With a federal lawsuit alleging EPA violations between the environmental advocacy group Save the Sound and Westchester County approaching the two-year mark, officials at the nonprofit are growing increasingly impatient with alleged inaction on the part of several communities.
“Save the Sound is frustrated with the lack of progress,” said Tracy Brown, director of Save the Sound’s Western programs. “We need schedules with more meaningful deadlines than what [defendants] brought to the table.”
A settlement conference was held earlier this month and allowed the 11 municipalities named in the suit to update both a state district judge and members of Save the Sound on where their respective communities stand.
Brown, who attended the conference, said that while schedules outlining work have been drawn up for most of the communities, some continue to lag behind.
So far, aside from the village of Mamaroneck, which was under a 2014 consent order from the New York state Department of Environmental Conservation, DEC, to conduct an evaluation of its sewers, Brown said other communities have floundered in taking significant steps toward doing the same.
“We’re asking for—in the case of each of the communities in the Long Island Sound watershed—[communities] to do a Sanitary Sewer Evaluation Study and then have a coordinated strategy for their repairs,” she said.
A lawsuit filed in 2015 originally targeted the named communities’ adherence to the EPA’s Clean Water Act, alleging that deficient and neglected sewer infrastructure has led to untreated waste entering the Long Island Sound via sanitary sewer overflows. But Roger Reynolds, legal director for Save the Sound, said that federal suit has since been put “temporarily on hold.”
“We are working toward a resolution where the [municipalities] would create a regional solution,” Reynolds said. “But if that doesn’t happen, then the litigation process—which is not ideal—would be the way to go.”
Specifically, Reynolds said, instead of litigation, the group will push to see greater cooperation between communities who manage common infrastructure and are situated in a mutual network of waterways, and ideally a more clearly defined assessment of the problem itself.
“It’s not about any specific town or community, it’s the entire problem,” Reynolds said. “It’s one big system that flows in and out of each other.”
Reynolds said similar cooperative solutions have shown some efficacy in the past, some of which are taking place in New York state.
Reynolds points to a similar effort launched in Albany, New York, in 2015 that leveraged a DEC consent order to bring multiple cities, villages and towns together to rectify pollution spurred by deficient sewer infrastructure under mandated deadlines.
Among the initiatives to stem from a consent order in Albany, are various intermunicipal sewer agreements that also add clear deadlines and definitions to communities’ pollution problems.
According to Reynolds, a settlement with the Westchester communities named in the lawsuit may be nearing. He estimated a decision may be coming in the next two months.
“We just really want to see the problem get solved,” he said.
Due to ongoing litigation, Mamaroneck Village Manager Richard Slingerland declined to comment. Rye City Attorney Kristen Wilson could not be reached for comment, as of press time.
