The City's goal to retain filtration avoidance status under the Safe Drinking Water Act has motivated major changes in its relationship to landowners and residents in its watersheds, starting with a major pact with dairy farmers and extending more recently to an agreement with forest interests. NYS WRI has been assisting the deliberations by bringing natural and social sciences to bear upon difficult tradeoff issues and by acting as a trusted intermediary to foster increased information interchange among parties that have often been adversaries in the past. At the edge between the Middle Atlantic, New England, and Great Lakes States, New York has some of the water opportunities and problems of each of these regions. The state is blessed with abundant fresh water throughout, and a substantial majority of it is of good to excellent quality. Most of the ongoing water quality issues fall under the banner of nonpoint source management, the major point source problems having been addressed successfully by the mid 1980's.
Acid precipitation impairs many small lakes and ponds in New York.
While there have not been major disease outbreaks from Cryptosporidium parvum or Giardia in New York, nevertheless much preventive effort is being paid to these in the New York City watersheds under the filtration avoidance provisions of the Safe Drinking Water Act. Ground water contamination by solvents, petroleum, and nitrate restricts ground water use for drinking water in numerous areas of western and central Long Island. Easter Long Island's agricultural pesticide concerns rampant in the early 1980's have receded due to broad bans on the use of soluble, mobile materials whose residues were of most concern. Small, urbanized portions atop most of the upstate Primary Water Supply Aquifers contribute petroleum, solvents, and nitrate to recharge water. Heavy industrial areas such as those along the Niagara River suffer from a legacy of solvent and other toxic chemical disposal in the past.