Environmental Policy Recommendations Respectfully Submitted to the Mamdani Administration

SUMMARY

The Environmental Law Committee (Jullee Kim and John Rousakis, Co-Chairs) issued a transition memo to the Mamdani Administration with policy recommendations regarding environmental and public health priorities for New York City. The recommendations include: (1) urging the City to take climate action to meaningfully improve the quality of life of marginalized populations and strengthen climate resilience (including prioritizing the implementation of existing climate legislation, building a strong coalition to secure state government support, and strengthening the capacity of the Mayor’s Office of Climate and Environmental Justice (MOCEJ)); (2) urging the City to assess, disclose and help mitigate the potential negative environmental impacts of artificial intelligence (including utliizing the City’s existing AI Action Plan, implementing the City’s recently adopted Guaranteeing Unbiased AI Regulation and Disclosure Act (“GUARD Act”), and working to reduce the financial impact of AI on ratepayers); and (3) urging the Administration to redouble the City’s efforts to reduce nitrogen pollution and combined sewer overflows (CSOs) that impact New York’s waterways (including further reducing CSOs, improving stormwater management, and upgrading wastewater resource recovery facilities).

REPORT

REPORT BY THE ENVIRONMENTAL LAW COMMITTEE

RECOMMENDATIONS RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED TO THE
MAMDANI ADMINISTRATION

The New York City Bar Association (the “City Bar”) has a long history of working to protect New York City’s (the “City’s”) environment and the health of New Yorkers.  The City Bar has commented on and advocated for laws and policies that improve air and water quality, reduce carbon emissions and mitigate the effects of climate change, increase recycling, protect and enhance natural areas, and address the impacts of pollution on disadvantaged communities.

While your Administration faces a number of challenges in preserving and building on the environmental and public health achievements of its predecessors, it is our hope that the Administration will dedicate the resources and attention necessary to continue to reduce the City’s greenhouse gas emissions, enhance harbor water quality, and advance environmental justice, as further detailed below.  We note that the Trump Administration’s hostility to renewable energy and the explosion of artificial intelligence, with its extreme energy demands, will complicate the City’s decarbonization ambitions, and present unique challenges to overcome.  And while the City has made great strides over the years to improve harbor water quality, certain waterbodies are still impacted to an unacceptable degree.  We respectfully offer the following recommendations on these topics:

I. CLIMATE AND ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE

We urge the City to take bold and swift climate action to meaningfully improve the quality of life of marginalized populations and strengthen climate resilience in the City. Strong local leadership is critically important given the federal administration’s dismantling of environmental justice (EJ) policies and programs[1] and rescission of EJ-related federal grant funding.[2] These major setbacks were aggravated by New York State’s regression on commitments mandated by the Climate Leadership and Community Partnership Act, including the indeterminate pause on the Cap-Trade-and-Invest program[3] and the delay on the implementation of the All-Electric Buildings Law regulations.[4]

The City Bar applauds your Administration’s Green Schools for a Healthier New York proposal aiming to renovate 500 public schools with solar panels and green courtyards.[5]

We recommend your Administration take the following additional actions:

• Prioritize the implementation of existing climate legislation: The City has recognized pressing climate-related harms faced by New Yorkers, such as extreme flooding and extreme heat, and has enacted legislation including: i) Local Law 97 (requiring reductions in carbon emissions for certain buildings larger than 25,000 square feet); ii) Local Law 70[6] (requiring the development of a citywide comprehensive stormwater plan); iii) Local Law 87 [7](creating a southeast Queens flooding adaptation assistance task force); iv) Local Law 128[8](requiring the designation of cooling centers during extreme heat emergencies); and v) Local Law 148[9] (requiring the creation of a citywide urban forest plan to reach 30 percent tree canopy). The City Bar recommends prioritizing the implementation of these laws to combat climate change and mitigate climate-related harms that impact the health and wellbeing of New Yorkers, particularly those living in disadvantaged communities. The City Bar also recommends reinforcing the staffing capacity and budget of the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) to achieve the goals of Local Laws 70 and 87 in collaboration with community leaders.
• Build a strong coalition to secure state government support: We believe securing funding and support from Albany is critical to your Administration’s ability to deliver on campaign promises of affordability and public health. Opportunities for tangible action exist and can be leveraged. For instance, the projected state revenue from the Cap-Trade-and-Invest (CTI) program has been estimated at $6 billion to $10 billion per year.[10] This substantial revenue can also be a source of funding for municipalities, including the City, to invest in climate initiatives and address urgent priorities. A strong mayoral coalition is therefore vital to lead the way on prioritizing the release of the CTI program regulations and ensuring swift implementation, as the dividends can provide financial benefits at both the state and local levels.
• Strengthen the capacity of the Mayor’s Office of Climate and Environmental Justice (MOCEJ): In April 2024, MOCEJ officially released the EJNYC Report, assessing historical and current environmental justice issues in the City, along with an EJ mapping tool.[11] This was a remarkable development to advance environmental justice in the City. We urge your Administration to support the development of a comprehensive plan to guide the implementation of EJ initiatives, including reducing air pollution, adapting to extreme flooding and upgrading sewer infrastructure, mitigating extreme heat, and increasing access to public green spaces.  The City Bar recommends that the City strengthen MOCEJ’s staffing capacity and budget to help ensure that its commitments are fulfilled and that the strategies outlined in the EJ plan are translated into transformative action for marginalized communities.

II. CLIMATE IMPACTS OF AI

While artificial intelligence (AI) has key benefits, its use also involves significant potential risks and consequences, particularly for sustainability, which we urge the City to assess, disclose and help mitigate to the extent possible.  In 2023, the City launched an ambitious AI Action Plan to tackle the range of emerging risks associated with the City government’s use of AI.  In particular, the City recognized that: “Absent appropriate oversight and governance, some uses of AI could lead not only to benign inaccuracies or unintended results, but also data privacy or cybersecurity vulnerabilities, negative environmental impacts, or even serious bias, disparate impacts and active harms.”  Utilizing the City’s significant global profile as well as its purchasing and investing power to drive increased, detailed sustainability disclosures from AI vendors will not only assist the City’s decision-making but also help the City manage its own environmental footprint and provide a model for others to do the same.  As such, the City Bar calls upon the City to:

• Utilize the City’s existing AI Action Plan: In October 2025, the City’s Office of Technology and Innovation (OTI) reported that the AI Action Plan is approaching completion. OTI’s key successes have included putting in place foundational guidance documents on AI use, establishing a City AI Steering Committee, increasing public engagement, and building AI knowledge and skills in City government.  With its AI Action Plan in motion, the City is well-positioned to be at the forefront of addressing concerns around the energy and environmental impacts of AI use.  Data centers currently account for about 8% of U.S. energy use, which is expected by some estimates to grow to 12% by 2028.  Indeed, plans have recently been unveiled for individual AI data centers that would equal or dwarf the entire peak electricity load of the City.  The significant land use and water demands of data centers have also come into focus, with billions of gallons of water being used each year for cooling data center equipment.  In short, the sustainability risks associated with AI use are significant as it sparks growing data center deployment that will increasingly strain energy infrastructure, drive up greenhouse gas emissions, and compete for water resources.
• Promulgate Rules Under and Implement the City’s recently-adopted Guaranteeing Unbiased AI Regulation and Disclosure Act (“GUARD Act”): The GUARD Act contains legal mandates and tools that the City can employ to help assess, disclose, and mitigate the environmental impact of its AI use. This can include using the GUARD Act’s pre-deployment AI assessment for better-informed procurement processes and promulgating rules under the GUARD Act that require increased transparency from vendors regarding the sustainability risks and impacts associated with AI.
• Work to Reduce the Financial Impact of AI on Ratepayers: We further remind the Administration that the extraordinary energy demands of AI data centers will likely lead to increased costs to ratepayers, including the City’s residents, if the data centers are not required to pay their fair share. We urge the Administration to engage in all state legislative and regulatory efforts (including before agencies such as the Public Service Commission) necessary to advocate that AI centers be required to: (1) construct or fund their own renewable or carbon-free energy sources to meet or offset their power demands, and (2) bear any increased costs to ratepayers resulting from their energy demands, including the costs of any grid buildout necessitated by their energy use.

III. PROTECTING NEW YORK’S WATERWAYS

We urge the Administration to redouble the City’s efforts to reduce nitrogen pollution and combined sewer overflows (CSOs) that impact our waterways.  The New York City Department of Environmental Protection’s (DEP’s) latest NYC Stormwater Management Program Plan acknowledges that “New York City is shaped by water.”[12]  Surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, Long Island Sound, and the Hudson River and built around numerous rivers and creeks, the City has 520 miles of shoreline (more than the cities of Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Miami combined).  Unfortunately, the City also has a chronic water pollution problem.

The City Bar recognizes that the City has spent billions of dollars over the last few decades to upgrade its sewer system and wastewater treatment plants, but challenges persist.  Water quality issues are the consequence of inadequate and outdated wastewater and stormwater infrastructure, which allows excess nitrogen and harmful pathogens to enter into and cause ecological degradation of New York’s waterways, and make the waters unsafe for human interaction.  Those infrastructure deficiencies are exacerbated by climate change, which causes increasingly frequent episodes of extreme precipitation that overwhelm our systems.  Approximately 21 billion gallons of partially and untreated sewage are released into  the City’s waterways annually.  We call on the City to seize the greatest opportunities to restore the City’s waterways to the fishable, swimmable standards established by the Clean Water Act, specifically to:

• Further reduce CSOs: The PlaNYC Getting Sustainability Done, 2024 Progress Report sets a goal of eliminating the discharge of untreated sewage into the New York Harbor by 2060.[13] The City should work towards that goal by expanding both green and gray infrastructure to capture and store more stormwater, as well as accelerating implementation of long-term control plan projects, including CSO storage tunnels, that significantly reduce overflow volumes.  These actions align with DEP’s ongoing efforts, which have already cut CSO discharges citywide by roughly 85% and are targeted to further reduce discharges by more than 4 billion gallons per year by 2045.
• Improve stormwater management: We recommend the City expand the use of green infrastructure and work to pass policy at the State level, such as the Rain Ready New York Act (S.4071-A / A.7467-A), that will benefit the City.[14] Green infrastructure helps absorb and slow runoff, which reduces localized flooding and eases pressure on combined sewers during heavy rain events. The Rain Ready New York Act would further support this approach by explicitly granting water and sewer authorities the legal authority to manage stormwater, to fund green infrastructure, and to adopt incentives that reduce flooding and improve water quality across the City and State.  Many other major cities across the country have adopted similar stormwater management frameworks, enabling them to expand green infrastructure, reduce stormwater pollution, and significantly strengthen resilience to increasingly frequent flooding events.
• Upgrade wastewater resource recovery facilities: We recommend progressing toward a state-of-the-art Wastewater Resource Recovery Facility (WRRF) on Rikers Island, as outlined in DEP’s feasibility study, starting with the passage of a law in the City Council requiring the creation and funding of a master plan to begin to move toward Rikers Island’s most beneficial future use.[15]The feasibility study found that consolidating four aging Upper East River facilities into a single modern WRRF on Rikers Island is not only technically feasible but would significantly advance the City’s long-term water quality, energy, and climate goals.  It highlights that a new facility would incorporate state-of-the-art nutrient removal and stormwater management capacity, helping reduce CSOs and improve Upper East River and New York Harbor water conditions.

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We appreciate this opportunity to submit recommendations to the new Administration and offer our continuing support as you work toward building on and improving New York City’s environmental policy and infrastructure for the benefit of the City’s residents and the wider community.

Environmental Law Committee

April 2026