SWAP

Protocol for Review of Requests for Long Island Source Water Assessment Reports

Effective: September 3, 2003

The 1996 Safe Drinking Water Act Amendments required states to develop a Source Water Assessment Program (SWAP) to assess all sources of water used by public drinking water systems. The New York State Department of Health (NYSDOH) implemented the program for New York State.

On March 21, 2003, the NYSDOH presented the state’s policy concerning the release of Source Water Assessment Reports and the Source Water Assessment Summary Report. The policy indicates that source water assessments and summary reports prepared based on the assessments can be released to the public and other interested parties. The NYSDOH asked that “local health departments and public water suppliers release these reports only upon request and develop protocols for reviewing requests, to assure the appropriateness of the request, and log all requests (e.g. name of requester, date, reason for request). Requests that are deemed by the secondary custodian (i.e. the Nassau County Department of Health) to be inappropriate, such as requests from non-credentialed requestors, requests without a justifiable public or private benefit, or requests without a specific use or purpose, and which do not require disclosure under the Freedom of Information Law (Article 6 of the Public Officers Law) should be denied.”

The Program’s final reports are:

  • The Long Island Source Water Assessment Report, which consists of Tasks 1A, 1B, 1C, 1D, 2A, 2B, 2C, 3.A.1, and 5.
  • The Long Island Source Water Assessment Summary Report, and
  • The Individual Public Water Supply Well assessments. The assessments contain maps depicting the general location of specific water sources as well as potential sources of contamination. The document also contains the assessment tables.

Coordinate data used to identify the exact location of a public water supply source is not available to the public, as per state policy. However, identifying information, such as street locations, appears on the assessment maps.

In response to the NYSDOH policy, the Nassau County Department of Health (NCDOH), as a secondary custodian, has developed the following procedure to process requests for release of assessment reports prepared under the Source Water Assessment Program:

  1. All requests received by the NCDOH to view and/or copy Long Island Source Water Assessments will be evaluated and processed by the Director of the Water Supply Engineering Unit of the Bureau of Environmental Engineering (516-227-9692).
  2. The applicant will be required to complete the NCDOH SWAP Records Request Form and indicate, on his/her company letterhead, the reason for the request and how the information will be used.
  3. If approved, the NCDOH will request that the applicant sign an agreement that the information obtained will not be used for purposes other than the one(s) identified in the application and will not be distributed to other parties.
  4. The NCDOH will maintain a log of all requests for access to public water supply well assessments. A copy of the log may be presented to the NYSDOH on a regular basis.
  5. Requests from the media or requests for extensive information will be immediately reported to the NYSDOH by the NCDOH.