AG flush with victory vs. cities dumping into river

A group of upstream cities notorious for dumping raw sewage into the Bronx River have finally agreed to pump some hard cash into the waterway’s cleanup.

Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has clinched five major environmental settlements with polluting municipalities, for a total of over $7 million - the majority earmarked to protect the Bronx River and expand an environmental-education program.

“To protect the health and safety of the hundreds of people who use the Bronx River every year, we need to keep pollution out of the water,” Cuomo said last week in announcing the funding.

“The millions of dollars secured in these settlements will help to heal the damage already done and will serve as a reminder that no one can afford to violate environmental standards.”

Cuomo’s office negotiated the settlements with several upriver municipalities with a history of dumping raw sewage into the river and its tributaries when storm water runoff routinely overwhelmed their sewer systems.

The municipalities are Yonkers, White Plains, Scarsdale and Greenburgh.

The funds will be administered by the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation through its existing Long Island Sound Futures Fund, which funds projects to improve water quality in the sound, where the Bronx River ends.

“The monies will be distributed as grants,” said Gillian Harris, NFWF’s manager of special funds.

Harris said requests for proposals will go out in October, with the first grants disbursed next spring.

The state Office of Government Services has awarded a contract to Malcolm Pirnie, an environmental consulting firm, to investigate Yonkers’ sewage system. The contract is being funded by Yonkers, which agreed under a previous settlement to pay $2.2 million to identify the sources of the raw sewage and to repair its sewage system.

Yonkers was dumping nearly 1 million gallons of raw sewage per day into the Bronx River, the attorney general’s office said.

The settlements were the follow-up to an agreement reached late last year by then-Attorney General Eliot Spitzer requiring the municipalities to prevent further discharges by improving their sewer systems.

Cuomo’s office also announced an agreement with Beczak Environmental Education Center, giving it $1 million to expand its environmental education program and to teach school children about the Bronx River. This money was obtained from a separate settlement with Yonkers Racing Corp.

BY BILL EGBERT

NY Daily News