State Sen. Michael Nozzolio on Thursday criticized the state Department of Environmental Conservation's plan to allow the town of Groton to continue to discharge high amounts of phosphorous into Owasco Lake for another four years and called on the DEC to take more immediate action and revise its permit proposal.

The DEC's draft permit schedule, released July 2, one day after a countywide meeting on Owasco Lake says that four pounds of phosphorous can be discharged until Sept. 2010, when it will be reduced to three pounds per day for the next two years. The permit does not restrict Groton's phosphorous discharge to two pounds per day until November 2012.

A 30-day public comment period is now in effect, where residents in the region can contact the DEC to register their opinions. They must contact the DEC before Aug. 8.

“In response to tremendous pressure from the local community, the DEC recently announced that aggressive action would be taken to protect the water quality of Owasco Lake and that they would order the reduction of the amount of phosphorous discharge from four pounds per day to two pounds per day,” Nozzolio said in news release. “However, the DEC carefully avoided releasing the details of their announcement until after our July 1 meeting at Owasco Lake. They also declined to participate in the meeting. We have since learned that the DEC will not impose the two pounds per day limit for another four years. It would be an outrage to allow this amount of phosphorous to continue to be discharged into Owasco Lake until 2012.”

James Tierney, assistant commissioner for water resources at the DEC, said there was some confusion about the interpretation of the schedule of compliance in the draft permit.

“The village of Groton has to hire an engineer whose fully engineered blueprint designs are due in September of 2008. Construction is to start in June of 2009 and be completed by June 2010,” Tierney said. “The DEC has every reason to believe that when the switch is turned on, the plant will achieve the two-pound-per-day standard when completed in June 2010.”

He explained that it is standard practice to allow a “shake out” period before imposing the most stringent standards in the event that there are some adjustments that have to be made, thus a graduated approach over the next two years until June 2012, when the plant would be fined or have to go back and re-engineer if it didn't meet state standards.