On January 12, 1009, New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo announced that five upstate New York hospitals and nursing homes agreed to end the practice of discharging pharmaceutical waste in the watershed that supplies drinking water to New York City.
The agreements resolve investigations by the Inspector General for the watershed into the facilities’ pharmaceutical waste management practices. The Inspector General position was created in 1998 as part of a watershed protection agreement reached with EPA.
The investigations, which began in January 2009 with letters to 15 health care institutions within the watershed, sought to ensure compliance with state law requirements implementing the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA) and the Water Pollution Control Act.
The settlements cover O’Connor Hospital and Countryside Care Center, both in Delhi, New York; Margaretville Memorial Hospital and Mountainside Residential Care Center, both in Margaretville, New York; and Putnam Nursing and Rehabilitation Center, in Holmes, New York. Delhi and Margaretville are within the watershed’s Catskill-Delaware system west of the Hudson River, while Holmes is located within the smaller and more densely populated Croton system east of the Hudson.
According to the Attorney General’s office, to date, only trace amounts of pharmaceuticals have been found in city drinking water. According to the settlement documents, low concentrations of some pharmaceuticals have been found in watershed streams, and even lower concentrations of fewer pharmaceuticals have been found in reservoirs. The settlements address the practice of flushing unused pharmaceuticals — including painkillers, antibiotics, antidepressants, hormones, and other waste drugs — into waterways feeding the city water supply.
Under the settlements, the health care institutions must immediately cease all discharges of pharmaceutical wastes into the watershed and instead use authorized waste management facilities capable of safely treating the pharmaceuticals. In addition to meeting regulatory requirements, the institutions must also set up pharmaceutical take-back programs for collection and proper disposal of pharmaceutical wastes from area households. The settlements also include payment of fines, fees, and investigative costs for RCRA and CWA violations, ranging from $3,500 to $12,000.
Included in the waste management protocols under the settlements are not only unused medications, but chemicals and wastes from diagnostic procedures and such “universal wastes” as batteries and fluorescent light bulbs.