State fails to follow sewage ‘right to know’ law

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Want to know if your local waterway is fouled by sewage after a heavy storm?

New York has a law for that, but the Department of Environmental Conservation isn’t enforcing it, Dan Telvock of Investigative Post reports in the current edition of City & State.

Telvock writes:

Seventeen months after the legislation was enacted, New Yorkers still do not “know if they are swimming, boating or fishing in raw sewage,” Adrienne Esposito, executive director of Citizens Campaign for the Environment, said in a prepared statement.

Cuomo signed the legislation two years ago to great fanfare from environmental groups that advocated for the law. But the excitement did not last long.

“There’s been zero support from the administration in making sure the Department of Environmental Conservation had the staffing in place to actually do this,” said Travis Proulx, communications director for Environmental Advocates of New York.

Telvock’s story appears online on City & State and its its current print edition.