SOURCE:
July 7, 2022
$225 Million in Grants for Municipalities to Bolster New York's Actions to Protect Drinking Water Supplies and Vital Resources
$30 Million in Funding to Targeted Counties Will Incentivize Replacement of Old Septic and Cesspool Systems to Prevent Water Pollution
Includes $20 Million for Suffolk County to Help Address Substandard or Failing Systems
Governor Hochul: "Today I'm announcing $255 million in clean water infrastructure. That'll go for wastewater, sewer, and drinking water improvements. And that's statewide. You're getting a lot of it. And that's in addition to over half a billion dollars that has already been received by Long Island alone, to make these investments. So municipalities can submit applications, and also here's something that's important, we have $30 million set aside to support homeowners and business owners who have to replace their septic systems. Let's get that money out. And of that money, $20 million is going directly to Suffolk County."
Hochul: "Our budget includes over $500 million in clean water infrastructure, overall, $400 million for the Environmental Protection Fund. All these are record numbers. We've never spent this level of money on environmental protection, as well as our $4.2 billion Clean Air, Clean Water, and Green Jobs Environmental Bond Act. And I need everybody's help to get that one over the finish line."
Earlier today, Governor Kathy Hochul announced the availability of $255 million in state grants for critical water infrastructure projects that will protect public health and the environment through the State's Water Infrastructure Improvement, Intermunicipal Grant, and State Septic System Replacement programs. This announcement marks the latest action by Governor Hochul to upgrade New York's water and sewer systems, reduce water pollution, and safeguard vital drinking water supplies from emerging contaminants and toxic chemicals. This infusion of public funds will continue to help make water infrastructure investments more affordable for local governments and create jobs in the manufacturing, engineering, construction, plant operations, and related industry sectors. The announcement was made in Suffolk County where $20 million from the State's Septic Replacement Program will help address more than 2,000 substandard or failing septic systems and cesspools that cause significant water quality impairments.
VIDEO of the event is available on YouTube here and in TV quality (h.264, mp4) format here.
AUDIO of the event is available here.
PHOTOS of the event will be available on the Governor's Flickr page.
A rush transcript of the Governor's remarks is available below:
Thank you. Great to see everyone. Great to be back here in paradise, known by others as Long Island. Thank you, everyone. Truly appreciate this and I'm so happy to be here today. This is really extraordinary, you know? It takes a former town official and a former county official like myself to get really excited about sewer and water and all the things that you don't think about every day.
So that's in my DNA, that's who I am. And I think I've served in every level of government except for school board. I may take a pass on that. I think that's the toughest one. But my experience in local government really made me cognizant of the fact of the responsibility that local leaders. Your County Executive, Steve Bellone, is at the top of that list in terms of people who understand the importance of the legacy building accomplishments that occur when we invest in infrastructure because my friends, for decades it did not happen.
So I want to thank County Executive, Steve Bellone, for his leadership on this as well as many other initiatives we've worked on together. Basil Seggos, extraordinary. I want to thank you for being the face to the rest of the country. What we can do when we protect our climate, protect our environment and lean into a clean energy future. You have been a rockstar and I'm so proud to have you part of our administration. Our Commissioner, Basil Seggos, Department of Environmental Conservation.
Adrienne, we've known each other a long time. You are one of those people that when Adrienne's here is like the answer better be yes because you're going to hear about it. The Executive Director of Citizens Campaign for the Environment. I thank you for, and all the other environmental activists who are here today. This is really important. And it's just a reminder of our commitment at the government level, but also it is the activism at the local level that brings these issues to us with such passion. And I thank you for that as well.
Jeff Sebo, again, I'm county official. I know it is important if it's a big deal to be the CEO of the Water Authority. So I thank you for the team you lead here to make sure that we do it right because the consequences are devastating if we don't. And providing clean water for our homes is so critically important.
Also, we have Senator Kevin Thomas who has joined us here today. Great to see you again, Senator. Steve Englebright, our Assemblymember, thank you. Great to see everybody outside of Albany. Yes! No offense to Albany. Love the city. It's just the - well, we'll leave that alone. Just nice to be out.
Also, our great partners in labor. I mean, these are the people who just train the individuals who are creating the jobs of tomorrow that are so important for us. And I want to thank Matthew Aracich, the President of the Building Construction Trade Council for Nassau and Suffolk counties. Also, Ryan is here from - I don't see John Durso. John Durso? No? Ryan, you're a good substitute. Don't worry about it. John Durso is not here, but Ryan, thank you for joining us.
Kevin Law, the Chair of the Empire State Development. I'm so proud to have him as part of my team. It took a little while to get through the process, but I'm really proud to have you and I look forward to hearings through your eyes based on your many years of service to Long Island and different roles. The important needs of this entire community. And I want to thank all of you for being here today.
You know why we're here? I've been to Long Island hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times - because I actually keep track of this - and we've made many announcements, clean energy announcements. We talked about infrastructure a lot out here and you know, I also know that every time I'm out here, it's potholes. I know, I'm working on your potholes. We're working on your potholes. We talk about the property taxes all the time, and I'm really proud that, as I look back at our numbers, the record investments that we're able to make in education this year has resulted in some school districts being able to reduce their taxes. That is important, that is a quality of life issue. It is an area where we need to continue making sure our property taxes decline, and anything we can do at the state level, we'll continue to do that and work with our partners in local office, because we know that is a barrier. Again, everybody wants to live here, but they have to be able to afford to live here. So, I will continue working and finding ways to direct money to the localities so they can take a little pressure off them and their need to raise taxes. So we'll make sure we keep working on that.
So, we talk about potholes. We talk about property taxes. When it's season time, we talk about the Islanders. I know what we talk about here, all the picnic conversations, but also today we're talking about something we don't talk about enough and that is water quality. Water quality, because when you have it, it's like air, you take it for granted, you don't think about it. When you don't, your community is challenged, your homes and businesses are affected, and it really becomes a deterrent to wanting to live in a place if you can't guarantee something as basic as water quality. Why is this so important to me? I come from a far, far, far place called Buffalo, New York. And it takes, actually it takes me less time to drive from there to see my kids in Washington than it does to Long Island. So that's how the scale of our state is.
But I grew up on Lake Erie and now it's pristine. It's magnificent as one of the largest fresh water bodies on this planet. And when I was growing up, in the shadow of this steel plant, you could witness the destruction of this body of water, literally with your own eyes. You could see at night, the sky glowed when the steel plant would dump and they didn't think we noticed it. It looked like molten lava being poured in there, discharged there, and believe it or not, by day we were swimming in that water as kids, nobody knew any better. And the sky was so polluted that I didn't know it was supposed to be blue skies. They were orange skies. The smell, the stench and the dead fish, that's the world a lot of people grew up in. And so when I think about water quality, yes, of course you should always have water quality, but it was now always not always a given. And we had a fight and we had to establish organizations and I give Richard Nixon a lot of credit in 1970, creating the Environmental Protection Agency. Thank you, Richard Nixon, for that one.
And you know, and I'll mention this later, but it is still so shocking to me that just in the last week, when the steam roller known as the Supreme Court this year, you know, took away one of our other rights and that is to protect ourselves and to make it more challenging for the EPA to do their job. The reason they exist is to make sure that we have clean air, clean water, and a better future. And we made tremendous progress. I swim in Lake Erie all the time. It's gorgeous. That's my swimming pool when I'm back home, I literally jump in the lake. Of course, your beaches are a little nicer. As a matter of fact, you know, I shouldn't say this, but, as I said, as I was arriving here today, I said, "Of all the places we can go on Long Island today, dealing with water, you couldn't get me to a beach?" No offense here, but I was like, "We have other ways I can experience water here on Long Island, and, you know, because the beach are world class, absolutely world class here. But, but we talk about water, water quality, and it doesn't happen on its own. You need protections, you need thoughtful infrastructure projects and you need to invest the money. And that's what we're doing here right in Long Island.
And so for too many communities, we've had contaminated drinking water. That is a scary thought. You're a parent and you have to wonder what's coming out of your faucet. That is scary. And no one in this state, in this country, should ever have that fear. But we saw what happened in other parts of our country when the investments were not made in basic infrastructure. Yes, it's expensive. Yes, when I was a local official, we were always trying to get money out of the state to be able to rehabilitate our sewer and water lines that were well over a hundred years old. And the answer was almost universally "No, do it yourselves."
So I come out of that, and I know we have to do this because three quarters of the homes in Suffolk County are not even sewered. That's just a statement of fact. So they use cesspools that are often contaminated. Barely treat the wastewater that goes into the ground and it doesn't just impact drinking water. It also affects marine life, the shell fish, and all these others, the whole wonderful, magnificent ecosystem that is part of the quality of life here and the uniqueness of Long Island. So it's an environmental issue. It's a quality of life issue. It's a public health issue. So while they may be underground, and you don't always see it visually, they're very, very, very much on our radar. And so we're feeling the effects of this for too long. And today we're doing something about it. Today I'm announcing $255 million in clean water infrastructure.
That'll go for wastewater, sewer, and drinking water improvements. And that's statewide. You're getting a lot of it. And that's in addition to over half a billion dollars that has already been received by Long Island alone, to make these investments. So municipalities can submit applications, and also here's something that's important, we have $30 million set aside to support homeowners and business owners who have to replace their septic systems. Let's get that money out. And of that money, $20 million is going directly to Suffolk County. So you're receiving $20 million. And that should help over 2000 failing systems. And so this will help Long Islanders and New Yorkers, and help us also create the jobs. You ready for this? Let's start building. More manufacturing, engineering, construction, plant operations, and so much more.
And you think about critical infrastructure, yes, it's great to do, it's important to do, but it does have over 120,000 jobs associated with this, statewide. And that's really important to me as well. We've made a number of other improvements. We really do believe in using the time we have here, we are stewards of this planet. We have a moral responsibility to clean up the messes of the past, invest now, so the future generations look back at us, not with disdain and say, "Why did they do that?" like we look back, but they'll say, "Wow, they got it right. They were forward thinking they protected us." And that's the gratitude. You may not hear directly from children and grandchildren of the future, but it'll be real because we're making those investments now. And I also have a number of investments that we're making in our budget.
Again, a budget is simply a statement of priorities, a statement of your priorities. This is where we think it's important to invest state taxpayer dollars. And so, we've embraced this moment of possibility to really make a generational change, a difference in our investments is showing where we believe we have a responsibility. So, our budget includes over $500 million in clean water infrastructure, overall, $400 million for the Environmental Protection Fund. All these are record numbers. We've never spent this level of money on environmental protection, as well as our $4.2 billion Clean Air, Clean Water, and Green Jobs Environmental Bond Act.
And I need everybody's help to get that one over the finish line. That'll need your help this November. Got to get that one over the finish line. Critically important to make those investments now, because yes, it is a big price. The longer we wait, the numbers just go up. They just keep going up. And that is why it would've been better if this had been done in the past, we're doing it now.
And again, this is an investment to protect against climate change. You know, the devastation that goes on right here before our very eyes, you know, you've had enough cleanups to have this seared in your memory, what happens. And that requires us to build resiliency and we know how to do this. We know how to do this.
We know how to protect our shore lives. We know how to protect our homes and our businesses, but it takes money, and it takes money now. And that's, if we're committed to doing so. The stakes could not be higher. Again, I mentioned the Supreme Court that says to me, we're on our own. We're on our own here in the State of New York. We are on our own.
And luckily there are other enlightened states. I'm part of a Climate Alliance with Oregon and California and Washington State. And actually, more than half of the states are banding together and saying, you know, what we can't, we can't let this go. We cannot miss this moment. And I've said before, this is the first generation to really feel the effects of climate change as I described, how I grew up what it was like, we're the ones feeling it now with extreme weather events and so many other ways that our lives are not the same. But we're also the last generation that can do something about it. We're the last ones that can do something to stop it from going even further backwards.
And so that is my commitment to you here today. As your Governor, I will continue to focus on this place. This is paradise, Long Island, but we also have vulnerabilities. We focus on fixing invulnerabilities, strengthening what we have here, and then there's no stopping us. So I really feel optimistic about the future.
I truly do, but the health of our children and this planet depend on what we do here today. And this is a great start. So thank you everybody. Appreciate you being here, looking forward to hearing from our County Executive and this is a great day. Thank you.