Environmental Advocates of New York has just released a report that claims New York State's water infrastructure spending is coming up short. The report found that about half of the proposed shovel ready projects never see any funding from the state and a billion dollars annually is needed.
Clean Water Associate Robert Hayes says grant requests will only increase if the state doesn’t do anything.
"Every single year, local governments requested more grant dollars than the year before. We absolutely believe that this need will continue to grow and that's why New York State must continue to invest more."
Onondaga County has received $10 million in water infrastructure funding by the state over the last four years. However, ten shovel-ready projects last year didn’t receive anything from the state. Hayes says Syracuse is one city that could definitely use some water infrastructure updates.
"Syracuse has one of the highest rates of water main breaks in the state and that means that every single year, thousands of New Yorkers are at risk of losing access to clean water."
Hayes adds that old sewage systems and lead pipes are other factors in water contamination that are prevalent throughout the state. The organization is asking the State legislature to increase the Governor’s Green Bond Act from $3-5 billion to focus specifically on water infrastructure.
"We have hundreds of thousands of lead pipes across the state and digging them out of the ground must be a top prioity if we're going to prevent more crises like in Flint, Michigan and Newark, New Jersey."
He also says people shouldn’t look at these issues as infrastructure costs, but rather long-term investments for public health.
"And it's important when we talk about cost too that we're not just thinking about the cost of doing this infrastructure placement work, but the cost of public health as well. Kids exposed to lead in their drinking water have neurological damage, have developmental damage [and it] is an enormous cost on this society."
According to Hayes, there’s another added benefit by updating water systems across the state: tens of thousands of jobs. Environmental Advocates of New York estimates that it would take approximately $80 billion to update the state’s outdated water system. Until then, they say water systems are at risk of emerging contaminants like sewage and lead service lines. The full report can be found here.
