Copyright 1999 The New York Times Company
The New
York Times
September 16, 1999, Thursday, Late Edition -
Final
SECTION: Section B; Page 3; Column
3; Metropolitan Desk
LENGTH: 885 words
HEADLINE: Scientists Give Mixed Marks to the City's
Water Plan
BYLINE: By ANDREW C. REVKIN
BODY:
A panel convened by the National Academy of
Sciences to critique New York City's billion-dollar plan to prevent pollution of
its most important reservoirs gave the city a mixed grade yesterday.
The
panel of scientists said the city's plan to limit development, fix sewage
problems and buy thousands of acres around the reservoirs in the Catskills and
the Delaware Valley could work. But they warned that the city needed to be more
aggressive in tracking sources of water-borne parasites and should intensify
efforts to improve septic systems, which can taint water with bacteria,
parasites and other pollution. The 427-page report will be closely evaluated by
the Federal Environmental Protection Agency when it begins a parallel review of
the city's plans to protect its water system.
Federal clean-water rules
generally require drinking water to be filtered. New York is one of a handful of
cities that have been granted an exemption from the rule, but it must prove it
can protect the water sources adequately without costly mechanical systems.
A main filtration system would cost $6 billion, and city officials
maintain that they can protect the water adequately with alternative methods
costing $1 billion over a decade.
The Federal waiver only applies to the
Catskill-Delaware arm of the city's system, which provides 90 percent of the
water. The city has already agreed to build a $600 million plant to clean water
from the separate, smaller cluster of reservoirs east of the Hudson River in the
crowded suburbs of Westchester and Putnam Counties.
In general, the
scientists said, the city's plan was a good one that could serve as "a prototype
for water suppliers nationwide," but they said the city must also proceed with
plans for construction of a main filtration plant, in case it proves necessary.
Mary Mears, a spokeswoman for the Federal environmental agency, said the
scientists' report "will be a key document in our mid-course review" of the
city's water protection efforts.
The report was commissioned by Alan G.
Hevesi, the City Comptroller, to provide an independent, scientific assessment
of the water protection plan, which took effect in June 1997 after protracted
negotiations involving city, state and local officials from the dozens of
communities abutting the city's 19 upstate reservoirs.
The report was
prepared by the National Research Council, an arm of the National Academy of
Sciences, which assembles panels of experts to assess scientific issues for
government agencies.
At a news conference in Manhattan yesterday, the
chairman of the scientific panel, Dr. Charles R. O'Melia, said the city should
put more money and effort into finding where potentially deadly infectious
organisms were coming from.
So far, he said, there was no indication
that the microbes that cause the most serious infections were increasing, but
they are in the water and, according to the panel's calculations, are
responsible for many cases of intestinal illness in the city each year, he said.
And almost nothing is known about whether they come from wildlife, farms or
sewage systems, he said.
"Pathogens such as cryptosporidium and giardia
pose a significant and direct threat to public health because they are very
resistant to the chlorination process used to disinfect the city's unfiltered
water supply," said Dr. O'Melia, who is a professor of geography and
environmental engineering at Johns Hopkins University. "Efforts to monitor,
model and control these organisms must be stepped up," he said.
Late
yesterday, the city's Department of Environmental Protection, which manages the
water supply, issued a printed statement in which Joel A. Miele Sr., the
Commissioner of Environmental Protection, said he was pleased that the panel
endorsed the city's overall water-protection plan, and he defended the agency's
program for monitoring cryptosporidium and other parasites, saying, "Our
detection methods continue to be on the cutting edge."
Dr. O'Melia also
said the city needed to do more to eliminate sources of organic compounds, some
of them naturally occurring in soil and decaying leaves, that are benign by
themselves but form toxic chemicals when they pass through a chlorination
system. Federal environmental officials are preparing to strengthen their
standards for those toxic byproducts of chlorine treatment.
Another important weakness in the city's program, the panel concluded,
concerns its work to replace failing septic systems at homes around the
Catskills. Once septic systems are shown to be failing, the city pays to replace
them but only with conventional passive systems using a tank and a leaching
field.
The panel said it would be well worth the investment to replace
them with more effective units that aerate waste water to remove more impurities
and kill parasites and bacteria. This could "drastically reduce concentrations"
of disease-causing organisms, the report said.
The report concurred with
recent findings of some private environmental groups, saying that the city needs
to intensify efforts to stanch pollution and buy land around the Kensico
Reservoir, located in a crowded neighborhood north of White Plains, which acts
as a holding basin for all the water flowing through aqueducts from upstate.
http://www.nytimes.com
LOAD-DATE: September 16, 1999
