Give Gotham credit: Whatever its other failings, the city understands that without high-quality drinking water, we have nothing. Now, President Trump’s Environmental Protection Agency is forcing Big Apple residents to spend $3 billion to “improve” and cover over a Yonkers reservoir.
This is classic overreach — massive taxpayer spending for minimal result — that Trump pledged to stop.
No matter who is mayor, New York jealously guards the reservoirs and pipes that bring us water. Today the city spends $200 million a year employing 2,600 people to protect the water and sewer system, including guarding and monitoring upstate reservoirs.
Now, though, in a lawsuit filed this month, the US Department of Justice, with EPA support, calls our water system “a serious public-health problem.” The supposed risk: Birds can poop in uncovered Hillview Reservoir in Yonkers, the last stop for a billion gallons of already chlorinated and ultraviolet-treated water as it flows into local pipes.
So we have to cover it, likely with concrete. Rather than fight, the city immediately settled, entering into a “consent decree.”
Although it’s tempting to imagine dark Trumpian forces punishing Democratic New York in this case, there is no evidence that the president knows about this lawsuit. Rather, it’s the culmination of a painfully drawn-out process, spanning four administrations.
In 1996, the Clinton-era Congress amended the Safe Drinking Water Act. It took another decade, until 2006, for Bush-era regulators to apply the toughened law to uncovered reservoirs. Obama-era regulators dithered for years over whether the city would have to build the cap. All along, New York City tap water remained as safe and delicious as ever. But no matter, the feds kept pressing for the cap.
Trump was supposed to be different. Ten days into office, the 45th president signed an executive order to “reduce regulation and control regulatory costs” — without, of course, harming the environment. This lawsuit fails on three counts.
First, it isn’t science-based. The EPA is upfront that this massive project is to “prevent” harm, not to remediate it. The city regularly tests the water, and the lawsuit doesn’t proffer any evidence that anyone has gotten sick. The best the feds can do is to say that “if the Hillview water were to be re-contaminated” after previous chlorine treatment, “health would be threatened.”
But consider: Former Mayor Mike Bloomberg was a stickler for public health, yet he spent 12 years in office not capping the reservoir. Would the man who wouldn’t let us drink soda let us drink dirty water? Tellingly, even the environmental groups that often sue as third parties to enforce government statutes regarding air and water have left this case alone.
Then, too, New York has until 2049 to complete this project. You’re drinking bird poop but have to wait 30 years for the feds to rescue you. That’s an odd message to telegraph.
Second, it is an unfunded mandate that ignores local ideas. “You’ve got a great opportunity to put in place adaptive management” rather than apply a one-size-fits-all rule, Carter Strickland, Bloomberg’s environmental protection chief, tells me. The city already manages wildlife at Hillview and can change its methods if and when testing results change.
Third, the feds ignore cost-benefit analysis. If EPA administrator Andrew Wheeler is concerned about local water supply, he ought to start with areas with far less oversight and power over their own supplies. New York’s latest (unfounded) state health warning over water bacteria didn’t apply to the Big Apple but to tiny upstate Franklin County. All over the country, in places with less media scrutiny than New York, people face real contamination.
Finally, one aspect of the suit is punitive. As part of the settlement, Gotham must pay a $1 million federal fine, plus $250,000 in state penalties. By comparison, the DOJ and EPA this month levied a $616,000 civil penalty against ExxonMobil for clean-air violations arising from a 2013 fire at a Texas refinery that killed two employees.
Meanwhile, drink up, the water’s fine — thanks to the resources and self-enlightened intentions of a wealthy city, not the feds.
This piece originally appeared at New York Post
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Nicole Gelinas is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute and contributing editor at City Journal. Follow her on Twitter here.
This piece originally appeared in New York Post