Partnership for Onondaga Creek Research

Read our comments, sent to the NYSDEC, Governor Paterson and Pete Grannis.

Our comments on Onondaga Environmental Institute's draft Onondaga Creek Revitalization Plan suggest ways that this excellent plan can start to become reality.

In 2005 POC and other interested parties challenged many points in the NYSDEC's draft SPDES discharge permit for Syracuse main wastewater treament plant ( METRO) and its Long-Term Combined Sewer Overflow Control Plan.  Four years and  four drafts later, the current 2009 draft permit is an immense improvement.   It was worth all the effort from many parties to make it better.  Below is our cover letter and attached are the POC comments for this 2009 draft permit.

The Objectives of the Survey

Proposed Midland Phase III is huge pipe, some of it 12-ft in diameter.  The pipe would convey upstream CSOs to the Midland RTF for storage or chlorinated treatment. In March, 2008 Onondaga County’s Legislature bonded an extra $25 million (M) for Phase III. Building this pipeline would drive the Midland RTF project to $150 M[1], more than double its original 1999 estimate. Using this fiscal burden to its advantage, in June 2008, the POC presented to Onondaga County and the NYSDEC a cheaper and greener alternative to the pipeline. 

For this alternative to work however, it will need citizen participation. Like recycling solid waste, if the county is to prevent the rainwater falling on private property from entering the public domain (the streets and their catch basins), it needs help from homeowners.  Some of the green methods ensure that rain is infiltrated into the “private” soil or stored in rain barrels attached to household gutters.  Knowing that private homeowners would have to implement much of the green technology, POC accepted a Syracuse University professor’s offer to design and conduct a survey of residential neighborhoods.  The selected areas were the ones whose run-off impacted Southside CSOs along the proposed pipeline.  Since this is an extensive area, the POC asked that the survey focus on three sewersheds linked to the largest Southside CSOs.  

The survey sought to gather the opinions of city residents about the stormwater problem and some of the likely green solutions such as rain barrels, trees, rain gardens, curb extensions and porous pavement.  After the survey results are analyzed, the POC will give the report to the county’s Outreach committee and in this way promote an alternative plan to the proposed Midland Phase III

[1] Monthly Report, Onondaga Lake Improvement Project, Onondaga County Department of Water Environment Protection, January 10, 2008, A-10.

'New and Significant' Information Regarding Title VI Claim 03R-04-R2, Midland Avenue Sewage Plant by the Partnership for Onondaga Creek

From the Executive Summary:

The Partnership for Onondaga Creek (POC) submits "A Study in Environmental Racism: 'New and Significant' Information regarding Title VI Claim 03R-04-R2" as one of several ongoing submissions to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Office of Civil Rights.