SOURCE:
https://www.newsday.com/opinion/newsday-opinion-the-point-newsletter-1.45565285
June 10, 2020
The much-anticipated but oft-delayed setting of drinking water standards for new contaminants was pushed back again when the Department of Health last week postponed another meeting of the Public Health and Health Planning Council. The blame, as with many things nowadays, is being put on the coronavirus.
An April meeting was postponed as the health department dealt with the virus 24/7. Even though the department has begun to transition back to normal operations, it had no time before last week’s meeting to finish wading through the 2,000 comments it received regarding the proposed standards.
The next chance to set maximum levels for such contaminants as PFOA, PFOS and 1,4-dioxane is the July 30 meeting, now that Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo issued an executive order extending the deadline for a decision until Aug. 7.
The biggest issue is whether to help water districts pay for treatment of the chemicals and, if so, to what degree. An activated granulated carbon system to treat PFOS and PFOA costs $750,000 to $1 million, while a 1,4-dioxane treatment system can cost up to $4 million. But now state funding is scarce given the high cost of battling COVID-19.
“They wanted time to see if the financial challenges could be resolved and if the federal government is going to be contributing anything to New York State,” Citizens Campaign for the Environment executive director Adrienne Esposito told The Point. Esposito was among environmentalists on a conference call with health department officials last week.
No one disagrees that standards must be set. How to pay for them, and whether that entails waivers or phase-ins or something else for the water districts that must implement the standards, is another story.
