Larry Levine, Senior Attorney, New York

A state court has ruled that New York State is failing to take legally required steps to clean up one of the biggest sources of pollution in its waterways -- stormwater runoff. 

The January 10th decision of the Westchester County Supreme Court comes in a lawsuit NRDC filed in 2010, which challenged a statewide “general permit” for stormwater discharges from municipal sewers.  The court ordered the agency to fix several major flaws in the permit, to ensure all Clean Water Act requirements are met. 

Every time it rains, pollution from developed areas -- such as city and suburban streets, parking lots, driveways, rooftops, and chemically-treated lawns -- is washed into rivers, streams, lakes, and coastal waters across New York state. Polluted stormwater is channeled through municipal separate storm sewer systems (a.k.a. “MS4s”) directly into local waterways, without any treatment. 

The so-called “MS4 General Permit” at issue in the court case regulates stormwater runoff that flows into, and out of, these sewer systems, in hundreds of municipalities across the state -- from Albany to Amityville, Buffalo to Binghamton, Syracuse to Saratoga Springs.  (You can see the full list of covered municipalities here and a ...

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