Westchester County has reduced water pollution.
Since 1998, through the Department of Planning and the county’s Soil and Water Conservation District, streams and wetlands have been restored to improve water quality.  Also, storm water management practices have been installed or upgraded to improve water quality. The county has made changes to its sanitary code (enforced by the Department of Health) to protect the environment and  keep water clean.

Sewage pumping stations (county and local) are required to file annual reports documenting operations. In addition, the departments of Public Works and Environmental Facilities completed a four-year $30 million program in 2003 to remove inflow and infiltration in municipal sanitary sewers and reduce sanitary sewer overflows. These departments are now completing a plan to upgrade the four Long Island Sound Wastewater Treatment Plants to remove nitrogen from the Sound.

The Westchester County Airport implemented an airport wide groundwater monitoring program to protect drinking water as part of the Airport wide Environmental Management System which was independently certified to the ISO 14001 Standard in 2004. 

Westchester has tackled air pollution by:

• reducing emissions from its bus fleet
• requiring the buses operate using ultra-low-sulfur diesel fuel
• retrofitting its buses with filters to further reduce emissions of air pollutants.
• purchasing hybrid vehicles and monitoring their performance to see if additional vehicles should be purchased.
• purchasing and continuing to buy hybrid vehicles for its motor fleet and assisting local governments and school districts with reducing their emissions from motor vehicle fleet.

The county Board of Legislators has mandated that all county diesel vehicles and county contractor diesel vehicles use ultra low sulfur diesel fuel and be equipped with filters to further reduce air pollutants. In 2007, the county entered into a “Statement of Intent” with other suburban counties, New York City and the state Department of Transportation and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to work together to further to reduce emissions from engines and vehicles that operate in their jurisdictions, with a focus on diesel emissions.

We have also reduced the use of pesticides and toxic cleaning products.
Since 2000, the use of pesticides by the county has been phased out. The county has encouraged local governments to do the same. A recent Executive Order requires all county facilities to use non toxic green cleaning products where possible.