Plans Announced to Protect Watershed

An agreement reached among 12 towns in Westchester on how to spend $10 million on projects to control and clean stormwater in the region was announced on Monday.

The funds will pay for improvements designed to protect the drinking water in the watershed, including:

• Stormwater retrofits like retention basins designed to reduce contaminants in the water supply
• Creation of a database to monitor the inspection and pumping of septic systems
• Mapping the path of stormwater, to detect and eliminate pollutants it can carry

"Water does not know municipal boundaries…we were all involved in creating a regional stormwater plan," said Somers supervisor Mary Beth Murphy at a press conference held in Katonah.

Murphy chairs the 12-member Northern Westchester watershed committee that brokered the deal with the county to use the money, obtained from the New York City East of Hudson Water Quality Fund.

The funds were needed to stave off the financial burden of heightened requirements under the federal and state mandated Municipal Separate Storm Sewer Systems requirement, said Murphy, which compels municipalities in the watershed to minimize the adverse affects of stormwater runoff.

County Legislator Peter Harckham (D-Katonah) agreed, noting that the cooperative plan enables communities to pool resources to comply with new septic requirements, including inspection every three years and pumping every five years, saving towns hundreds of thousands of dollars in hiring their own staff to do the work.

"None of us like unfunded mandates—and this was a whopper," said Harckham, who founded the county's septic sub-committee two years ago to help address the issue. "But this opportunity is a model of collaboration and public-private partnership," he said.

County Executive Rob Astorino expressed his support for the plan. "The streamlined process makes sense. The county will be helping with IT capabilities to collect data and hand it to the municipalities for enforcement; projects will now be approved through one lead agency—the town of Somers," he said.

The Town of Somers obtained a grant from the Department of Environmental Conservation and worked with towns including Bedford, New Castle, Lewisboro and Yorktown to identify five-year projects to fulfill the mandate. Additional matching grant funds secured from the DEC for mapping and retrofits help relieve taxpayers of the burden, said Murphy.

Harckham said the legislation will be "fast-tracked," and after approval by the NWWC and the county executive's office, it should be approved at the next board of legislators meeting in October.

The stormwater regulations stem from the 1997 memorandum of agreement signed by Westchester County to protect New York City's drinking water supply, which serves almost 9 million New Yorkers. About 80,000 county residents also receive their water from the watershed's 19 reservoirs.

Bedford supervisor Lee Roberts, said "Mary Beth has demonstrated remarkable leadership in fostering cooperation to resolve a complicated issue."

Commissioner of Public Works Kevin Winn was pleased with the news. "The big impact will be on retrofits, which are a huge capital expenditure," he said. Winn recently presented Bedford's efforts to comply with the MS4 mandates, along with the town's director of planning, Jeffrey Osterman, at a town board meeting.

The town also provides educational materials to residents on how to reduce phosphorus in the reservoirs, which are posted with this story.