ELLENVILLE � Attorney Jeff Baker of the Coalition of Watershed Towns Executive Committee recently made public the background on the dispute with New York City over its land purchase efforts.

The dispute began when the city obtained a 10-Year Filtration Avoidance Determination from the State Department of Environmental Conservation. That meant the city could avoid spending billions on filtering its water supply. And one way to do that was to spend $541 million to buy watershed lands to protect unfiltered drinking water for the city. As much as 96,000 acres of land in the Catskills might be acquired by the city over the next decade and a half.

At a meeting on the 16 of August, Baker outlined the general nature of the situation, but avoided specifics, saying that everything was still a matter for negotiations.

A two-year-old lawsuit, filed by the coalition, challenged the process used to prepare the DEC water supply permit for the city, which was part of the deal created by the Filtration Avoidance Determination. However, the lawsuit may be dropped, if the Coalition approves of the language of the permit.

A draft of the permit is expected to be released to the public by the end of this month.

Meanwhile, on August 25, New York City Environmental Protection Commissioner Cas Holloway announced that the city had purchased 1,323 acres of land for $7.8 million. The land is in 12 parcels, located in Ulster, Greene, Delaware and Westchester Counties. The parcels ranged in size from 266 acres down to half an acre.

Since the land protection program began, New York City has protected 111,000 acres of watershed land in the Catskill/Delaware and Croton reservoir systems.

"The Land Acquisition Program is central to preserving the high quality of NYC Water," said Commissioner Holloway. "Last year marked the second highest number of acres ever purchased by DEP in the watershed, and this latest investment means that we are not slowing that pace down one bit. Though we are preventing over-development in the watershed, we are not cutting off access to the land. Many of these new acres will be opened as hiking or fishing areas for local residents, and anyone else who visits this beautiful natural landscape. I look forward to continuing to work with our partners in the City's watershed to continue the land acquisition program, and at the same time facilitate sustainable economic development that maintains the high-quality water that nine million New Yorkers need and expect every day."

The Watershed Protection Program is cited as the prime reason that New York remains among the small group of large American cities that does not have to filter its drinking water. The others are Seattle, San Francisco, Boston and Portland.