Our Water & Natural Resources Program is focused on conserving and protecting New York’s land and water resources. Our open spaces, lakes, streams, and rivers provide us with places to work and play, clean and green energy, drinking water, and jobs. Our natural resources are also a critical part of New York State’s identity, and Environmental Advocates of New York is working to ensure their existence and abundance for generations to come.

The Great Lakes Compact
We are working to protect one of North America's greatest natural treasures and sources of freshwater, the Great Lakes. We promoted the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River Basin Water Resources Compact to limit large-scale and harmful water withdrawals from the lakes. The Compact was passed by state legislators and signed into law by the Governor in 2008, ensuring that New York will be an equal partner in water management decisions throughout the Basin.

At the federal level, we advocate to protect, preserve and restore the health of the Great Lakes. Environmental Advocates is a member of the regional Healing Our Waters and Healthy Lakes, Healthy Lives coalitions, which are made up of more than 100 environmental, sport fishing, public health, economic, shipping and community groups that represent millions of people throughout the eight-state Great Lakes region. 

Healthy Lakes, Healthy Lives is proud to host a letter campaign to encourage the Presidential candidates to support the Great Lakes Restoration Strategy. Click on the image below to send a letter to the Presidential candidates asking them to support the Great Lakes and make restoration a priority this year.

Protecting Our Waterways
Environmental Advocates also fights for federal wetlands protections, sewage and drinking water infrastructure funding, programs and resources to clean up toxic waste sites, habitat protections, and initiatives to control and fight the onslaught of invasive species.

In the State Capital, we work with partner organizations to ensure that New York is doing its utmost to protect and conserve our precious water resources.  We urge lawmakers to close the gaping loophole in New York's wetlands protection law that currently leaves wetlands smaller than 12 acres unprotected.  We also advocate for funding to restore and protect sensitive areas in the Great Lakes region and funding to address New York’s critical and rapidly aging sewage and drinking water infrastructure.

In addition, Environmental Advocates is leading the charge to adequately staff New York's Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) to make sure that the state's pollution permits—the method for regulating discharge into our state waters—are properly written and enforced. In 2008 we released Permission to Pollute, a report detailing serious flaws in the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation’s (DEC) oversight of hundreds of water pollution sources across the state. The report documents how the state’s primary environmental agency is rubber-stamping water pollution permits without substantive review, as required every five years under the federal Clean Water Act. Environmental Advocates’ investigation also uncovered that the public is being denied its right to scrutinize hundreds of permits issued by the DEC that authorize the discharge of billions of gallons of sewage and industrial pollution every day.

According to the report, the DEC’s practice of rubber-stamping and renewing expired water pollution permits endangers the health of the state’s waters. The lack of staff at the agency is the main driver behind the DEC’s inadequate permit review practice; there simply aren’t enough engineers at the agency to scrutinize New York’s polluters and the permits that authorize water pollution discharges.   

Permission to Pollute is the follow-up to Muddying the Waters: The Unknown Consequences of New York’s Failed Water Pollution Permitting Program, which documented how the DEC did not review the water pollution permits of more than 1,100 facilities for over a decade—in clear violation of federal law. Permission to Pollute is an in-depth look at about 10 percent of the pollution permits administratively renewed and rubber-stamped by the agency over the past 10 months beginning in July 2007.

Community Preservation
Environmental Advocates also plays a role in efforts to preserve the natural character of our communities. We oversee the statewide Campaign for Community Preservation, which in 2007 successfully advocated for the Hudson Valley Community Preservation Act.

The Hudson Valley Community Preservation Act is an "opt-in" measure that provides New York municipalities with financial tools to preserve their natural and historic heritage. The new law gives communities in two counties the power to create their own preservation funds through local voter referendum. Although limited to Westchester and Putnam counties, the law was designed to provide communities statewide with the tools to tap into this measure.