The Unique Water Story of Rockland County

The challenges of bringing clean water to our communities to be successful is encapsulated in Rockland County, a small New York City suburb on the westside of the Hudson River, just north of New Jersey.   

 As NYC’s developed a vast upstate watershed approach to providing drinking water to the growing city, Rockland County opted out of being included in that water system.   As a result, its drinking water supply is uniquely limited to within its geographic boundaries.  It is the only county in the state that has this limitation.  It means it cannot import water from surrounding watersheds. At that time, a small local water company managed and controlled the wells and water distribution in the County.   

Now Rockland’s water is owned and operated by multi-national, for-profit, foreign corporation . Rockland has one of the few private water companies in the State, its aging piping has Flint, Michigan level problems, yet being a private water company, it has been unable to  receive infrastructure improvement funds.

How can drinking water be provided to a small, growing County?  These issues became front and center during the effort to bring desalinated water to Rockland County.  What followed was described by many as a Desal Fiasco that failed to address the drinking water challenges.  In 2010, New York’s Public Service Commission approved construction of the expensive desalination plant on the Hudson River.  What the company characterized as briny water, in its location on Haverstraw Bay, is actually a nursey for endangered pre-historic Atlantic sturgeon.  It is also three miles down river from leaking nuclear reactors at Indian Point. 

In 2015, after much public outcry, the PSC reversed its decision that Rockland needed more water, and saddled Rockland County ratepayers with a nearly $60 million surcharge for the failed desalination pilot effort.  Since 2000, without a water solution in sight, there has been an over 50% growth in Rockland’s population.

Additionally, little to nothing is being done to protect Rockland’s limited clean drinking water supply.  The corporate profits for the privatized water supply, seem to take precedence over protecting clean water in the first place, including additional expenditures need for filtering and treatment to make dirty water potable. To make matters worse, privatization is preventing Rockland from receiving much needed available infrastructure funds.

  Other clean water issues exist. There has been no review or amendment of the Rockland County wetlands maps  for almost 50 years.   New York State has refused to extend wetland protection to the EPA protected Mahwah-Ramapo sole source aquifer re-charge fields which provide clean drinking water for approximately a million residents in Rockland and northern New Jersey.

A privatized water system has far reaching impacts.  In Rockland, the company appears to be  playing Russian Roulette by giving “willingness to serve letters” to any and all developers without knowing how much more drinking water is available and how much has already been allocated.  The water supply information has not been provided to either  he State PSC, County Department of Health, or the public.  

The crux of the problem is that under NYS law water companies must provide water to any approved projects, so without knowing how much water remains available, the Planning Boards tasked with reviewing and approving projects from homes to commercial developments,  continue blindly approving projects which use large amounts of water.

Rockland County, a growing suburban community,  is a clear example of where perceived economic interests and development pressures have endangered the drinking water supply upon which these developments depend. Challenges to find enough affordable clean water will never go away in Rockland.  The County may not ever be able to effectively address water issues unless a special water district is established which would require accountability and disclosure.  These changes would be profoundly important to the future of Rockland, and a way to maintain quantity and quality of its water supply.  It is imperative to develop reliable information about what supply remains, and importantly, to not require “willingness to serve” letter be provided when there isn’t adequate water supply.

Without taking action now, one day, but hopefully not soon, the water situation will be a crisis. A recent large development that has been approve may take as much as 20% of the remaining water supply.

Rockland’s clean water can run out.   And then Rocklander’s will be forced into extremely expensive engineered solutions which will increase water costs, which are already one of the highest in New York State.  

Or, Rockland County can protect its existing clean water supply by:

1. Identifying how much water remains and how much is allocated before anymore is allocated;
2. Increasing wetland and drinking water well protections; and,
3. Obtaining necessary funding to repair the aging water distribution infrastructure by making Rockland’s water system public.

Clean drinking water is a right, not a commodity.