Musical Chairs at the New York City Department of Environmental Protection
The Department on its 6th commissioner in a decade.
This is how we go down:
-Joel Miele
-Chris Ward
-Emily Lloyd
-Steve Lawitts
-Cas Holloway
-Carter Strickland
Carter Strickland was appointed to be the Commissioner of the New York City Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) on August 17, 2011. Previously, he served as Deputy Commissioner for Sustainability at DEP. In that role, Commissioner Strickland oversaw DEP’s environmental planning, analysis, permitting, policy, and enforcement programs, and was charged with importing sustainability principles to build on PlaNYC, Mayor Bloomberg's sustainability blueprint for New York City. He was the principal leader of DEP’s plans to shift combined sewer overflow controls to green infrastructure in its consent orders and long term control plans, to structure a program to address stormwater in its separated sewer system, and to adopt heating oil regulations that will remove more pollutants than are emitted by all of the trucks and cars in the city and save hundreds of lives each year. As part of DEP’s executive leadership team, Commissioner Strickland was instrumental in the development and implementation ofStrategy 2011-2014, DEP’s plan to become the safest, most efficient, cost-effective, and transparent water utility in the nation, and lead DEP’s efforts for national regulatory reforms that would prioritize water and wastewater investments according to a rational cost-benefit approach that maximizes public health benefits.
Before joining DEP, Commissioner Strickland was the Senior Policy Advisor for Air and Water with the Mayor’s Office of Long Term Planning and Sustainability, where he was responsible for the implementation of PlaNYC across all agencies and departments, with a focus on water, air, and natural resource issues. The foundation for Commissioner Strickland’s work on sustainability initiatives was developed through his extensive regulatory and litigation practice at the New York Attorney General’s Office and the Rutgers Environmental Law Clinic, where he taught environmental law and policy and directed the clinic’s litigation of numerous ground-breaking natural resource and pollution control cases on behalf of local and national environmental groups.
Commissioner Strickland is a graduate of Dartmouth College (A.B. 1990) and Columbia University School of Law (J.D. 1995), where he was Executive Editor of the Columbia Environmental Law Journal and a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar. Following law school he clerked for the Honorable Joseph H. Young, U.S. District Judge, in Baltimore, Maryland.
The Facts
Over 50 times a year, when we get as little as one-tenth of an inch of rain, our outdated sewer systems get overwhelmed and spew poop from some or all of 400+ locations along the shoreline, in all five boroughs.
To add insult to injury, there’s, not any public warning when those rain-induced spills happen -- even though the city is required by federal, state, and local law to notify the public of the location and occurrence of sewage overflows, and of the nature and duration of the resulting health risks.
Local Law 5 of 2008 requires the City to undertake “a program of public notification to inform the public of the location and occurrence of combined sewer overflow events, which . . . shall include a mechanism to alert potential users of the waterbodies affected by combined sewer overflow events . . . of the estimated nature and duration of conditions that are potentially harmful to users of such waterbodies.” The same requirements appear in DEP’s Clean Water Act permits issued by the State. In other words, the ultimate goal of a CSO public notification program in New York City must be to provide the public with general public health information on the effects of CSO discharges and real-time information on when CSOs are impacting their waterbody of interest.
Testing the Waters: New York
Ranked 24th in Beachwater Quality (out of 30 states)
10% of samples exceeded national standards for designated beach areas in 2011
10% of samples exceeded national standards for designated beach areas in 2011
More than 70% of New York City's 7,400 miles of sewers are combined sewers that carry sanitary sewage and stormwater runoff in the same pipes. When overwhelmed by the volume of wastewater needing treatment during and immediately after precipitation events, combined sewer systems discharge a mixture of rainfall runoff and raw sewage into area waterways (called combined sewer overflows, or CSOs). These CSOs contain fecal material.
CSOs discharged from New York City contain not only fecal material and other pollutants, but floating debris made up of street litter and toilet waste such as hygiene products. When discharged to the New York/New Jersey Harbor Complex, the floating debris tends to collect into slicks that can wash up on beaches. The multi-agency Floatables Action Plan employs several means of controlling floating debris, such as helicopter surveillance to locate slicks, catch basins to reduce the discharge of street litter to sewers, increased street cleaning in some neighborhoods, skimmer vessels fitted with nets that collect floating debris, floating booms that trap debris near sewer-system discharge points for later collection, and sewer-system improvements intended to maximize the ability to retain floating debris.
The NYCDEP also maintains 24 floatables containment facilities that capture floatables from approximately 60,000 acres of the city before they enter the ocean. In addition, NYCDEP has a shoreline dumping prevention program to monitor for evidence of recent illegal disposal activities. Findings are reported to the Department of Sanitation police for follow-up and apprehension of illegal dumpers.
In March 2012, the City Department of Environmental Protection (NYCDEP) and New York State reached an agreement to modify an existing enforcement order governing the city's CSO reduction plan, which would alter existing "gray" infrastructure requirements and add new requirements to implement key aspects of the city's Green Infrastructure Plan.
Commissioner Strickland and The House of Lies aka Veolia
The pipeline lingo:
The largest municipal water and wastewater utility in the country wants to achieve up to $200 million savings annually. Here's how.
The New York City Department of Environmental Protection recently selected Veolia Water to support a highly ambitious program: Help DEP become the nation's most effective water utility. At the same time, the agency wants to enhance services for DEP customers, deliver environmental benefits and reduce costs.
As the nation's largest municipal water and wastewater utility, DEP is aiming high. Out of their current $1.2 billion annual operations and maintenance budget, the department hopes to save $100 - $200 million annually. Their plan is to deliver these huge savings through a new program called OpX.
""The OpX program pairs us with a firm that brings a comprehensive portfolio of best management practices, a track record of boosting productivity while reducing expenses across the globe, and all while protecting existing workforces."
Really?
Some facts about Veolia
1. Digging for Pay Dirt in European Markets: Veolia Environnement
2. No London contract
December 24, 2011
West London Waste Authority ('WLWA') excluded French multinational Veolia from a £485 million contract covering 1.4 million inhabitants of the London boroughs of Brent, Ealing, Harrow, Hillingdon, Hounslow and Richmond-upon-Thames, for treatment of residual domestic waste.
3. Veolia Has a History of Environmental Mishaps and Other Operational Problems
4. Indianapolis - The Indianapolis Fire Department discovered that the fire hydrants in the surrounding four blocks were frozen.
5. Veolia Sued By Shareholders On Failure To Disclose Adverse Data
The law firm of Izard Nobel LLP said a lawsuit seeking class action status has been filed in the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York on behalf of purchasers of the American Depositary Shares between April 2007 and August 2011 who said Veolia and certain of its officers and directors violated the federal securities laws.
MAIN FACTS:
- The law firm says defendants failed to disclose the following adverse facts: Veolia was materially overstating its financial results by engaging in improper accounting practices, Veolia lacked adequate internal controls and Veolia failed to timely record an impairment charge for its Transport business in Morocco, Environmental Services businesses in Egypt, Marine Services business in the U.S., and for Southern Europe.
6. Private Transit Giant Lobbied House to Weaken Public Transit
The threat of service reductions and fare increases always loomed large over the transfer of Long Island Bus service to a private operator. After Nassau County refused to assume its share of costs for the service, international private transit provider Veolia Transport was brought on to take over from the New York MTA at the beginning of the year.
It wasn’t long before the ax dropped. Two weeks ago, it was announced that the Nassau Inter-County Express (NICE bus) would see cutbacks to some 30 of its routes.
On Tuesday more than 100 protesters from around the country, representing transit and labor advocates as well as local religious leaders, staged a protest at Veolia’s Silver Springs, Maryland offices. The French-based international transportation service provider operates transit in 150 cities, transit authorities, counties and airports in the U.S. and Canada. From Denver to Tucson, from Seattle to Dallas — there’s hardly a state where Veolia doesn’t hold a contract.
Veolia has also played a role in shaping HR 7, the House transportation bill put forward by GOP leadership. Through the law firm Patton Boggs, Veolia lobbied for measures that would accelerate the transfer of transit service to private operators, according to Sam Finkelstein, a spokesperson for the Transportation Equity Network, which organized the protest. A provision of the bill would reward transit agencies that privatize a portion of their service by offering increased capital funding [PDF, pages 322 and 323]. Veolia did not respond to requests to confirm or deny that the company lobbied for that provision.
Protestors said Veolia’s contracts are a bad deal for transit riders. “We’re here to demand our money back,” said protestor Irma Wallace of Springfield, Illinois. “These private companies siphon profits out of our public services and we’re sick and tired of our municipal services being managed for private profit instead of public good.”
On Long Island, Veolia says its management will bring efficiencies to the system. “I like to call it a reallocation of resources,” Veolia’s Michael Setzer told WABC New York. “We’re taking all the money available from Nassau County and applying it much more smartly than it has been.” But WABC was quick to point out that while Veolia had added a few express routes, the overwhelming majority of changes were service cuts.
Ryan Lynch at the Tri-State Transportation Campaign said a total of 60 percent of Long Island Bus routes will see some reductions. “From our perspective, 60 percent of the routes to see reductions is pretty significant,” he said. “They’re taking it down to sort of a skeleton system.”
Lynch echoed the protestors’ warnings about handing over transit operations to a for-profit entity. Veolia’s Long Island contract requires the company to consult a public “transit advisory committee” if it intends to cut a route more than 25 percent. Veolia has remained true to the letter of the requirement but not its intent, Lynch said. “Most of the cuts have been 23.8 percent or 24 percent, so they are going around the process,” he said.
Veolia was tasked with making up a $7.4 million shortfall in the Long Island Bus budget. But it’s not clear whether all the cuts are related to the shortfall, because private operators are not subject to the same transparency requirements as public agencies.
“Are they cutting to make a profit or are they cutting to improve operations?” Lynch said.
As a result of the protest, TEN reports, Veolia Transportation CEO, Mark Josep, has agreed to meet with the protesters to hear their concerns.
The Best Always Do Better?
Look around. Count high paid bureaucrats.
