New York City can continue to buy land to protect its watershed in the Catskills and Hudson River Valley from development under an agreement announced on Wednesday by the city and state.
Officials with the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and the city?s Environmental Protection Department said the state had issued a permit under the agreement that allows New York City to continue the land acquisition program for the next 15 years.
The land and watershed-protection effort, begun in 1997, enables the city to avoid having to filter its drinking water under a federal exemption, saving at least $10 billion that the city would otherwise have to spend on a filtration plant (and pass on to consumers through water rate increases.)
The city already protects about 160,000 acres of the one-million-acre watershed, said Farrell Sklerov, a spokesman for the city?s Environmental Protection Department. The state owns 200,000 acres of watershed land, meaning that the city and state combined own 35 percent over all, he said.
That acreage is expected to continue increasing at the rate of 10,000 acres a year, depending on the availability of land for sale and the financing. Mr. Sklerov said the city had spent about $400 million in the program and had committed another $140 million for future purchases.
The Catskill and Delaware system reservoirs supply drinking water to nine million residents in New York City and neighboring counties.
?Protecting New York City water at its source is the single most effective way to maintain high-quality water,? Caswell Holloway, the city?s environmental protection commissioner, said in a statement. ?The new 15-year water supply permit will do just that.? He noted that New York was one of only five large cities to receive the majority of its water from unfiltered sources, as a result of the program
The agreement, which updates an accord negotiated by the city, the state, the federal Environmental Protection Agency, environmental groups, and 77 counties and municipalities in the watershed, also includes more than $100 million for programs that limit water pollution, including the repair of residential and commercial septic systems.
Eric A. Goldstein, a senior attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council, one of the environmental groups that took part in the negotiations, praised the decision. ?By authorizing the city to safeguard over 100,000 acres of forests, meadows, farms and wetlands in their natural state, the new permit should help to ensure clean water for half the state?s population deep into the 21st century,? he said.
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