URGENT ACTION ALERT: Require Governor Cuomo to Eliminate Cyanobacteria Harmful Algal Blooms Which Threaten Drinking Water Sources for More Than 300,000 New Yorkers

Please become a signatory to our new self-explanatory: Coalition Letter Which Requests That Governor Cuomo Take Urgent Action to Eliminate Water Quality Impairments That Cause Cyanobacteria Harmful Algal Blooms Across New York State

You will not believe these: Photos of Harmful Algal Blooms on Owasco and Cayuga Lake 2017

Watch this powerful Capital Tonight interview with Liz Benjamin: Algae blooms putting the state's drinking water at risk - 9-20-2017

Greetings,

I write to request that you take immediate, urgent action to require Governor Cuomo to eliminate massive cyanobacteria Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs) which threaten the drinking water sources for more than 300,000 residents of Rochester, Auburn, Skaneateles, Syracuse, Ithaca and many other communities.

This is a drinking water crisis of unprecedented proportions. HABs caused by excessive phosphorus and nitrogen have been reported all over New York from the Niagara Frontier to Eastern Long Island: Map of Reported Harmful Algal Blooms in New York State 2017

Since the start of our Marcellus Shale Campaign nearly eight years ago, we have successfully played a crucial role in preventing water pollution hazards that would have threatened public health and the environment throughout a huge region of New York.

Now your help is needed more than ever to resolve hundreds of existing water quality impairments that government authorities have ignored for literally decades.

Thank you to all the hard-working journalists who covered our new campaign release. You can view their amazing newsclips, our HAB map as well as impaired waters and HAB databases below and at: Harmful Algal Blooms in New York State.

Help Protect Cayuga Lake

Cayuga Lake sadly exemplifies the perils of New York's failure to clean up massive algal blooms, aquatic weed infestations and turbidity hazards that have plagued this historic Finger Lake for more than 50 years.

Cayuga Lake was included in the National 303(d) Registry of Impaired Waters in 2002. A comprehensive Total Maximum Daily Load watershed clean up program was required as a "high priority" in 2004. To this day, no TMDL has ever been proposed or adopted.

In early August, an immense cyanobacteria HAB closed public bathing at Taughannock State Park and threatened the drinking water for more than 30,000 residents.

A huge fight is looming to adopt a landmark TMDL to clean up Cayuga Lake. A comprehensive TMDL is essential because it would protect this jewel of a lake and provide a model of effective action for other impaired waterbodies.

Watch a video of Toxics Targeting's 19-year struggle to clean up this incomparable lake: Walter Hang of Toxics Targeting Urges Citizens to Protect Cayuga Lake from Harmful Algal Blooms and Lake Source Cooling Through a Long-Awaited Total Maximum Daily Load Comprehensive Watershed Clean up Plan - 8-20-2017

My 1999 "choking blooms of algae" prediction in The New York Times tragically came true: Aid to Environment, Or Threat to Lake?; Cornell Pursues Pumping Plan, But Critics Fear Fouled Water

Call Governor Cuomo Today at 518 474 8390

Demand that the Governor clean up all water quality impairments that cause cyanobacteria Harmful Algal Blooms which threaten drinking water in New York State.

Call to Action

New York's on-going failure to resolve long-standing water quality impairments now threatens critical drinking water sources, property values, regional economic hubs and priceless natural resources.

We must all take action to require Governor Cuomo to resolve this problem as a top political priority without any further delay. Otherwise existing hazards will only grow worse.

The scope of New York's regulatory failure is breath-taking. A total of 219 impaired waterbodies included in the National 303(d) Registry require comprehensive TMDL clean up programs. More than half of those polluted waters have excessive phosphorus and nitrogen which promotes HABs.

New York State proposes to adopt a mere 15 TMDLs through 2022. There are no plans to adopt TMDLs for more than 200 additional impaired waters.

This is simply an outrageous failure to protect public health and the environment. I implore you to take sustained action to safeguard New York's drinking water from widespread pollution hazards.

Check to see if your local waterbody is included in the: New York State 2016 Section 303(d) List of Impaired Waters Requiring a TMDL/Other Strategy

Thank You So Much

Please join me in thanking Auburn City Councilor, Terry Cuddy, for attending an Albany news conference on 9/20/17 to discuss Auburn's cyanobacteria HAB problems when he normally would have been instructing his students.

Terry and the stalwart Auburnian colleagues he organized were instrumental in prohibiting shale fracking wastewater dumping in Auburn's municipal treatment plant. That ultimately led to a nationwide ban. Is has been a privilege for me to be able to work with these stellar activists.

Now Terry, fellow Councilor James Giannettino, Jr. and so many others are playing an equally important role to rid New York of cyanobacteria HABs which threaten the drinking water for more than 40,000 Auburn residents.

Their dedication to the public good is exemplary. All Fractivists should all bow in homage to each and every one of them.

If you believe that your community's environment and public health are worth fighting for, you can take similar grassroots action.

Toxics Targeting can help you. Just get in touch.

Onward and upward. Keep slugging.

Walter