The City of Poughkeepsie came under fire in a report prepared by the nonprofit organization Environmental Advocates NY (EANY) for deficiencies in it efforts to rid the city of water pipes containing lead. EANY said the city was moving too slowly and was spending more than it had to on each pipe replacement.
Poughkeepsie’s Mayor Marc Nelson rejected what was in the EANY report and told the Business Journals that the city has been paying attention to the issue of water pipes containing lead. Nelson said that when Poughkeepsie replaces those pipes it does so from the water main in the street right up to the house or business building instead of stopping at the property line as is the practice in some other municipalities. He said that adds to the difficulty of the job and to its cost.
EANY is based in Albany and has among its leadership a venture capitalist, lawyers and environmentalists. Its IRS Form 990 financial statement for 2021 showed income of $2,527,146. The organization states that its mission “is to protect our air, land, water and wildlife and the health of all New Yorkers.”
EANY’s report on Poughkeepsie said, “Poughkeepsie has a lead poisoning crisis, with one of the highestrates of childhood elevated blood lead levels in the state (approximately 1 in 10 children are lead poisoned). Contributing to this crisis are an estimated 5,500 lead service lines (LSLs) in the city, which connect water mains running under streets to the internal plumbing in homes and businesses.”
The report said that Poughkeepsie has spent $399,926 of a $544,745 grant it received from the New York State Department of Health but managed to replace only 14 lead service lines as of July 2022. EANY alleged that Poughkeepsie has not been doing an adequate job of testing for lead in the water supply and that when it has tested it did so mainly in parts of the city that did not reflect the city’s racial and economic diversity.
“The science is clear,” Nelson said. “There is no amount of lead that is safe. This is of particular concern to households with small children. The cost of lead line replacement en mass is obviously a major, major number.”
Nelson said that lead water pipe replacement is being built into the city’s capital plan every year.
“In terms of best practices you want to do it as quickly as you can with the resources that you have,” Nelson said. “The City of Poughkeepsie has been in the past rated by the New York state comptroller as one of the most fiscally-stressed cities in the state of New York.”
Nelson said that a few years ago the city was running a $13 million deficit, which has now been reduced to about $2 million. He said the deficit should be totally wiped out by the end of this year or early next year and the financial rating agencies have been looking favorably on Poughkeepsie.
“We can now have meaningful conversation about what the priorities are when it comes to capital planning,” Nelson said. “The cost to replace all of the lead service lines in the City of Poughkeepsie is somewhere around $130 million. I could be low. That’s a number that was estimated by our engineering team a year ago. It’s a big lift financially, but I think this is probably the right time to start having those conversations.”
Nelson was emphatic in saying he doesn’t believe Poughkeepsie has been sitting back on its heels when it comes to the issue of lead in water pipes. He said the EANY report is skewed and he talked with the authors and made his concerns plain.
“Is it a crisis? I think it might be more concerning if the city’s sewer plant went offline or if we were failing to meet state or county health requirements regarding the quality of our water,” Nelson said. “We meet or exceed all of the state and county requirements and have for many, many years. We’re investing in our infrastructure.”
Nelson said that federal financial help will be needed to do a complete job and replace every water line that contains lead.
“The City of Poughkeepsie has no chance on its own of having all of our lead pipes replaced within the next 10 years as some folks have called for,” Nelson said. “We need to be realistic. If rich cities that have triple-A bond ratings are not doing anything about this, how do you expect one of the poor cities in the state of New York to address it? We certainly can’t go out and borrow $130 million.”
Nelson said that federal infrastructure money would be a natural source for the lead pipe replacement funding the city needs.
