The Commissioner Talks

The following interview with Christopher O. Ward, Commissioner of NYC’s Department of Environmental Protection was conducted June 16th at DEP’s Kingston offices by Brian Powers, publisher of The Phoenicia Times and The Olive Press newspapers.

BP: Commissioner Ward, I’m guessing you didn’t hear about your job through the New York Times. Maybe you could tell us about how you did find your way to DEP, and when did thinking about water quality become a big part of your life?

CW: I worked in and out of government for most of my career. I’d been with the City before in economic development, I’d been with the energy office and did energy and environmental policy there. I was in the private sector in the shipping business for a while, and then I spent 5 years being the chief at the Port Authority of NY and NJ. I did all of the long term strategic planning for that agency. And then from there I became knowledgeable about a lot of environmental issues, not the reservoir issues but environmental policy. The Port Authority develops the port facilities, the airports, and so doing large-scale development and handling a large agency like the Port Authority was the background. After Sept 11 there were some political changes at the Port Authority and Mayor Blumberg heard that I was thinking about leaving and offered me the DEP job.

How much of your job is spent thinking about these water-related issues and how much is spent on other things?

Almost 90 percent of what we do is water-related, whether it’s wastewater treatment in NYC, whether it’s water and sewer distribution within the city, but I would say a good half of what I do is water-supply related, the reservoirs, the aqueducts, the shafts… We’ve just gone through a whole new capital plan for the agency and I’ve shifted focus, after having been an agency that did wastewater treatment within the city, shifted focus to water-supply, as I see the water supply system as our real critical challenge right now.

The City’s still seems to be doing a pretty good job of acquiring lands from voluntary sellers at this moment…

I’m delighted you say that ..(laughs)

Are you concerned the numbers might not be where you’d want them to be?

Well, they’re not where we’d like them to be. We think we’ve done a great job and I appreciate the way you put that. The willing-seller, willing-buyer model only takes you so far, and we have been offering to buy property for a long time. And because of that, getting the next acquisitions, each one gets harder and harder. But we think we’re making progress, it continues to work well for us, but we have made some changes in how we acquire. We’ve shortened up the time for the contracts under review so the sellers know sooner. We’ve increased the down payment so the sellers have value in their pocket earlier. So we’ve tweeked and looked at ways that we can become a more attractive buyer. But in the long run what we need to do is link economic development and land acquisition with our program. And we’ve begun to talk to the Watershed Ag Council as well as CWC, about what the Watershed Land Acquisition program might be in the next five to ten years

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Are the escalating property values in the Catskills impeding your ability to do this?

It’s not really impeding it. It’s making it a little bit more expensive. But the second-home issue escalating property values has been a concern, particularly East-of- Hudson but also up here West-of Hudson. But the City’s so committed to this that if we have a fair market value appraisal for a piece of property and it’s valuable to us, we’ll buy it. While the prices may have risen and the people who want to sell have the benefit of that, we’re still going to buy. Our issue is that we need to do it quicker for the seller.

So under Federal court order is there a specified number of acres you must acquire, or is it a target only.

It’s a target only. It’s an aggressive target, we think we’ll make it, and we’re looking for ways of expanding that.

Let me ask you about the reservoirs. How’s security going at the Ashokan reservoir?

We think that security is going well. Having said that, the community is well aware that we have closed the road over the Ashokan dam. And that has a local community impact that we recognize and we believe are attempting to deal with it. Unfortunately post September 11, the frequency of indirect or direct information from terrorist networks often identifies water supply as high on the list of targets. The Ashokan dam and the Ashokan road as well as our Kensico dam and Kensico road are vulnerable locations to significant attack jeopardizing the water supply.

Now that particular location in Olive, “the lemon squeezer”, is obviously a very narrow configuration of the road and of the dam structure. I think the thing that people are a little confused about is they understand OK, this section of the road is blocked, but for the last number of months there haven’t actually been any people there, just a couple concrete barriers. If we’re really talking about determined terrorists…

What people are noticing is that earlier our department had the benefit of Department of Corrections police who were assigned from the State to those fixed, manned locations. Our police appraisal of the site with barriers and police capability in the area is sufficient to keep a large truck which is really the issue, not a bicyclist not a pedestrian, off that constrained area is the approach. So we think on balance, we’ve recognized that manning, timing and all that is a cost, we think we’ve restricted access in a way that keeps it protected. But since September 11, in the whole water supply area, we will have spent over $100 million in security efforts around all of our reservoirs and all of our shaft sites, whether it’s infrared cameras, sensors, hardening of doors, electronic locks, sensor wire. Without detailing where we’ve done it, we’ve put an enormous amount of money into protecting the water supply system.

Also on the subject of the Ashokan, the Catskill Mountain Railway has a right-of-way which traverses basically the whole north side of the reservoir. And while the time-frame for its potential development is somewhat uncertain, I think they are hopeful of being able to get the railroad open at some point on their leased property. Does your agency have unusual concerns about this?

The difference is consistent, fixed use from that kind of business, that kind of attraction, is something that we can work with. That’s where you have a known commodity, you know what they’re doing, you can coordinate information. You’re not dealing with a situation that open access or road access would create. So I’m sure we could work something out, as long as we’re exchanging information, timetables, that sort of thing.

You had an approval, an extension by the US EPA quite recently of the FAD. I would take it you’re pleased with that..

I would go a step further and say I’m delighted. I think this is one of the great social, environmental experiments that has worked successfully, and it just got extended again.

The issues for the watershed communities are ones that continue to be complex for us. There is, depending on one’s point of view, either a lot or maybe not so much money available to the watershed as a whole and to its individual communities. The total amount of money is on the order of 250 million

That’s just for land acquisition. That’s total, for this 10-year timeframe.

Okay but apart from that, there are also a number of water quality protection programs that are administered by CWC, and frankly the funding levels on those have been viewed throughout the Catskills as very problematical. Let me give you a case in point. There are streambank stabilization problems all over the watershed and in Phoenicia we’ve had 5 backyards falling into the Esopus Creek. A remediation program is finally about to start, but it took over 5 years of meetings and inter-agency discussions during which time most of those backyards and a couple of outbuildings fell into the creek and washed into the reservoir. Now, one would think the City would want to look at these kinds of situations with some sense of urgency, and have the funding available to deal with them. Under the funding levels of the original MOA that was clearly a problem. Programs ran out of money early, septic system repair for instance, was terribly underfunded. And the rate at which sewer treatment plants have been built has been very slow. Phoenicia is now slated for its plant, but it’s #11 on a list of 22 that need to get built, and it’s been 7 years already. So there are real concerns about the resources that have been made available so far.

Let me say right off the top that that’s unfortunate. Because the city is committed to spend almost $1.2 billion throughout all of the FAD and MOA agreements. There has never been a lack of funding commitment for these programs, and the city, I believe, has demonstrated consistently that funding commitment. What we have struggled with and I think we need to do a better job of, and it’s a matter of partnership and communication, is getting work done. And that means setting priorities, negotiating contracts, implementing work, and that day to day management of this partnership is really to my mind been where we need to focus more of our efforts. Because given over $1.2 billion in funding, it hasn’t been the lack of financial commitment. But what we’ve struggled with is how do you put together this big, this complex, this multidimensional a program, recognizing all the community differences and issues. And that I think is a real challenge.

If you go back and you think about what a company, if you were a private sector company and you were delivering services, and you said your business plan was to deliver services to the multiple community perspectives whether it’s stormwater. Whether it’s septic. Whether it’s economic development. Whether it’s land acquisition, whether it’s forestry. Whether it’s agriculture. If it’s all the things you said this business needs to do and spend a billion dollars on, how quickly could it get done? I think you’d find that spending and implementing and managing all these programs is an enormously complex and difficult endeavor.

The city has always been committed to funding these programs, but what we’ve struggled with is how do we set priorities, how do we create local partnerships, and how do we get the work done.

Well, a lot of that decision making seems to happen through the Catskill Watershed Corporation. And CWC has at times, their own frustrations at dealing with your agency.

Without a doubt. Let me state again that dealing with the City of New York as a bureaucracy which is spending and protecting NYC residents’ money, over a billion dollars, there is process, regulations, legal requirements that do mount up and cause frustration. They can cause frustrations for the people who work for the City. But that’s what I mean by finding a way to get things done sooner rather than later, setting priorities and problem solving. I think if we fall back to the idea that we’re not in this together and the City’s not committed to this, and there’s not an agreement to go forward, that’s when we don’t make progress. If we all say let’s roll up our sleeves and get stuff done, that’s ¯from my year’s experience now ¯ when we’ve really been successful. And I think we’ve shown with that kind of focus things have gotten done. The contracts, except for the community septic are all now done. All the FAD contracts are done. The wastewater treatment projects have gone forward and the next level of community funding is going forward. We might not have done it fast enough, there might have been problems with how we got there, but everything that we said we’d do, we are now doing or in the process of doing and everything we said we’d fund, we’ve funded.

Let’s talk about the broader aspects of the relationship between the City and the watershed towns. Most people here see the City’s role as inherently restrictive of things individuals and developers might want to do, and there’s a widespread perception that in the Catskills we live under the most stringent water quality restrictions in the country, maybe in the world. And because of that, there are ways both tangible and intangible that we pay for it, or that it costs us that we may or may not be fairly compensated for by the City.

I know where you’re headed. Putting aside the compensation for what the MOA does, I think there clearly does remain a skepticism about the city and how much regulation is imposed by the city that otherwise wouldn’t have been imposed. And there is also obviously the whole history of what is the city even doing here, having constructed the reservoirs, or having anything to say about what happens in and around them. And that unfortunately continues to rear its head, and it often clouds progress because people need to come to terms with that sense of the relationship between the City and the upstate towns.

I think the answer from my perspective, where this all leads us, is that it’s a vision of the reservoirs, the money that we have spent in water quality, and the commitment we’ve made to it that’s creating an environment for the Catskills which in the long run is enormously positive. Cleaning up the environment, making sure that septic systems and wastewater treatment is at the level best that it can be. Making sure that streams function well as streams and that that the reservoirs are clean and you can fish in them. All of that is about a larger vision or a larger environmental vision for all of the watershed towns. And I think if you look at growth elsewhere in the country and you look at the issues of communities particularly like the Catskills which has such a great history and heritage of natural resource and beauty and woods and towns and streams, I think the concept has been to enhance that and make that valuable, and to make that a part of the base life, just what is the Catskills? Without that, what would the Catskills be? So I think that’s from the City’s perspective the kind of a partnership that we wanted to build on when we put all the funding into it.

You know in America everybody who owns a piece of property, it’s their land and they want to be able to do what they want with it. That’s a natural reaction. Having said that, if you live next door to someone whose septic system isn’t being taken care of and it’s constantly causing problems, you’d like to have that taken care of as well. And I think if we think of all of the environmental issues that the Catskills face, this is bringing real value to that environmental agenda which allows the towns to grow and prosper and grow into what the Catskills can be after you’ve preserved that. So that’s my vision for it.

Some of the anxieties that remain though, are fueled by things that people read and hear, often things that are heavily spun for political or business reasons, regarding the City’s long-term plans. Now some of us are aware that back in January, 21 environmental groups apparently made some kind of request of your agency. And that has been characterized by some in the watershed as an attempt to create a regional planning board that would supercede the authority of local planning boards.

Well, let me state first that there are clearly advocates and constituents upstate and around the watershed and we also have advocates and constituents around the city who are constantly talking to DEP about DEP should be doing. There is in no way, shape or form any discussion about creating some super-regional planning association that DEP would bring to bear and usurp local land use, zoning requirements or land use planning efforts or any of that. That is not in the City’s interest and it’s clearly not within our rights, or where we see the partnership under the MOA.

Having said that what you saw was a focused interest on the part of a lot of environmental land use advocates within the City but also some people upstate, to talk about a vision of the Catskills and how it might grow and how it might prosper. But that is part of what I guess would call this great mix of views for what the Catskills should be. Going back to my earlier answer, our view is that the Catskills have a great future, and that future can be built upon in an environmental agenda, which is what the MOA and the FAD is all about. And they are not mutually exclusive if done in a long-term, thoughtful manner. And I just think that the recommendations were from one particular perspective on what that thoughtful manner might be. We’re clearly hearing from the CWC, and I’ve met now with both local town representatives and community activists and just farmers. It’s what everybody wants the Catskills to be is what the MOA is about, and that’s what the partnership is. But there is no ¯ in any way, shape, or form ¯ no notion that some sort of supra planning organization might define what the Catskills should be in the future.

So how do you see, sort of, the broader significance of the FAD?

The beauty of the FAD and the MOA should in no way to be understood that we’re done. And that what the vision for the Catskills for the next 5 years, ten years, and finally 50 years is somehow found in what we’ve done to date.

The problem is that the EPA gives us a 5-year FAD and we just got a 5-year extension with an open ended extension. But as I’ve talked with the Watershed Agricultural Council and talked with the CWC, for the Filtration Avoidance west of Hudson, the number roughly put to filter the Catskill-Delaware watershed would be $5 to $6 billion. Over time it grows to $7 billion. The cost-benefit ratio of spending the $1.2 billion if we were to lose the filtration avoidance is really money poorly spent if we can’t keep this thing going for another 20, 30, 50 years and hopefully forever. So that I think the social experiment that makes the FAD and what makes the MOA, is still in its infancy. And there are going to be more ideas and more projects and in the future more funding to make this all viable. So I think that people tend to think once this part of it is done we’re all done. That is not the case.

Your agency is taking a significant role in the Belleayre Resort review. Perhaps you could give us an idea of how you see that review unfolding.

Well let’s start with that the Belleayre Resort project, by any calculation, the largest project proposed in the watershed. Big is not necessarily bad, but it is big. And because it’s big, and because of its location and the type of project that it is, there are obviously water quality concerns. And I’ll start and I’ll probably end with water quality concerns.

By law under State Environmental Quality Review requirements (SEQRA), DEP needs to find the adequacy of the DEIS, the Draft Environmental Impact Statement that the Crossroads project has proposed. That is our legal responsibility. In addition we have a permitting requirement in terms of stormwater and wastewater treatment, which are very technical subsets of the larger SEIS. So we are an involved party. We are here looking at what is a very large, to some people’s mind visionary project for the rejuvenation of the Catskills.

I have said and will continue to say that it is in the best interests of the people who are building the project, the people who live in the towns around the project, and the water quality environmentalists who are concerned about its impact, for the department to undertake thoughtful, scientific analysis of what is this potentially doing to the long-term sustainability of the water supply. If we don’t do that, we’ve abdicated a legal responsibility and a responsibility to the towns that are around the project, and also then to the people of New York who have allowed us to invest a billion dollars of their money to protect that watershed. And if you weren’t prudent and thoughtful in analyzing that, what are you saying to the people who’ve allowed you to spend a billion dollars of their money? Or even then what are you saying then to the towns in and around this area that we have created a partnership with?

So we think that it is entirely appropriate, it’s a legal requirement, that DEP look at the long-term water quality impacts of this project. We recognize as well that there are the economic challenges facing the Catskills are very large if not enormous. Per-capita income in Delaware County is as low as just about anywhere in the United States. And that what will bring economic vitality and growth is something of real local concern. So our focus is water quality. Our focus is what does this do to this investment, what does it do to our reservoirs.

And we think that that is appropriate, and the towns and the other communities can deal with the issues for those who think it creates great opportunities, and for those who are concerned about its impact on the quality and character of the Catskills.

So do you feel that local planning issues like the project’s impact on town taxes, services, housing, community character and so on should be reviewed as part of the SEQRA process, by the host municipality?

Well I’m not a lawyer but traditionally if not legally, that type of funding through the SEQRA process allows the local community which typically would not have the resources or the expertise to evaluate such a project, that in the kind of public compact of good faith, that funding is made available so the local community can evaluate it. I think, like DEP’s position, the more people know, the more people have a chance to evaluate, the more people can understand what is being proposed and what it will bring or what it won’t bring, and the solutions it will provide or the problems it will create. The more information, my feeling always is, the better off everybody is. I’ve done economic development projects in the city, and successful projects always benefit by information. So if some arrangement through SEQRA as I believe is traditional can provide funding to the local towns, I think that can be of real value.

It appears that’s not going to happen though, since lacking lead agency status, no funding under SEQRA will be available for any local municipal review.

As I understand that issue, there’s a legal dispute as to whether or not it’s required under SEQRA.

Yes. Crossroads’ lead counsel Dan Ruzow takes the position that the level of participation from any involved agency is not proscribed, but is very flexible and left to its own determination; basically voluntary. Whether he’d take the same position regarding your agency’s involvement I don ‘t know, since DEP and Shandaken are both involved agencies. So’s Middletown with about 15 percent of the project’s acreage and maybe 10 percent of its impact. There, the idea of reviewing the developer’s EIS seems to be viewed with the importance of maybe reviewing the New York City phone book. Whereas Shandaken’s town government was elected specifically because it favors comprehensive local review of the project’s impact on the town. Now of course we have an unprecedented situation where the established manner in which that review is financed ¯ voluntarily from the developer - has been, well, breached is a nice way to put it, certainly contractually and probably ethically. The thinking seems to be if the developer can keep the town penniless and in court, there won’t be any local review, and DEC can make its determination without any study by the host community at all. That’s pretty much where things stand now. So do have any thoughts on the propriety of this?

Well, it’s always difficult for the Commissioner of New York City DEP to talk about the propriety of what’s occurring in any town in the watershed. I just return to the idea that if you are the developer or the attorney or the town, information is what allows you to solve problems and answer questions. Without information, speculation, misinformation, and doubts grow, and create more problems than are necessary. Particularly for a project of this size.

And I can understand well why Shandaken in particular being the real host town would want to understand what does this mean for us going forward? It could be a real seed change for what that town’s character would be. Or maybe it won’t. The Draft EIS put forward by the developer has looked at what they consider the lack of what’s called secondary impacts. So with analysis that conclusion may well be validated. But if you are a local planning board or you are a local town supervisor or mayor or any concerned citizen, knowing is that conclusion’s reasonable or valid is something you’d think might benefit from airing it out and looking at it.

Well it’ll certainly take some money for a municipality to do that. And to protect its taxpayers from those costs, the town’s proposed a local law to fund the review, which Crossroads will be challenging in court.

Speaking from my SEQRA experience, traditionally this type of review is funded by large-scale project developers. Has there been any discussion of sort of good-faith putting up money?

Yes, both between the attorneys and publicly. The two lead counsels used to be partners when they represented the watershed towns during the drafting of the original MOA. So I don’t think communication is the problem. In fact the Town’s Counsel Jeff Baker recently suggested publicly that if the developer would be willing to pay its site plan review fees of about $73,000 in advance so they could be used for SEQRA, the whole issue of the local law might go away. The developer’s never responded to that. So the town has effectively asked for as little as $73,000 to conduct its review, and it’s been completely rebuffed.

Those would be fees that would be paid to the town, following successful…

Right, normally following green-lighting of the project under SEQRA.

Wow. That seems like a fairly viable suggestion, I must say.

Yeah, but in any case, the answer from the developer is no,

Okay. But coming back to our role, the Department’s evaluation of the Crossroads project, whether you’re for or against it, is the most valuable way for everybody to understand the water quality implications. We can’t be pro-development. We can’t be pro-environment. Our balance needs to be right down the middle, letting science, letting water quality, letting all of those analysis benefit everybody when they look at this project. Otherwise it is a lose-lose for everybody.

That’s why information, like from the Town of Shandaken can be so helpful. I’ve spoken to the developer and I’ve spoken to elected officials. And over and over again I say that the Memorandum of Agreement between the City and the upstate communities is not about projects, it’s about process. It’s about making sure that everybody has the right information, the same information at the same time to make good decisions. And if we don’t provide that type of analysis, and do the kind of work that we think will demonstrate one way or the other, then we won’t make a good decision, whether you’re in favor of the project or you’re against the project. And the consultant money ($600,000) that people have been so troubled by.. .We’re looking to do this review in an expedited fashion. It’s a large project with a lot of very complex ecological, water quality questions. This is just making sure that everybody gets to see the same information and have the benefit of the same kind of scientific analysis. It’s a lose-lose from Commissioner Ward’s perspective if there’s any thought that we’ve been on one side or the other. We need to be right down the scientific middle of the road on this whole project.

Any final thoughts on how the City’s holding up its end of the bargain so far?

I have said this is a partnership. Tell me what we said we’d do that we didn’t do . Tell us a contract we didn’t sign. Tell us a problem that we didn’t solve. And if there is something out there that we haven’t gotten done, I don’t know what it is. So when people talk about “the city’s not committed to making this all work”, I;’ve been here a year and a half and I can’t come up with anything where we disagreed, besides for some people’s perspective on whether or not we should do the consulting analysis of Crossroads. Other than that, we’ve done everything we said we’d do.