Crippled by concessions to farmers, the state’s water pollution prevention programs are failing to protect the Finger Lakes from harmful algal blooms (HABs) that threaten sources of public drinking water.
Blooms of toxic cyanobacteria are routinely reported on all 11 Finger Lakes each late summer and early fall. No region of the state has been hit as hard.
The HABs problem has become particularly acute for Owasco and Cayuga lakes, which have tributaries that reach deep into farming communities in Cayuga County, the state’s No. 2 milk producer.
“The state is playing politics. They’re caving to the agricultural community,” said Edward Wagner, supervisor of the Town of Owasco. “If they don’t protect our drinking source, we’re going to be in the same situation as the people in drought in California.”
In Auburn, the Cayuga County seat, cyanotoxins were first detected in public drinking water in 2016. While a new $2 million carbon filtering system has protected public tap water for 45,000 users in Auburn, Owasco and other communities since then, toxins in their raw water drawn from Owasco Lake set new records in 2021 and 2022. That’s prompted the county health department to prep for a possible “Do Not Drink” emergency if the filters fail and toxins spike in tap water.
While officials have praised the state for funding for the new filter system, they’ve criticized it for failing to address the root causes of HABs — and agriculture’s role.
Runoff from farms, which is rich in nitrogen and phosphorus, fuels HABs in the lakes.
Under Gov. Kathy Hochul, water quality policy is carried out by the state Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) and the state Department of Health (DOH). But their initiatives tend to be blunted by farming interests protected by the state Department of Agriculture and Markets, which enforces the state’s Right to Farm law.
In the competition between two vital state interests, water quality regularly loses out to…
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