Conservation Update
AFTU, together with Peconic Baykeeper, has petitioned the NY Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to add the Carmans River to the 2012 Impaired Waters list under the Federal Clean Water Act. If the Carman River is added to this list it will trigger additional protections to remediate the water quality within the river. See our Press Release or check out the stories in Newsday (Nov. 18th) and the Long Island Advance (Nov. 17th).
President's Line for December 2011
In the past few weeks, you may have read several articles in the local newspapers regarding the petition that AFTU, in conjunction with Peconic Baykeeper, has submitted to the NY State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to have the Carmans River added to the 2012 Impaired Waters list under the Federal Clean Water Act. Our basis for this request was the rising level of nitrates in the river which has begun to cause harm the aquatic communities. High levels of nitrates can come from several sources. Some of these sources are not locally controllable, such as deposition of nitrates from the atmosphere, while others are, such as nitrate discharges from septic systems. You may have also recently read other articles about the growing problem of nitrate pollution of our drinking water sources, i.e. the aquifers, here on Long Island. Since the Carmans River is fed by groundwater, the two problems are one and the same. High levels of nitrates can pose serious human health risks. However, aquatic ecosystems are far less tolerant of nitrate pollution than are humans. The Department of Health's safe limit for nitrates in public drinking waters is 10 parts per million (10 ppm). Scientific research has found that aquatic ecosystems suffer damage at one fifth of that level (2 ppm). A 2008 biological assessment of the Carmans River carried out by DEC, based on aquatic insect sampling, found that some reaches of the river were already moderately impacted. Therefore our petition requested that the DEC take a step that is available under the Clean Water Act: the implementation of a mandatory Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) of nitrates for the river. A TMDL would set a legal limit on the total amount of nitrates that could be discharged into groundwater in the river corridor and would force a cleanup of the problem. For obvious reasons, this legal petition has begun to garner some serious attention from both local governments and local environmental and civic groups. A number of environmental groups have signed on to a letter of support asking the DEC to undertake this action. We should know if our petition is successful by late spring of 2012. If we are, this could be a great holiday present for us all even if it is a few months late!
Happy Holidays!
Doug
