WATER QUALITY MANAGEMENT AND THE POLICY RESPONSE IN LOCAL GOVERNMENTS IN LONG ISLAND, NEW YORK

The Long Island Sound has been impacted from various sources emanating from densely populated urban areas from the New York and Connecticut coastline. These impacts include hypoxia, elevated pathogens, overflow impacts from municipal wastewater and sewers, and urban/suburban runoff. Under the Clean Water Act, the state of New York requires the implementation of pollutant load reductions from designated villages, towns, and counties who must comply with the Municipal Separate Storm Sewer System (MS4). The MS4 process requires annually submitting permits which identify specific strategies used to reduce pollutants and developing retrofit plans to identify best practices to reduce pollutants.

This session focuses on one sub-watershed that drains into an impaired waterbody and explores the following research questions: who are the actors involved in water quality management and what are their roles?; what are the trends in water quality and what are the data gaps?; and, what has been the policy response from municipalities and where is each in the process?

From our research, we observed that there are a variety of practices being advanced and that municipalities are at different stages in the process. Most municipalities generally lack human, technical, and financial capital. What has resulted is a disparate set of responses that has not resulted in reductions of pathogens. In addition, multiple agencies are examining water quality which leads to confusion about the current state of water quality. In addition, we conclude that there is lack of readily available data on non-sewered systems.

We recommend that a standardized data clearinghouse be created for both water quality data and policies to avoid duplication of efforts and allow for sharing of best practice measures. We also advocate for the development of an integrated water management system organized into a few regions to provide a better mechanism to reduce pollutants in Long Island’s waterways.