New York City school officials have agreed to assess the environmental risks posed by PCBs in school buildings and to come up with a plan for cleanups and for reducing potential exposure, federal officials said Tuesday.

Officials with the Environmental Protection Agency said that the city, under a binding accord, would conduct a pilot study to address potential violations of the Toxic Substances Control Act related to the presence of caulk containing PCBs above the allowable level of 50 parts per million.

They said the city had found unsafe concentrations of PCBs in testing during construction and renovation projects. They added that the city had estimated that hundreds of school buildings could have the same problem.

Source: NY Times continue reading this article here

Protecting the water New Yorkers drink is the goal behind several settlements announced today between the state and medical facilities.

Under the agreement announced by State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo today, five medical facilities have agreed to stop releasing pharmaceuticals into the New York City watershed. Those drugs end up in the watershed when they’re flushed down toilets.

Cuomo says the city’s water is safe and to date only trace amounts of pharmaceuticals have ended up in the drinking supply.

“We want to stop it from becoming a problem,” Cuomo said. “All too often, we only respond once it’s a problem and then we have to work very hard to fix it. We want to stop this from being a problem.”

The facilities have also agreed to pay for past violations of the law and the cost of the investigation. Additionally, they will institute take-back systems so households can bring the facilities the pharmaceuticals and they can be disposed of properly.

Cuomo says he is trying to work with 10 other medical facilities to reach a similar agreement.

Source: NY1

Following the second deadly brown tide in two years, New York conservation officials are planning to list Long Island’s Great South Bay among the state’s “impaired waters,” a move that requires devising a strategy to cut pollution.

The Department of Environmental Conservation put 787 troubled waterways on the list in 2008. The bay between Long Island and Fire Island is the site of a Nature Conservancy project to restore its clam beds, which once produced nearly half the clams eaten in the U.S.

Gov. David Paterson and Sen. Charles Schumer had previously asked the U.S. Commerce Department to designate a commercial fisheries disaster that would make the bay eligible for federal aid. They made the request – which is still pending – in 2008, though its commercial harvest was depleted years earlier.

Source: AP

Lawyers for New York City are trying to convince a jury in a federal trial that Exxon Mobil knew that an additive that it used in gasoline would contaminate groundwater.

The trial, which began on Tuesday before Judge Shira A. Scheindlin of United States District Court in Manhattan, is one of hundreds of cases that have been presented around the country against oil companies over the additive, M.T.B.E., a chemical compound that replaced lead in gasoline as an octane enhancer. Such enhancers boost engine performance and help prevent knocking.

New York City’s case against Exxon Mobil arose from the contamination of groundwater wells in Jamaica, Queens, that are designated as part of a backup system for drinking water in emergencies or droughts. In 2003, the city sued 23 oil companies over the contamination; it has reached settlements with 22, for a combined $15 million.

Source: NY Times Continue Reading This Article Here

New York environmental officials say the combination of summer heat and exhaust gases is boosting ozone to unhealthy levels in five lower Hudson Valley counties.

They’ve issued an air quality advisory effective through 11 p.m. Tuesday in Sullivan, Ulster, Dutchess, Putnam, and Orange counties. An advisory is issued when meteorologists predict pollution will reach levels that could affect peoples’ health.

Ground-level ozone is formed when sunlight and heat interact with smog from vehicle exhausts and industrial and power plant emissions.

People with respiratory disease and those who do vigorous work or exercise outdoors, especially children, should limit activity when ozone levels are highest, generally in the afternoon and early evening.

Source: AP

Two bills fell victim to a chaotic late night state Senate session – one requiring electronics manufacturers statewide to take away customers’ old products and another hoping to create thousands of jobs by retrofitting New York homes to be more energy efficient.

The “e-waste” bill failed Thursday night in the state Senate, dashing the hopes of environmental groups.

The basic concept of the measure has broad support in the Legislature, particularly among Democrats, but the bill failed because of a dispute over whether manufacturers should be able to charge a fee for collecting old equipment.

The e-waste bill passed by the Assembly forbids such a fee. But manufacturers waged an aggressive lobbying campaign in the Senate for the right to charge collection fees and lined up the support of most Republicans and Democratic Sen. Craig Johnson of Nassau County. A bill needs 32 votes to pass, and with four of the 32 Democratic senators absent from Thursday’s session, the e-waste bill was doomed and was withdrawn without a vote.

Source: Crains New York Continue Reading This Article Here

Fighting to prevent the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn from being labeled a Superfund site, city officials are proposing an alternative cleanup plan that they say would still be overseen by the Environmental Protection Agency but would take only about half the time a Superfund project would require.

A Superfund designation, reserved for the country’s most hazardous sites, allows the government to pursue parties responsible for the pollution and require them to pay for the removal of hazards.

In April the E.P.A. proposed adding the Gowanus Canal to its Superfund National Priorities List at the urging of the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation. In a preliminary assessment the agency found that the site was contaminated by a variety of pollutants as a result of the waterway’s industrial past, including pesticides, metals and cancer-causing chemicals called PCBs.

Source: NY Times Read The Complete Article Here

A federal judge has temporarily blocked a new law requiring return deposits on water bottles sold in New York state starting June 1.

Federal Judge Thomas Griesa issued an order after a hearing Wednesday that will stop enforcement of the law while a lawsuit proceeds.

Water bottlers had sued New York officials after they authorized the new law, which expanded 5-cent deposits beyond carbonated beverages, wine coolers and beer.

In a release, Nestle Waters North America urged the state Legislature and governor to change the law.

According to Nestle Waters, a new date for the law to take effect has not yet been set. The judge will entertain recommendations from both sides. Today was the last chance legislators had to amend the law before it kicked in.

Its chief executive officer, Kim Jeffery, said the company strongly supports laws that encourage recycling, promote consumer health and apply to all beverages. But he said the New York Bottle Bill failed to accomplish those goals.

Source: AP Continue Reading This Article Here

A push by environmental groups to wean Americans from their water bottles is gaining momentum in statehouses.

In Maine, Poland Spring, the nation’s No. 3-selling bottled water brand, is fighting a proposal by lawmakers to impose a 1-cent-per-gallon tax, saying it’s unfair because out-of-state competitors wouldn’t have to pay the fee.

In New York, legislators recently expanded the state’s 20-year-old bottle deposit law to include water. And on Tuesday, Gov. David Paterson told state agencies to cut spending and help the environment by switching from bottled to tap water.

New York becomes the third state, after Virginia and Illinois, to cut spending on bottled water. Last June, the U.S. Conference of Mayors passed a resolution calling on city governments to stop buying bottled water, and at least 60 cities have done so.

Paterson signed an executive order Tuesday phasing out the spending of state funds for single-serve and cooler-sized bottles of water. Agencies will have to provide tap water fountains and dispensers instead.

“Governor Paterson’s announcement acknowledges that states send the wrong message when they promote and fund public tap water on the one hand and purchase bottled water on the other,” Kelle Louaillier, executive director of Boston-based Corporate Accountability International, said in a statement.

The corporate watchdog group’s “Think Outside the Bottle” campaign has asked the nation’s governors _ as well as mayors, restaurateurs, universities and individuals _ to turn away from bottled water and support public drinking water supplies.

The New York City Council called for an end to bottled water purchases for city offices and city-sponsored events last June, and numerous restaurants and cultural venues have followed suit.

“Bottled water is wasteful and requires large amounts of energy to bottle and transport,” Paterson said. More than 450 million gallons of oil per year are used to transport water from bottling plants to stores, and plastic water bottle manufacturing uses 17 million barrels of oil, he said.

Four billion pounds of water bottles end up in landfills or incinerators in New York annually, Paterson said. That number should decline when the state’s new 5-cent deposit on water bottles takes effect June 1.

“Taxpayers have spent billions of dollars to ensure that we have clean drinking water supplies,” Paterson said. “If we are going to make such significant investments, we should reap the benefits and use that water.”

Critics of bottled water say that, in addition to the environmental impact, the industry is essentially taking a public resource and selling it back to the public.

Lawmakers in Maine are considering a bill that would require large bottlers to pay a 1-cent-per-gallon tax on water they pump from springs or other sources in the state. Revenue would go to water quality protection, tax relief for Maine residents and to municipalities where the water was extracted.

Rep. Jon Hinck, the bill’s sponsor, said the proposed levy “reflects the true value of natural resources and supports efforts to protect and preserve them.”

Bottler Poland Spring said the proposed tax would cost the company $7 million per year, nearly 20 percent of its annual payroll.

Water is the second-largest category in the bottled soft drink market behind carbonated drinks. Nelson Co., which tracks consumer trends, said U.S. bottled water sales fell 3.3 percent last year. France’s Groupe Danone says its 2008 profits shrank 69 percent in part because of declining sales of Evian water.

Source: AP

The New York City Department of Environmental Protection is giving continued consideration to a new proposal for a wastewater treatment plant for the hamlet of Phoenicia.

The plan would use vegetated sand beds instead of the conventional concrete and chemical version that Phoenicia voters turned down two years ago.

Department of Environmental Protection Assistant Commissioner David Warne wrote, “While some outstanding issues related to the proposal still remain, DEP is nevertheless encouraged by the progress made in responding to our comment letter of December 10, 2008.”

The hamlet, which has been targeted for a sewer system since the mid-1990s, has received at least two extensions of deadlines imposed by the city agency. The most recent deadline, which was last December, was granted to allow Phoenicia to do a feasibility study for an alternative treatment system. The city, which is offering $17.2 million to build the hamlet a conventional system, then reviewed the alternative plan and refused to approve it.

In February, Richard Rennia of Rennia Engineering said the city supplied specific objections to that first proposal, developed last fall by Rennia’s firm. Rennia then amended that proposal to include all the elements the city thought missing. The size of the system was doubled and now includes the micro-filtration phase of treatment the city requires. As a result it will now cost as much to build the vegetated sand bed system as the old conventional one, but it is projected to cost much less to operate.

The conventional system would have cost an estimated $375,000 a year to run. Rennia’s system would cost an estimated $177,000 a year.

The town has been given until the end of the month to:

• Prove the system can remove ammonia and phosphorous.

• Prove the standby reed beds can be kept operational through all seasons.

• Provide more data on how the system would operate during peak flows and low flows.

• Show the calculations used to size the system.

Source: Daily Freeman