Inside New York's environmental investments: A Q&A with DEC Commissioner Basil Seggos

C&S: What’s been the most challenging part of the job since you came on last November?

BS: I think without a doubt the water crisis has been the most challenging part of the job. When I started, that’s about the time really the nation started grappling with the idea of clean water and drinking water and the problems associated with lack of infrastructure investment over the years and toxic contamination. I had goals coming into the job, things I wanted to carry out and see accomplished, and I had the benefit of working for the governor for four years as his environmental adviser, over which time we achieved so much on the environment in terms of new laws, record-setting investments in the environment and really bold policies on things like climate change. I would say I have been working for 20 years on water issues, but I didn’t expect the water situation to have become so front and center right at the beginning of my tenure. I think in many respects we had prepared for this point thoroughly, in terms of ensuring adequate funding and resources for all of our programs. The biggest change was the in the public’s awareness of the problem, and that is a good thing. We want the public to be aware of the problems that are out there and ultimately that helps us carry out our mission. To say that there has merely been a paradigm shift in awareness is almost an understatement. The public now is seeing water issues and environmental issues at the kitchen table for the first time in many, many years. I’ve not only dedicated half or more of my time to water issues over this year, but on the personal front, I’m actually seeing this at home.

Literally the day or the hour after my hearing down on Long Island, I got a note from my wife that our school (that his children go to) tested high for lead. I’m seeing both at work and at home and it’s really no different from anyone else now who’s concerned about the air they breathe and the water they drink or the land that they play on. 

C&S: What could the state have done better in responding to water contamination in Hoosick Falls?

BS: Every day I come into the office, I learn something new about this agency and the people here. When the Hoosick Falls story broke and we were leading some of the earlier solutions on that, I was blown away by our ability to respond to a situation like this that required creativity across the board. We ramped up very quickly, found a way to regulate a chemical that wasn’t well known, that we hadn’t formally regulated. We identified polluters very quickly and began holding them accountable and we launched probably one of the most ambitious pollution response in the agency’s 40-plus history. We had over 100 people from the agency at any given time for weeks on end – 24 hours a day, seven days a week – in Hoosick Falls, doing installations of private treatment systems in people’s homes, something that had literally never been done at any scale anywhere and certainly not that quickly.

C&S: Yet many people remain upset with the state’s response.

BS: I certainly understand that. When you have a polluter out there, multiple polluters that ruin the groundwater in an area, when you learn about that, it can be very anxiety producing. I can just speak from my perspective that my front-row seat on this has given me the sense that our agencies were responding very aggressively and in a very coordinated way, not only to restore drinking water in the area but to hold the polluters accountable and that’s what we were able to do quickly.

C&S: How does the state move forward from this?

BS: The governor launched early in February the Water Quality Rapid Response Team, and that team was created to break down barriers between agencies and help us work more efficiently together to identify gaps in our laws and our regulations and our policies, to apply funding more expeditiously and effectively to get us to respond more quickly and more aggressively when needed. Probably the best example of that playing out was earlier in the year in the city of Newburgh where we had the Rapid Response Team, we plowed through data on file with the (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency) and got ahead of it in a very expeditious fashion – switching the city’s water supply over to a clean drinking water source, identifying a polluter, tracking the pollution back to the pollution source and hopefully reversing the fortunes of this community in the process. We applied a similar model down in Suffolk County at the Gabreski Air National Guard Base, where we worked very closely with the county to hook up homes to a municipal supply line, get them off of wells and then work in tandem with the county to hold the National Guard accountable for that. I think, in short, the Rapid Response Team is doing exactly that. It is helping us improve the way in which we respond across the board to all types of problems. These types of responses typically require more than just the expertise of one agency. So, DEC will have one slice of jurisdiction, (the state) Department of Health will have a piece of jurisdiction, we even work closely with (the state Department) of Tax and Finance. They were instrumental early on in Hoosick Falls to quell the anxiety about mortgages and other investments in the community. The (state) Department of State had expertise on hand on the plumbing certification front. We really took what was historically a DOH and DEC response and it became a multi-agency response, and that’s the model we are now applying elsewhere. 

C&S: What impact is New York seeing due to climate change?

BS: I don’t think there’s any doubt that climate change is real and that humans are the primary cause. You just look at the data from the last decade. July and August were the hottest months ever. 2015, the highest year ever. 2014, the hottest year ever – and on and on. There’s a distinct reality here that I believe everyone is coming around to now, nationally and internationally. In New York, we’ve lived through major storms, Hurricanes Irene and Sandy, and I was in the governor’s office during Sandy. We had that seven-foot snowstorm in Buffalo. I was a part of the responses to all those, and then this year we had a drought that hit the state unlike anything we’ve seen in many, many years and it’s still impacting Western New York and the Southern Tier. We’re seeing (new) invasive species coming into the state. Climate change, we believe, is exacerbating the problem of invasive species in their steady march northward. This can sometimes be a slow-moving train, climate change, but occasionally you see these things that happen to the state, like these mega-storms, the drought and the spread of invasive species, that remind you that it’s happening very quickly.

C&S: The governor has called it the “new normal.”

BS: Yes, it is the new normal and we’re doing everything we can to both reduce our carbon footprint and to make the state more resilient for what we expect is coming in the future. 

C&S: Outside of moving toward green energy, how can the state help combat climate change?

BS: I was with the governor when we put together the “2100 Commission” after Superstorm Sandy, and in that report we identified dozens of recommendations to make the state stronger and more resilient and some of the recommendations now are law. The Community Resiliency Act – we’re working very closely with the environmental community and the business community to chart a more resilient state through that law. We’re developing sea-level (regulations), the first of their kind that acknowledge the reality of sea-level rise. Protecting open space is critical when it comes to watershed protection, as well as habitat for species that may be losing habitat due to the climate change. Conducting agency vulnerability assessments, we need to ensure that our agencies are prepared to deal with the impacts of climate change over the coming decades. These are all the things we’re doing now and that’s of course in addition to all the work we’re doing on the carbon side. 

C&S: How is the state moving toward green energy and what role do you believe natural gas and nuclear energy will have in that future?

BS: I may be partial, but I believe New York has one of the most ambitious – if not the most ambitious – programs to reduce carbon in the U.S. We have a very ambitious goal to reduce emissions – a 40 percent reduction by 2040, 80 percent by 2050. The governor has set forth the Clean Energy Standard, which would mandate that 50 percent of our energy is from renewables by 2030. We’ve been working very hard for many years, for 10 years, on lowering emissions from the power sector through the so-called Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. Now, we’re taking a look at the transportation sector, as well. Clean cars, zero-emission vehicles, working with other states on how to coordinate a strategy to reduce emissions from all types of transportation. We have dedicated $1 billion to solar in the next decade and, anecdotally, the early returns are very impressive: a 500 percent growth in solar from 2005 to 2015. Wind energy – we’re on the verge of a very ambitious build-out of the wind energy sector. We just put out an offshore blueprint and there are several very exciting proposals in the works on that. Through the Environmental Protection Fund, we are dedicating millions to communities that want to reduce their emissions through improvements to their infrastructure. The governor also set out a no-coal goal in the last State of the State. That’s something we’re working on now. Our overall carbon emissions, I’m very excited about the programs we have right now to reduce our carbon footprint.

I think the governor has rightly recognized that both gas and nuclear are bridges to a low-to-no-carbon future. We are looking very carefully at the nuclear side. DEC’s jurisdiction really is more on the pollution front, as opposed to regulating the industry. I look at a plant like Indian Point, regardless of the debate about whether nuclear energy is green, as something that hasn’t been responsibly managed, has had a number of significant mishaps over the last three or four years, which calls into question the viability of the plant. I think the governor has recognized that a plant like that may have no place in New York’s future, but there may be a role in the next decade in helping us to – with the other plants in the state – helping us to get to our carbon reduction goals by 2030. 

C&S: One part of the conversation around reducing carbon emissions is “NIMBY,” not-in-my-backyard. Do you think there’s any way to solve those issues or is that just a reality of moving toward green energy?

BS: I think public engagement is critical. Certainly, it’s incumbent upon us to always take public sentiment into account in our larger decision-making. We’re fortunate to have very solid environmental laws in New York state, between SEQRA, the State Environmental Quality Review Act, Article 7 and Article 10, which all mandate very thorough review of all environmental projects that come before us. We’ve got the laws on the books that we need to ensure public engagement. We certainly have, as we’ve demonstrated, a balanced approach to the build-out of renewables. 

C&S: How will the Environmental Protection Fund increase help the state?

BS: I think the increase is going to be transformational for New York state. You may recall that when the governor took office, the EPF had been cut dramatically back to I think $134 million and now it’s at a record $300 million, boosted more than double. If you look at what the EPF funds, it funds some agency work, but most of it is going out communities, supporting projects across the state, from invasive species reduction to protecting open space to ensuring for smart growth. That amount of funding will leave a legacy for all of us to be very proud of and I’m fortunate and glad that at this stage right now of the governor’s tenure, we’re able to think about how to apply those significant funds on a year-to-year basis to protect the state for frankly generations.

C&S: If you could wave a magic wand during next year’s budget process, what other increase in funding would you like to see?

BS: Right now, we have a level of funding that didn’t exist five years ago. We have the Water Infrastructure Improvement Act, which is a $400 million grant program that four years ago didn’t exist. We have an EPF funding of $300 million, which again a few years ago was less than half that. We have a 10-year Superfund, again was in jeopardy of sunsetting a year-and-a-half ago. Our resources now are at peak levels and obviously we’ll be working very closely with the Legislature over the coming months to see whether that can be enhanced in any ways, but right now the governor has rightly reclaimed the state’s mantle as a national leader on the environment, thanks to these investments. 

C&S: Anything else you’d like to add?

BS: I took this job really for one reason: to make a difference in the lives of all New Yorkers and I’ve had a very interesting career. I’ve had a chance to work in both the nonprofit sector in an advocacy basis, I’ve worked in the private sector on business development. Now, having been in state government for five years and leading this agency for a year, I can say that this is true: You can accomplish more in a day on the inside in this job than weeks or months or years on the outside. So to me, that was the opportunity to make a lasting difference in the lives of all New Yorkers. That’s why I came to DEC. DEC is a big agency, with a big and vital mission. Some of the most talented staff in all of state government are at DEC. I’ve got a governor that deeply believes in the environment, who’s established a legacy that as I’ve mentioned is one of the strongest environmental legacies of any governor, and he’s always been a strong supporter of the DEC and our mission. That’s the reason I took this job and the reason I took this job was to get in here and to help transform the state for the future.

Correction: The Water Infrastructure Improvement Act is a $400 million grant program, not a $4 million grant program.