Source Water Protection,
Not Filtration
» In the interest of protecting human health and preserving freshwater ecosystems, filtration of public drinking water supplies should be considered as a last resort only when an unfiltered water supply poses an imminent threat to public health. Sound watershed protection programs not only safeguard human health and aquatic life but also are vastly more economical than filtration.
Over the last 10 years, New York City has spent $1.3 billion on successful watershed protection programs. In stark contrast, a filtration plant for the Catskill/Delaware system, which provides on average 90 percent of the city’s drinking water, would cost ratepayers $10 billion in capital costs plus $365 million in annual operation and maintenance. Costs for the filtration plant currently being built for the city’s Croton system, which supplies 10 to 30 percent of the water supply, continue to increase with current estimates from the Independent Budget Office climbing to $2.8 billion.
In addition to being expensive, filtration is not an absolute barrier to contaminants. For example, many pharmaceuticals are not removed during the filtration process. Instead they pass through the filter media and are delivered to the taps of city consumers. Furthermore, some municipalities have reported major outbreaks of waterborne pathogens from filtered water supplies. In 1993, an estimated 400,000 people were infected with Cryptosporidium in Milwaukee’s filtered water supply.
Reliance on filtration may also lead system operators to unwisely relax watershed protection efforts under a misconception that source protection is no longer necessary because the water is being filtered before it is delivered to consumers. This concept ignores the need to protect watershed residents and upstream consumers who have wells or make withdrawals from a public system at a point upstream from filtration. This problem is exemplified in the city’s heavily developed Croton watershed where a number of communities will continue to receive unfiltered drinking water before it reaches the filtration plant in the Bronx.
Watershed protection programs provide regulatory mechanisms to avert these problems, keeping source water clean so there is no need for pollutant removal. By educating stakeholders and decision-makers, and enhancing protection of surface waters, our communities can supply safe drinking water with the most effective and economical approach. w
Upper Neuse Basin Clean Water Initiative
» On Oct. 23, 2006, the City of Raleigh and a coalition of land trust organizations held a press conference on the shores of Falls Lake to announce a new conservation plan called the Upper Neuse Basin Clean Water Initiative. The visionary land acquisition plan seeks to preserve 24,000 acres along critical stream corridors in order to protect water quality for nine Triangle (Raleigh-Durham) area drinking water reservoirs in the Upper Neuse River Basin, including Falls Lake, the second largest drinking water supply in North Carolina.
During the news conference, Raleigh Mayor Charles Meeker credited the Neuse River Foundation for the idea and for encouraging the city to partner with state and local land trusts to protect drinking water supplies for 535,000 people.
The Upper Neuse Basin Clean Water Initiative has since been hailed as a National model for source water protection. Local municipalities and the State of North Carolina have invested millions of dollars to ensure clean drinking water for future generations, but it almost didn’t happen.
Two years earlier, on May 18, 2004, the Neuse River Foundation addressed the Raleigh City Council and alerted the city about a dangerous water pollution-trading scheme that posed a threat to Falls Lake, Raleigh’s only drinking water supply. An upstream municipality (Butner) recently purchased more than 60,000 lbs. of additional nitrogen capacity (per year) with the intent to expand its wastewater discharge to Falls Lake rather than make needed upgrades to its struggling sewage treatment plant. Compromising a drinking water supply for more than 400,000 people was not an option to Neuse River Foundation, who vowed to fight the plan and made it clear Raleigh needed to do more to protect regional drinking water supplies.
The foundation stated that there are real economic ramifications when we don’t take preventative measures to protect our drinking water and urged them to create a source water protection plan to protect water quality upstream from Falls Lake.
Raleigh eventually partnered with Neuse River Foundation and Southern Environmental Law Center to defeat the Butner’s pollution trading plan — the largest water pollution trade ever proposed for U.S. waters. Neuse River Foundation later worked with several conservation groups to draft legislation and lobby for the passage of the Safe Drinking Water Protection Act of 2005, ensuring the creation of a nutrient reduction strategy (TMDL) for Falls Lake which is now in the process of being developed.
Yet, the recommendations to create an Upper Neuse Basin source water protection plan died quietly in committee. City staff struggled with the idea of the city leading a source water protection plan on such a grand scale. Thankfully, it was being tracked through every stage of the process and was resurrected when Neuse River Foundation proposed an alternative plan to Mayor Meeker in which the city could partner with land trusts. Mayor Meeker liked the idea. As result, he made protecting the cities drinking water his platform for reelection (receiving more than 70 percent of the popular vote). Several land trusts have since taken the lead in developing and implementing the plan, but the idea for the plan became reality only because of the persistence of the foundation.
A major theme for Waterkeepers is the notion of constant vigilance. If the Neuse River Foundation had not tracked the plan for two years as it moved slowly through committee then died, only to be resurrected, it never would have happened. Future generations may never know where clean water in the Upper Neuse Basin Reservoirs comes from, but we know they have their local Riverkeeper to thank. w
“The Upper Neuse Clean Water Initiative is an exciting new partnership effort to protect drinking water quality by conserving land along the streams and wetlands that feed water supply reservoirs. The genesis for the idea began with the Neuse River Foundation’s Dean Naujoks, who saw the value of using land preservation to protect water quality, and helped bring together North Carolina land trusts and local governments to pursue a coordinated conservation strategy.”
Reid Wilson, Executive Director, Conservation Trust for North Carolina
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A view of the Croton Reservoir from Turkey Mountain in Yorktown, N.Y.