Mayor Bill de Blasio. Image credit: CityLand

The process will be a comprehensive study of environmental justice issues with the goal of developing a citywide Environmental Justice Plan to combat the issues. On February 9, 2021, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced the launch of the Environmental Justice for All Report, a comprehensive study of environmental justice issues.  The report will study and collect information from various communities on environmental justice issues and work to formulate a plan to end the burden of pollution, the age of fossil fuels, and climate change. (more…)

Image Credit: NYC Office of Environmental Remediation

The updated SPEED tool will give community a better understanding of development and environmental measures taken in their neighborhood. On April 23, 2020, The Mayor’s Office of Environmental Remediation released an update to its SPEED environmental mapping tool. The SPEED 2.0 environmental mapping tool allows New York City property owners, developers and community members to create maps of environmental information at a city, borough, neighborhood or site level. All of SPEED’s data is regularly updated to provide an accurate snapshot for each user. For access to SPEED click here. For help navigating the SPEED tool, click here. (more…)

Recreational boating on the Schoharie Reservoir in the Catskill Mountains. The Schoharie Reservoir is one of 19 DEP-owned reservoirs across the state that supply New York City with water. Image Credit: NYC DEP

New rules include an expanded recreational boating season and an e-cigarette ban. On May 31, 2019, the New York City Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) published the final updated rules governing recreation access to over 137,000 acres of water and the surrounding watershed lands. The rules were created to protect the water supply and promote outdoor recreation and go into effect on June 30^th. (more…)

Ross Sandler

Environmental litigation from more than 40 years ago has been revisited in a new book by Robert Lifset, Power on the Hudson: Storm King Mountain and the Emergence of Modern American Environmentalism (U. of Pittsburgh Press 2014). The book portrays a time when environmental law was new and polluters were really polluters. (more…)

Mott Haven campus rendering. Credit: Perkins Eastman.

Community Group sued the School Construction Authority seeking a long-term maintenance and monitoring protocol for the Mott Haven School site. The Mott Haven school campus site, consisting of four public schools, was formerly a railroad yard in the South Bronx. The site contained soil and ground water that were significantly contaminated, and the site needed to be remediated before the campus could be built. The campus opened in 2010.

The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) accepted the most contaminated section of the Mott Haven campus site into the Brownfield Cleanup Program in 2005. The School Construction Authority (SCA) filed the final version of its Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) pursuant to the State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA) in 2006. The EIS made detailed findings as to the environmental impacts of the project. The SCA completed the remediation measures on the site in 2007. (more…)