck and Kaye Logan share memories about growing up around Ballantyne Road near Onondaga Creek in Syracuse, NY.
https://www.thirdcoastfestival.org/explore/feature/i-didnt-know-that-8
Third Coast International Audio Festival is my top resource for interesting audio documentary work. They are an inspiration!
This piece, titled B-A-B, was submitted under the category "I didn't know that". Sisters Joyce Brilbeck and Kaye Logan share memories about growing up around Ballantyne Road near Onondaga Creek in Syracuse, NY.
https://www.thirdcoastfestival.org/explore/feature/i-didnt-know-that-8
Third Coast International Audio Festival is my top resource for interesting audio documentary work. They are an inspiration!
Sunday, May 2, 2010
Environmental Quality Award
Onondaga County, Onondaga Nation and two environmental groups to be honored by EPA
By Tim Knauss / The Post-Standard
April 19, 2010, 6:57PM
Syracuse, NY -- Officials from Onondaga County, the Onondaga Nation and two non-profit environmental groups will travel to Manhattan Friday to accept an award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for their work collaborating on a green solution to the sewer overflows that plague Onondaga Lake and its tributaries.
The regional office of EPA will give its Environmental Quality Award to County Executive Joanie Mahoney, the Onondaga Nation, Atlantic States Legal Foundation and the Partnership for Onondaga Creek.
They are being honored for working together on a new solution for overloaded sewers, using rain gardens, porous pavement and other green initiatives to absorb storm runoff. Underground storage tanks will be used in combination with those methods.
That plan, approved in November by a federal judge overseeing the county’s compliance with clean water rules, replaced a program of building controversial sewage treatment facilities in city neighborhoods.
EPA’s Region 2 office in New York makes the awards annually to individuals, groups or government officials for “significant contributions” to environmental quality. A full list of this year’s winners is expected to be released Friday.
http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2010/04/onondaga_county_onondaga_natio.html
By Tim Knauss / The Post-Standard
April 19, 2010, 6:57PM
Syracuse, NY -- Officials from Onondaga County, the Onondaga Nation and two non-profit environmental groups will travel to Manhattan Friday to accept an award from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for their work collaborating on a green solution to the sewer overflows that plague Onondaga Lake and its tributaries.
The regional office of EPA will give its Environmental Quality Award to County Executive Joanie Mahoney, the Onondaga Nation, Atlantic States Legal Foundation and the Partnership for Onondaga Creek.
They are being honored for working together on a new solution for overloaded sewers, using rain gardens, porous pavement and other green initiatives to absorb storm runoff. Underground storage tanks will be used in combination with those methods.
That plan, approved in November by a federal judge overseeing the county’s compliance with clean water rules, replaced a program of building controversial sewage treatment facilities in city neighborhoods.
EPA’s Region 2 office in New York makes the awards annually to individuals, groups or government officials for “significant contributions” to environmental quality. A full list of this year’s winners is expected to be released Friday.
http://www.syracuse.com/news/index.ssf/2010/04/onondaga_county_onondaga_natio.html
Friday, January 22, 2010
Activists' persistence on sewage pushed Onondaga County to 'go green'
Activists' persistence on sewage pushed Onondaga County to 'go green'
By Tim Knauss / The Post-Standard
January 18, 2010, 6:50AM
Community activists and Syracuse residents Aggie Lane, left, and Lionel Logan on the bridge at Midland Ave. and Blaine Street that spans Onondaga Creek. Their efforts helped keep more sewage plants, like the Midland sewage plant in the background, from being built.
Syracuse, NY -- In 2000, Aggie Lane demonstrated outside the home of Onondaga County Executive Nick Pirro to protest plans for a sewage treatment plant in her Midland Avenue neighborhood.
During a 2004 protest against the sewage plant, she was arrested.
But by 2008, Lane was advising the new county executive, Joanie Mahoney, and giving PowerPoint presentations to top state environmental officials in Albany.
Lane lost her battle to stop the Midland Regional Treatment Facility from being built. But she and other activists recently won the war to scrap Onondaga County’s costly campaign of building neighborhood sewage plants.
This is the story of how Republican politician Mahoney sought help from community activists to shake up a complex $560 million program to clean up Onondaga Lake and its tributaries — a program that had long been controlled by engineers and bureaucrats.
Convinced that change was necessary, Mahoney early in her tenure listened more closely to her band of outsiders than to her own county staff and paid consultants.
The result was a radically new plan to develop a citywide network of rain gardens, green roofs, porous pavements and other “green” infrastructure to reduce the need for sewage plants and giant pipelines in city neighborhoods.
“It’s really democracy at its best, with people who are really involved demanding and achieving change,” said Joseph Heath, a lawyer for the Onondaga Nation.
The role of activists such as Heath and Lane in framing the county’s policy is perhaps nowhere more evident than at the “pipe to nowhere.”
Before construction of the Midland plant was finished, contractors installed the first 1,000 feet of a massive underground pipeline that was supposed to bring in half the sewage and storm water to be handled by the facility.
But the pipeline, which was intended to stretch 1.5 miles, will never be finished. The $80 million Midland Regional Treatment Facility will forever operate at about half capacity.
To engineer Peter Moffa, who consulted with Onondaga County for three decades before retiring, that’s a tragedy.
“It’s just terrible,” Moffa said. “You’ve got a facility that was built out and ... it’s not being utilized to its fullest.”
But Heath, who fought to exclude the Midland pipeline from the county’s program, said burying a 12-foot-diameter concrete pipe along a 1.5-mile route would have been disruptive to the neighborhood.
The pipeline also would have brought more runoff to the Midland plant, which is designed to dump partially treated sewage into Onondaga Creek if flows exceed its storage capacity.
“The less it’s used, the better,” Heath said of the treatment plant.
The Midland pipeline was expected to cost about $62 million, county officials said.
As alternatives, Lane and others proposed a series of smaller initiatives, such as cleaning trunk lines, installing a small storage tank and separating some storm sewers from sanitary sewers. Those “gray” projects would be combined with “green” initiatives such as vegetation-covered roofs, porous parking lots and tree boxes, they proposed.
That is now the county’s approach.
It’s not yet clear whether the new plan will save money. County officials say new gray projects targeted for the Midland area could cost between $24 million and $70 million, depending on whether all the projects get done. They have tentatively allocated $9 million for green projects, but many of the specifics for green infrastructure are still under review.
All told, the county estimates it could spend as much as $223 million to complete gray and green projects in the Midland, Armory Square and Harbor Brook areas, said Patricia Pastella, commissioner of water environment protection. That’s roughly the estimate for the previous plan.
By 2018, green initiatives are expected to keep 250 million gallons of storm water out of sewers throughout the urban area that drains into Onondaga Creek and Harbor Brook. Another 160 million gallons will be captured with gray infrastructure, such as storage tanks and sewer improvements, according to the county’s new plan.
The costs and benefits of green initiatives can be tricky to estimate, because they rely on many small projects across a wide area. They also require widespread public participation, said Samuel Sage, president of Atlantic States Legal Foundation, one of the activists who pushed for the green plan.
“Green is faith-based technology — faith in the public,” Sage said. “When you have to plant 10,000 trees, and you need 10,000 people to take care of 10,000 trees, engineers panic.”
In the fall of 2007, when Joanie Mahoney was campaigning for county executive, she bumped into Lane at an event on the South Side.
“We need to talk,” Mahoney told her.
Lane, 64, is a former engineer who retired early from Carrier Corp., in 1995. Her concern about racism and the way it divides the community prompted her to move in 1992 from Fayetteville to Midland Avenue, one of the poorest neighborhoods in Syracuse.
In 2000, she joined the Partnership for Onondaga Creek, a community group organized to fight against the Midland sewage plant and to advocate for alternative strategies. That fight became a new occupation for Lane, who lives two blocks from the plant.
“It was a full-time job,” she said.
Mahoney first heard Lane speak out when Mahoney was a city councilor in the early 2000s. Mahoney was persuaded that the Midland plant was a bad idea. She said she sympathized with neighborhood residents who complained that the county would never build a similar facility in a wealthy, white community.
Lane, who keeps boxes of records and sewer maps at home, impressed Mahoney with her knowledge.
As the election approached, Mahoney told Lane that if she won the county executive job, she would be interested in changing the sewer policies of the outgoing executive, Pirro. She asked Lane to organize a meeting of environmental and neighborhood activists who could bring Mahoney up to speed.
The meeting took place Oct. 29, eight days before the election. Mahoney and her campaign manager, Ben Dublin, met with Lane, Heath and several others who would become key suppliers of information and advice.
As soon as Mahoney took office, she turned to them for help. In January 2008, she faced a critical decision.
Plans for a second regional treatment facility — in Armory Square, similar to the Midland plant — had been started months before Mahoney took office. Site work had begun. Bids had been submitted for the construction.
Most of the staff from the county Department of Water Environment Conservation recommended that Mahoney award a contract and move ahead with the project, she said.
When she told department employees she wanted to abandon the project and look at other alternatives, she was met with incredulous looks, Mahoney recalled.
“I don’t believe anybody in those initial meetings thought we were going to do anything other than build a sewage treatment plant,” she said.
During those first weeks, Mahoney met and traded e-mail with Heath and Lane — both to seek their opinions and to check the facts her staff was giving her.
“I could trust, I could bounce things off (Joe) and Aggie,” Mahoney said.
She decided to postpone the construction bids, and later to abandon the sewage plant project.
Meanwhile, Sage, of Atlantic States, and Heath teamed to persuade the state Department of Environmental Conservation that it was time for a change in Onondaga County’s plan.
Sage can take credit for spurring much of Onondaga County’s progress in cleaning local waterways. His organization, a small nonprofit, sued the county in 1988 to force it to comply with federal clean water laws.
In the past decade, Onondaga County has spent $350 million to fix wastewater problems. Scientists agree that Onondaga Lake is much healthier because of it.
But that doesn’t mean Sage is happy with all the projects undertaken by the county. He has consistently opposed regional treatment facilities like the one at Midland Avenue.
Sage and Heath met twice in late 2007 and early 2008 with Alexander “Pete” Grannis, the DEC commissioner, to enlist his support for a new strategy.
During at least one of those meetings, they were accompanied by water scientist Ed Michalenko, of Onondaga Environmental Institute. Michalenko presented data showing that bacteria levels in Onondaga Creek are heavily affected by leaks in the sanitary sewers — a problem that would not be solved by building regional treatment facilities. Michalenko argued that Onondaga County should devote its resources to repairing sanitary sewers and separating them from storm sewers.
Heath said he also persuaded representatives of the DEC’s environmental justice staff to Syracuse to visit the neighborhood near the Midland plant and to walk the route of the planned pipeline. Their visits helped convince DEC officials that the South Side had borne an unfair burden and should not get a pipeline, as well, Heath said.
To sell a green solution, Heath and Sage helped coordinate visits by experts in green infrastructure.
They brought in Nancy Stoner, a former EPA official who co-directs water programs for the Natural Resources Defense Council. Stoner, co-author of “Rooftops to Rivers,” the council’s influential guide to green infrastructure, gave a lecture attended by county officials.
They also brought in Franco Montalto, a Drexel University hydrologist and engineer who runs a company specializing in green infrastructure. Montalto toured local sites and met with county officials.
When the county finally had to hire an engineering company to evaluate and refine its new program, Mahoney put out a request for proposals but refused to hire any local company, because most had invested many years of work on the old programs.
She wanted a fresh set of eyes, she said, and selected CH2M Hill Cos. Ltd., an international company based in Englewood, Colo.
“You can’t get that from people who have been immersed in it for 15 years,” Mahoney said. “You can’t get that fresh look.”
DEC officials have said they hope to make Onondaga County’s green infrastructure program a model for other cities to follow. Mahoney said the county’s groundbreaking approach would not have been possible without the help of activists from the community.
“A lot of the reason I knew what I was talking about was because I had listened to people like Aggie Lane and Joe Heath and the neighbors,” she said.
Contact Tim Knauss at tknauss@syracuse.com or 470-3023.
By Tim Knauss / The Post-Standard
January 18, 2010, 6:50AM
Community activists and Syracuse residents Aggie Lane, left, and Lionel Logan on the bridge at Midland Ave. and Blaine Street that spans Onondaga Creek. Their efforts helped keep more sewage plants, like the Midland sewage plant in the background, from being built.
Syracuse, NY -- In 2000, Aggie Lane demonstrated outside the home of Onondaga County Executive Nick Pirro to protest plans for a sewage treatment plant in her Midland Avenue neighborhood.
During a 2004 protest against the sewage plant, she was arrested.
But by 2008, Lane was advising the new county executive, Joanie Mahoney, and giving PowerPoint presentations to top state environmental officials in Albany.
Lane lost her battle to stop the Midland Regional Treatment Facility from being built. But she and other activists recently won the war to scrap Onondaga County’s costly campaign of building neighborhood sewage plants.
This is the story of how Republican politician Mahoney sought help from community activists to shake up a complex $560 million program to clean up Onondaga Lake and its tributaries — a program that had long been controlled by engineers and bureaucrats.
Convinced that change was necessary, Mahoney early in her tenure listened more closely to her band of outsiders than to her own county staff and paid consultants.
The result was a radically new plan to develop a citywide network of rain gardens, green roofs, porous pavements and other “green” infrastructure to reduce the need for sewage plants and giant pipelines in city neighborhoods.
“It’s really democracy at its best, with people who are really involved demanding and achieving change,” said Joseph Heath, a lawyer for the Onondaga Nation.
The role of activists such as Heath and Lane in framing the county’s policy is perhaps nowhere more evident than at the “pipe to nowhere.”
Before construction of the Midland plant was finished, contractors installed the first 1,000 feet of a massive underground pipeline that was supposed to bring in half the sewage and storm water to be handled by the facility.
But the pipeline, which was intended to stretch 1.5 miles, will never be finished. The $80 million Midland Regional Treatment Facility will forever operate at about half capacity.
To engineer Peter Moffa, who consulted with Onondaga County for three decades before retiring, that’s a tragedy.
“It’s just terrible,” Moffa said. “You’ve got a facility that was built out and ... it’s not being utilized to its fullest.”
But Heath, who fought to exclude the Midland pipeline from the county’s program, said burying a 12-foot-diameter concrete pipe along a 1.5-mile route would have been disruptive to the neighborhood.
The pipeline also would have brought more runoff to the Midland plant, which is designed to dump partially treated sewage into Onondaga Creek if flows exceed its storage capacity.
“The less it’s used, the better,” Heath said of the treatment plant.
The Midland pipeline was expected to cost about $62 million, county officials said.
As alternatives, Lane and others proposed a series of smaller initiatives, such as cleaning trunk lines, installing a small storage tank and separating some storm sewers from sanitary sewers. Those “gray” projects would be combined with “green” initiatives such as vegetation-covered roofs, porous parking lots and tree boxes, they proposed.
That is now the county’s approach.
It’s not yet clear whether the new plan will save money. County officials say new gray projects targeted for the Midland area could cost between $24 million and $70 million, depending on whether all the projects get done. They have tentatively allocated $9 million for green projects, but many of the specifics for green infrastructure are still under review.
All told, the county estimates it could spend as much as $223 million to complete gray and green projects in the Midland, Armory Square and Harbor Brook areas, said Patricia Pastella, commissioner of water environment protection. That’s roughly the estimate for the previous plan.
By 2018, green initiatives are expected to keep 250 million gallons of storm water out of sewers throughout the urban area that drains into Onondaga Creek and Harbor Brook. Another 160 million gallons will be captured with gray infrastructure, such as storage tanks and sewer improvements, according to the county’s new plan.
The costs and benefits of green initiatives can be tricky to estimate, because they rely on many small projects across a wide area. They also require widespread public participation, said Samuel Sage, president of Atlantic States Legal Foundation, one of the activists who pushed for the green plan.
“Green is faith-based technology — faith in the public,” Sage said. “When you have to plant 10,000 trees, and you need 10,000 people to take care of 10,000 trees, engineers panic.”
In the fall of 2007, when Joanie Mahoney was campaigning for county executive, she bumped into Lane at an event on the South Side.
“We need to talk,” Mahoney told her.
Lane, 64, is a former engineer who retired early from Carrier Corp., in 1995. Her concern about racism and the way it divides the community prompted her to move in 1992 from Fayetteville to Midland Avenue, one of the poorest neighborhoods in Syracuse.
In 2000, she joined the Partnership for Onondaga Creek, a community group organized to fight against the Midland sewage plant and to advocate for alternative strategies. That fight became a new occupation for Lane, who lives two blocks from the plant.
“It was a full-time job,” she said.
Mahoney first heard Lane speak out when Mahoney was a city councilor in the early 2000s. Mahoney was persuaded that the Midland plant was a bad idea. She said she sympathized with neighborhood residents who complained that the county would never build a similar facility in a wealthy, white community.
Lane, who keeps boxes of records and sewer maps at home, impressed Mahoney with her knowledge.
As the election approached, Mahoney told Lane that if she won the county executive job, she would be interested in changing the sewer policies of the outgoing executive, Pirro. She asked Lane to organize a meeting of environmental and neighborhood activists who could bring Mahoney up to speed.
The meeting took place Oct. 29, eight days before the election. Mahoney and her campaign manager, Ben Dublin, met with Lane, Heath and several others who would become key suppliers of information and advice.
As soon as Mahoney took office, she turned to them for help. In January 2008, she faced a critical decision.
Plans for a second regional treatment facility — in Armory Square, similar to the Midland plant — had been started months before Mahoney took office. Site work had begun. Bids had been submitted for the construction.
Most of the staff from the county Department of Water Environment Conservation recommended that Mahoney award a contract and move ahead with the project, she said.
When she told department employees she wanted to abandon the project and look at other alternatives, she was met with incredulous looks, Mahoney recalled.
“I don’t believe anybody in those initial meetings thought we were going to do anything other than build a sewage treatment plant,” she said.
During those first weeks, Mahoney met and traded e-mail with Heath and Lane — both to seek their opinions and to check the facts her staff was giving her.
“I could trust, I could bounce things off (Joe) and Aggie,” Mahoney said.
She decided to postpone the construction bids, and later to abandon the sewage plant project.
Meanwhile, Sage, of Atlantic States, and Heath teamed to persuade the state Department of Environmental Conservation that it was time for a change in Onondaga County’s plan.
Sage can take credit for spurring much of Onondaga County’s progress in cleaning local waterways. His organization, a small nonprofit, sued the county in 1988 to force it to comply with federal clean water laws.
In the past decade, Onondaga County has spent $350 million to fix wastewater problems. Scientists agree that Onondaga Lake is much healthier because of it.
But that doesn’t mean Sage is happy with all the projects undertaken by the county. He has consistently opposed regional treatment facilities like the one at Midland Avenue.
Sage and Heath met twice in late 2007 and early 2008 with Alexander “Pete” Grannis, the DEC commissioner, to enlist his support for a new strategy.
During at least one of those meetings, they were accompanied by water scientist Ed Michalenko, of Onondaga Environmental Institute. Michalenko presented data showing that bacteria levels in Onondaga Creek are heavily affected by leaks in the sanitary sewers — a problem that would not be solved by building regional treatment facilities. Michalenko argued that Onondaga County should devote its resources to repairing sanitary sewers and separating them from storm sewers.
Heath said he also persuaded representatives of the DEC’s environmental justice staff to Syracuse to visit the neighborhood near the Midland plant and to walk the route of the planned pipeline. Their visits helped convince DEC officials that the South Side had borne an unfair burden and should not get a pipeline, as well, Heath said.
To sell a green solution, Heath and Sage helped coordinate visits by experts in green infrastructure.
They brought in Nancy Stoner, a former EPA official who co-directs water programs for the Natural Resources Defense Council. Stoner, co-author of “Rooftops to Rivers,” the council’s influential guide to green infrastructure, gave a lecture attended by county officials.
They also brought in Franco Montalto, a Drexel University hydrologist and engineer who runs a company specializing in green infrastructure. Montalto toured local sites and met with county officials.
When the county finally had to hire an engineering company to evaluate and refine its new program, Mahoney put out a request for proposals but refused to hire any local company, because most had invested many years of work on the old programs.
She wanted a fresh set of eyes, she said, and selected CH2M Hill Cos. Ltd., an international company based in Englewood, Colo.
“You can’t get that from people who have been immersed in it for 15 years,” Mahoney said. “You can’t get that fresh look.”
DEC officials have said they hope to make Onondaga County’s green infrastructure program a model for other cities to follow. Mahoney said the county’s groundbreaking approach would not have been possible without the help of activists from the community.
“A lot of the reason I knew what I was talking about was because I had listened to people like Aggie Lane and Joe Heath and the neighbors,” she said.
Contact Tim Knauss at tknauss@syracuse.com or 470-3023.
Friday, January 1, 2010
best news for the new year
December 31, 2009
E.P.A., Concerned Over Gas Drilling, Questions New York State’s Plans
By MIREYA NAVARRO, New York Times
See original article here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/31/science/earth/31drill.html?_r=4&ref=nyregion#
The federal Environmental Protection Agency told New York State on Wednesday that it had major concerns about how proposed hydraulic drilling for natural gas would affect public health and the environment, and urged it to undertake a broader study of the potential impact.
In formal comments on the state’s proposed regulations governing new natural gas drilling, the E.P.A. said it was particularly concerned about the regional water supply, air quality, wastewater treatment and radioactive materials that could be disturbed during drilling.
It recommended that “essential environmental protection measures” be taken before the state begins to review permit applications for the drilling, which is envisaged in the Marcellus Shale region.
The region includes New York City’s watershed in the Catskills. The Chesapeake Energy Corporation, which owns the lease to drill in the watershed, has backed off from plans to drill there specifically, but opponents of drilling have argued that the promise means little and could be reversed.
The draft regulations apply to a technology known as hydraulic fracturing, which involves blasting huge volumes of water mixed with chemicals into rock to extract gas. The process results in significant amounts of wastewater and has stirred concern about the risk of contamination and about water disposal issues.
In a statement, Yancey Roy, a spokesman for the State Department of Environmental Conservation, said it “appreciated” the federal agency’s comments but had no detailed response.
“At this time we are still taking input from the public and it would not be appropriate to respond to specific comments,” he said.
The federal agency was not required to weigh in as a regulator in what amounts to a state process to assess the environmental impact of drilling. But the agency’s involvement was welcomed by those who share similar concerns in what has become a highly polarizing issue in New York.
New York City officials, who oppose drilling in the watershed that supplies the city’s drinking water, views the E.P.A.’s comments as corroboration of their view that the state’s environmental impact statement is “flawed and should be rescinded,” said Marc La Vorgna, a spokesman for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.
“It does not adequately address the risks to the city’s drinking water,” he said.
Katherine Nadeau, water and natural resources program associate with Environmental Advocates of New York, a nonprofit group, described the federal agency’s letter as “nothing short of awesome.”
“The E.P.A. rightly echoes the concerns of tens of thousands of New Yorkers,” she said. “The D.E.C. needs to ditch the draft natural gas guidelines.”
E.P.A. officials did not specifically call for a ban on drilling in watershed areas. But they said the agency had “serious reservations about whether gas drilling in the New York City watershed is consistent with the vision of long-term maintenance of a high-quality unfiltered water supply.”
They recommended “a very cautious approach in all watershed areas.”
The agency also suggested that state regulators join forces with the New York State Department of Health, which enforces rules on safe drinking water, and with the New York State Public Service Commission, which regulates the construction and operation of the pipes that gather the natural gas.
They should work jointly, the E.P.A. said, to produce a more complete final document that addresses all issues of concern.
E.P.A., Concerned Over Gas Drilling, Questions New York State’s Plans
By MIREYA NAVARRO, New York Times
See original article here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/31/science/earth/31drill.html?_r=4&ref=nyregion#
The federal Environmental Protection Agency told New York State on Wednesday that it had major concerns about how proposed hydraulic drilling for natural gas would affect public health and the environment, and urged it to undertake a broader study of the potential impact.
In formal comments on the state’s proposed regulations governing new natural gas drilling, the E.P.A. said it was particularly concerned about the regional water supply, air quality, wastewater treatment and radioactive materials that could be disturbed during drilling.
It recommended that “essential environmental protection measures” be taken before the state begins to review permit applications for the drilling, which is envisaged in the Marcellus Shale region.
The region includes New York City’s watershed in the Catskills. The Chesapeake Energy Corporation, which owns the lease to drill in the watershed, has backed off from plans to drill there specifically, but opponents of drilling have argued that the promise means little and could be reversed.
The draft regulations apply to a technology known as hydraulic fracturing, which involves blasting huge volumes of water mixed with chemicals into rock to extract gas. The process results in significant amounts of wastewater and has stirred concern about the risk of contamination and about water disposal issues.
In a statement, Yancey Roy, a spokesman for the State Department of Environmental Conservation, said it “appreciated” the federal agency’s comments but had no detailed response.
“At this time we are still taking input from the public and it would not be appropriate to respond to specific comments,” he said.
The federal agency was not required to weigh in as a regulator in what amounts to a state process to assess the environmental impact of drilling. But the agency’s involvement was welcomed by those who share similar concerns in what has become a highly polarizing issue in New York.
New York City officials, who oppose drilling in the watershed that supplies the city’s drinking water, views the E.P.A.’s comments as corroboration of their view that the state’s environmental impact statement is “flawed and should be rescinded,” said Marc La Vorgna, a spokesman for Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg.
“It does not adequately address the risks to the city’s drinking water,” he said.
Katherine Nadeau, water and natural resources program associate with Environmental Advocates of New York, a nonprofit group, described the federal agency’s letter as “nothing short of awesome.”
“The E.P.A. rightly echoes the concerns of tens of thousands of New Yorkers,” she said. “The D.E.C. needs to ditch the draft natural gas guidelines.”
E.P.A. officials did not specifically call for a ban on drilling in watershed areas. But they said the agency had “serious reservations about whether gas drilling in the New York City watershed is consistent with the vision of long-term maintenance of a high-quality unfiltered water supply.”
They recommended “a very cautious approach in all watershed areas.”
The agency also suggested that state regulators join forces with the New York State Department of Health, which enforces rules on safe drinking water, and with the New York State Public Service Commission, which regulates the construction and operation of the pipes that gather the natural gas.
They should work jointly, the E.P.A. said, to produce a more complete final document that addresses all issues of concern.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
good news!
Federal judge approves Onondaga County using green technology to reduce Onondaga Lake pollution
By Tim Knauss / The Post-Standard (Syracuse)
November 16, 2009, 7:32PM
Onondaga County's plan to use trees, vegetated roofs, rain gardens, permeable pavement and rain barrels - instead of three new sewage treatment plants - to reduce sewer overflows polluting tributaries of Onondaga Lake was approved Monday by U.S. District Judge Frederick Scullin. In this file photo from August 2009, the sun rises over the lake. Syracuse, NY - Onondaga County got the final go-ahead Monday to scrap plans for three new sewage plants — including one in Armory Square — and instead reduce sewer overflows with trees, vegetated roofs, rain gardens, permeable pavement and rain barrels.
U.S. District Judge Frederick Scullin on Monday signed a new consent order between U.S. District Judge Frederick Scullin the county, the state Department of Environmental Conservation and Atlantic States Legal Foundation, a nonprofit group that sued the county in 1988 to stop its pollution of Onondaga Lake.
The new agreement replaces a court order that required the county to build a series of sewage plants along tributaries of the lake. The parties to the lawsuit — along with environmentalists and neighborhood activists who opposed building sewage plants — hailed the new consent order as a breakthrough that could change the face of Syracuse.
“Just imagine half a million more trees in our city,” said Joseph Heath, an attorney representing the Onondaga Nation, who helped hammer out the agreement.
DEC officials have said Onondaga County will likely set an example for other New York communities in how to use “green infrastructure” to handle urban runoff.
County Executive Joanie Mahoney laid the groundwork in 2008 when, just three weeks after taking office, she halted plans for a controversial $128 million sewage plant in Armory Square, where site work had already begun. Mahoney, the DEC and Atlantic States then sought permission from Scullin to hammer out a deal that would emphasize green measures.
Mahoney said she hopes the new plan will revitalize the community by cleaning its waterways in environmentally friendly ways.
“This is truly changing the prospects for Syracuse and Central New York,’’ Mahoney said. “And it’s probably going to be among the biggest accomplishments that I’ll have in this job, to get the federal court to change the direction we’re in.’’
Instead of a sewage plant along Onondaga Creek in Armory Square, the county will build a 3.7 million-gallon underground storage tank there to hold sewer overflows until they can be processed at the county’s Metro sewage treatment plant. The Armory Square tank will be installed by December 2013. Two additional storage tanks will be built along Harbor Brook, also by 2013.
Through a combination of storage tanks, new sewers and green infrastructure, the county is expected to prevent at least 95 percent of storm runoff from reaching waterways by 2018. The sewage system now captures about 85 percent each year, or 400 million gallons less.
The new court order gives the county until 2011 — roughly three extra years — to demonstrate its ability to restrict phosphorous emissions into Onondaga Lake. The order also calls for new scientific studies examining phosphorous in the lake.
Tim Knauss can be reached at tknauss@syracuse.com or 470-3023.
© 2009 syracuse.com. All rights reserved.
By Tim Knauss / The Post-Standard (Syracuse)
November 16, 2009, 7:32PM
Onondaga County's plan to use trees, vegetated roofs, rain gardens, permeable pavement and rain barrels - instead of three new sewage treatment plants - to reduce sewer overflows polluting tributaries of Onondaga Lake was approved Monday by U.S. District Judge Frederick Scullin. In this file photo from August 2009, the sun rises over the lake. Syracuse, NY - Onondaga County got the final go-ahead Monday to scrap plans for three new sewage plants — including one in Armory Square — and instead reduce sewer overflows with trees, vegetated roofs, rain gardens, permeable pavement and rain barrels.
U.S. District Judge Frederick Scullin on Monday signed a new consent order between U.S. District Judge Frederick Scullin the county, the state Department of Environmental Conservation and Atlantic States Legal Foundation, a nonprofit group that sued the county in 1988 to stop its pollution of Onondaga Lake.
The new agreement replaces a court order that required the county to build a series of sewage plants along tributaries of the lake. The parties to the lawsuit — along with environmentalists and neighborhood activists who opposed building sewage plants — hailed the new consent order as a breakthrough that could change the face of Syracuse.
“Just imagine half a million more trees in our city,” said Joseph Heath, an attorney representing the Onondaga Nation, who helped hammer out the agreement.
DEC officials have said Onondaga County will likely set an example for other New York communities in how to use “green infrastructure” to handle urban runoff.
County Executive Joanie Mahoney laid the groundwork in 2008 when, just three weeks after taking office, she halted plans for a controversial $128 million sewage plant in Armory Square, where site work had already begun. Mahoney, the DEC and Atlantic States then sought permission from Scullin to hammer out a deal that would emphasize green measures.
Mahoney said she hopes the new plan will revitalize the community by cleaning its waterways in environmentally friendly ways.
“This is truly changing the prospects for Syracuse and Central New York,’’ Mahoney said. “And it’s probably going to be among the biggest accomplishments that I’ll have in this job, to get the federal court to change the direction we’re in.’’
Instead of a sewage plant along Onondaga Creek in Armory Square, the county will build a 3.7 million-gallon underground storage tank there to hold sewer overflows until they can be processed at the county’s Metro sewage treatment plant. The Armory Square tank will be installed by December 2013. Two additional storage tanks will be built along Harbor Brook, also by 2013.
Through a combination of storage tanks, new sewers and green infrastructure, the county is expected to prevent at least 95 percent of storm runoff from reaching waterways by 2018. The sewage system now captures about 85 percent each year, or 400 million gallons less.
The new court order gives the county until 2011 — roughly three extra years — to demonstrate its ability to restrict phosphorous emissions into Onondaga Lake. The order also calls for new scientific studies examining phosphorous in the lake.
Tim Knauss can be reached at tknauss@syracuse.com or 470-3023.
© 2009 syracuse.com. All rights reserved.
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
8th Annual Onondaga Creek Clean Up
Saturday, September 12th & 19th
and this year it will be COMPLETELY COMMUNITY RUN!
That mean it’s up to us to get the job done!
We need volunteers to:
- clear trash/debris on the Creek banks and in the water.
- bring canoes to haul our "treasures"
We'll get dirty, we'll get wet, and we'll make our city a better place to live!
SIGN UP TODAY!
Bob Graham 396-2944 or bob153g@msn.com
Steve Seleway 345-2727 or selent@msn.com
and this year it will be COMPLETELY COMMUNITY RUN!
That mean it’s up to us to get the job done!
We need volunteers to:
- clear trash/debris on the Creek banks and in the water.
- bring canoes to haul our "treasures"
We'll get dirty, we'll get wet, and we'll make our city a better place to live!
SIGN UP TODAY!
Bob Graham 396-2944 or bob153g@msn.com
Steve Seleway 345-2727 or selent@msn.com
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