Sewage Discharge Notifications
NYAlert is the notification tool for municipalities to let the DEC, the New York State Department of Health (DOH) and the public know that a discharge has recently occurred. DEC and DOH determine what to do about discharges after consulting with the municipality.
This page includes sewage discharge notifications that were sent out through NY-Alert within the last 7 days. The information from these alerts can help you make decisions about where to recreate on New York's waterbodies. Historical sewage spill data is available from 2013.
Sewage Pollution Right to Know
The Sewage Pollution Right to Know Law (SPRTK) requires that publicly owned treatment works (POTWs) and publicly owned sewer systems (POSSs) report sewage spills to the public within four hours of discovery. DEC does not issue alerts. These alerts are issued by the municipality who owns the sewer or treatment works where a sewage discharge takes place. DEC also does not make the decision on public health issues. DOH determines if there is a public health problem. DOH is notified at the time of the initial report.
Sign-up to receive sewage discharge alerts directly to your phone, email, or text via the NY-alert system. Once your account is created you will want to add the Sewage Discharge Notification to your list of alerts. To do this first click the "Edit" button next to "My Subscriptions". Click the "+" next to "Select your County Alerts" and then click the "+" sign next to the county/counties you want to receive alerts from. Check the box of the types of alerts you would like for each county. Make sure you include "Sewage Discharge Notifications" and click "Save".
For more information about NY-Alert, visit the NY-Alert website. (leaves DEC website)
Combined Sewer Overflows (CSOs)
CSOs may discharge untreated sewage when it rains-find out if you live, or recreate in a CSO community and learn about CSOs.
Historical Sewage Discharge Data
Historical sewage discharge data is retrieved from NY-Alert in batches and can be viewed in an Excel spreadsheet called Sewage Discharge Reports. This spreadsheet is separated into multiple tabs as changes have been made to the data collection methods. These tabs contain the following information:
- "Updated NY-Alerts from January 2021 through current"- Sewage Discharge Reports (Excel) - This update addresses the recent missing notification data (starting July 2021).
- "PDFs through May 2015"-data from May 2013 through May 2015 which was submitted to DEC as PDFs.
- "NY-Alerts through May 10, 2016"-data which was received from NY-Alert from February 2015 through May 2016.
- "NY-Alerts from May 2016 through May 2017"-data which was received from NY-Alert from May 2016 through May 2017.
- "NY-Alerts from May 2016 through July 2017"-data which was received from NY-Alert from May 2017 through July 2017.
- Beginning in August 2017 data is updated monthly and added as a new tab.
Data Caveats
- All data is submitted by the POTWs and POSSs.
- DEC does not issue notifications about individual discharges.
- The reports are submitted by the notifiers creating the reports in a short time frame after discovery of the discharge and specific details may not be known.
- Data is estimated based on the existing systems, models, and personal knowledge of the sewer systems.
- Data quality is not checked by DEC.
- The NY-Alert program allows for negative durations and zero quantities for volume.
- Background system processing on duration calculates to the next whole hour.
- Addresses may not be entered by the notifiers in a way that allows the parts of the address to be separated.
- Multiple notifications may be entered for the same discharge since municipalities need to submit daily and termination reports for ongoing discharges.
