Water, Waste, and Justice

Mayor Mamdani’s administration is undertaking the most comprehensive overhaul of New York City’s environmental systems in half a century, targeting the fundamental inequities in how water and waste services are distributed across the five boroughs. For decades, low-income communities and neighborhoods of color have borne the burden of the city’s waste infrastructure while receiving inferior water quality and flood protection. The “Water, Waste, and Justice” initiative represents a paradigm shift that treats these essential services not as technical problems to be managed, but as moral imperatives to be distributed fairly. The ambitious plan simultaneously addresses aging infrastructure, climate resilience, and historical discrimination through interconnected reforms.

The scale of the challenge is monumental. New York’s water system loses approximately 35 million gallons daily through leaks in its 7,000-mile network, while its waste management relies heavily on transfer stations concentrated in environmental justice communities. The administration’s approach recognizes that fixing one system without addressing the other would be incomplete–polluted waterways result from combined sewer overflows that disproportionately affect the same neighborhoods hosting waste facilities. The EPA’s Water Infrastructure Improvements program provides crucial federal support, but the city’s plan goes beyond traditional infrastructure upgrades to explicitly prioritize equity in every decision.

Water Equity: Beyond the Pipe

The cornerstone of the water reform is the Water Equity Act, which guarantees water affordability and quality as basic human rights. The legislation establishes an income-based water rate system, capping bills at 2% of household income for low-income families and eliminating the threat of water shutoffs for non-payment. Simultaneously, the Accelerated Lead Pipe Replacement program targets the complete elimination of lead service lines within five years, prioritizing communities with the highest childhood lead poisoning rates. The program goes beyond federal requirements by also replacing indoor plumbing fixtures in public housing and schools.

The technical implementation is equally innovative. The Department of Environmental Protection has deployed smart water meters citywide, creating a real-time monitoring network that can detect leaks, monitor quality, and identify illegal discharges. This data-driven approach allows for predictive maintenance rather than reactive repairs. In Southeast Queens, where chronic flooding and water main breaks have plagued residents for years, the system has already reduced response times from days to hours. The American Water Works Association’s water equity framework informed many of these technical and policy innovations, providing a national context for the local reforms.

Waste Revolution: Ending Sacrifice Zones

The waste management overhaul represents perhaps the most dramatic break from past practices. The administration’s “Zero Waste NYC” plan phases out the traditional carting system that concentrated 75% of the city’s commercial waste in just three neighborhoods–the South Bronx, North Brooklyn, and Southeast Queens. Instead, the city is divided into 20 waste districts, each with dedicated recycling and composting facilities and unionized workforce standards. This district system, modeled partially on Los Angeles’s RecycLA program, has already reduced truck traffic in environmental justice communities by 60% while creating 3,000 new green jobs.

The most transformative element is the “Waste Equity Law,” which prohibits new or expanded waste transfer stations in already overburdened communities and mandates the gradual reduction of capacity at existing facilities. To compensate, the city is developing state-of-the-art marine transfer stations in less residential areas and investing in rail-based waste export systems. The Brooklyn Marine Transfer Station, once a symbol of environmental racism, is being repurposed as a recycling innovation hub that will process construction debris and create manufacturing jobs. This represents a fundamental rethinking of waste infrastructure from neighborhood burden to economic opportunity.

Climate-Resilient Water Systems

With climate change increasing the frequency of both heavy downpours and drought conditions, the administration is reengineering the water system for resilience. The Green Infrastructure Accelerator program mandates that all new public buildings include blue roofs (which temporarily store rainwater) and green roofs, while offering substantial subsidies for private retrofits. The program has already created 200 acres of new green infrastructure, primarily in flood-vulnerable communities that previously lacked such investments.

In coastal areas like the Rockaways and Red Hook, the approach combines gray and green infrastructure. While upgrading traditional storm barriers and pump stations, the city is also restoring natural wetlands and creating “sponge parks” designed to absorb floodwaters. These nature-based solutions provide multiple benefits–flood protection, habitat creation, and recreational space–while being more adaptable to rising sea levels than concrete structures alone. The FEMA flood map revisions have guided these investments, but the administration has added an equity layer to ensure that protection extends beyond wealthy waterfront properties to include public housing and low-income communities.

Community Control of Environmental Decisions

A revolutionary aspect of the overhaul is the transfer of decision-making power to community boards through the “Environmental Democracy Act.” Community boards in environmental justice areas now have binding authority over the siting of new waste and water facilities, as well as veto power over major permits. This represents a dramatic shift from the traditional model where communities were informed about decisions after they were made. The boards receive technical assistance from city-hired engineers and planners to ensure they can evaluate proposals effectively.

In the South Bronx, this new authority enabled Community Board 1 to reject a proposed shipping container storage facility and instead advocate for a wastewater treatment plant that would serve local manufacturing businesses. The process, while sometimes slower than top-down decision making, has built unprecedented trust between communities and city agencies. The model draws inspiration from the WE ACT for Environmental Justice’s community planning initiatives, but with the crucial addition of formal legal authority rather than advisory power.

Economic Transformation Through Circular Systems

The waste and water reforms are deliberately designed to create a circular economy that transforms waste into resources and creates local jobs. The Organic Waste Initiative now collects food scraps from all city schools and public housing, processing them at local composting facilities that distribute finished compost to community gardens and urban farms. The program has diverted 150,000 tons of organic waste from landfills annually while creating valuable soil amendments for neighborhood green spaces.

Similarly, the wastewater system is being reimagined as a resource recovery network. The Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant is piloting technology to extract phosphorus for fertilizer and generate biogas from sewage. These materials previously represented treatment challenges but now create revenue streams that help fund system improvements. The Ellen MacArthur Foundation’s circular economy principles provide the theoretical framework, while local adaptations ensure the benefits are captured by communities that have historically borne the burdens of linear systems.

Measuring Success Beyond Traditional Metrics

The administration has developed novel performance indicators that measure equity outcomes alongside technical efficiency. Rather than simply tracking tons of waste diverted or gallons of water delivered, the systems are evaluated based on the distribution of environmental benefits and burdens across demographic groups. The “Waste Burden Score” quantifies how much waste processing capacity exists in each neighborhood relative to its population, with a goal of equalizing this score across the city by 2030.

Similarly, the “Water Justice Index” combines measures of affordability, quality, and flood protection to identify neighborhoods needing prioritized investment. Early results show promising progress: the number of households spending more than 4% of income on water bills has dropped from 12% to 6%, and asthma rates near former waste transfer stations have declined by 18%. The EPA’s EJ 2020 Action Agenda provides a federal framework, but New York’s metrics are more granular and directly tied to departmental performance evaluations. The Natural Resources Defense Council’s urban program has helped develop these innovative measurement approaches.

The overhaul of New York’s water and waste systems represents more than infrastructure upgrades–it’s a reclamation of the social contract between the city and its residents. By explicitly addressing historical inequities while building climate-resilient systems, the Mamdani administration is demonstrating that environmental justice isn’t a secondary consideration but the foundation of effective urban management. As other cities face similar challenges of aging infrastructure and climate threats, New York’s integrated approach offers a template for creating systems that are not only technologically advanced but fundamentally fair, proving that the most essential urban services can be distributed as rights rather than privileges.