For more than a decade, the NYS DEC has been eroding from within
A COLUMN By Clayton “Tiger” Hulin, pictured is the recent Ischua Creek disaster
The Creek Knew Before We Did
One August morning, Ischua Creek went still. The water moved, but the life inside it did not. Fish floated. Frogs and salamanders vanished. The smell turned metallic and wrong.
Days later, the Department of Environmental Conservation confirmed what locals already knew. A discharge from the Great Lakes Cheese plant had poisoned the creek. The company was fined four hundred seventy-five thousand dollars and ordered to install real-time monitors. The number sounded large, but for the creek it meant little.
Justice, in these cases, comes written on paper. The water keeps the memory in silence.
Read the authors first hand account of the Ischua Creek disaster from September 1, 2025
A Watchdog That Forgot to Bark
For more than a decade, the DEC has been eroding from within. Its mission remains noble, but its strength has withered. Budgets have tightened. Field inspectors cover entire regions alone. Laboratory testing backlogs stretch for months.
The agency that once fought for wilderness now struggles to keep up with paperwork. Its pattern is clear: reaction after catastrophe, rather than prevention before it.
The creek dies first. The report comes later.
The Hudson’s Poisoned Memory
The Hudson River was supposed to be DEC’s victory. Instead, it became a monument to compromise.
General Electric’s PCB dumping left the river contaminated for generations. After limited dredging, the cleanup was declared complete in 2019. Fish still carry unsafe levels of toxins. Sediment remains laced with poison. DEC had the power to demand more, but it chose quiet cooperation over confrontation.
A river that once built New York’s identity still waits for its redemption.
The Pipeline and the Silence
When the Algonquin pipeline expansion passed near the Indian Point nuclear plant, residents begged the DEC to halt it. They cited risks that should have frozen the project in its tracks. The agency approved it anyway. Later reviews revealed safety modeling flaws, and the DEC said nothing.
Regulation without courage is paperwork pretending to be protection.
Forgotten Lakes
The Adirondack lakes were once acidic scars, then symbols of recovery. Cleaner air helped. But when budgets fell, the monitoring stopped. Entire watersheds went untested for years. No one can say how much the wilderness has healed or how much it is slipping again.
When you stop listening to the water, you stop learning from it.
Sewage in the Mohawk
In the Mohawk Valley, heavy rains bring a familiar sight. Manholes bubble. Sewage runs into the river. DEC consent orders appear on paper, but enforcement is weak. The Comptroller’s audit confirmed dozens of wastewater plants operating with expired permits.
If you cannot track the sources of pollution, you cannot claim to protect the people.
Western Wetlands and Quiet Permits
Across western New York, wetlands shrink one project at a time. Developers move soil. Trees fall. Complaints are filed. DEC responds slowly or not at all. These are the same lands that feed Ischua Creek and the Genesee River. When wetlands die, floods follow.
A map of neglect is being drawn in mud and runoff.
Air That Stinks of Decay
Outside Rochester, neighborhoods near industrial composting sites breathe the sour air of broken promises. Odor complaints pile up. DEC offers “improvement plans” instead of fines. The smell lingers. The people endure. The state waits for the problem to drift away with the wind.
Wells of the Southern Tier
In small towns from Salamanca to Elmira, families still drink from wells near old industrial zones. When water smells like metal, DEC points to another agency. Residents are left without answers. The chain of responsibility stretches thin until it breaks.
Accountability cannot live in a maze.
Olean’s Overflow and the Wounded River
On April 3, 2024, heavy rain fell over Olean, New York. Two overflows from the city’s wastewater treatment plant poured nearly one hundred eighty-six thousand gallons of untreated sewage into the Allegheny River, known to the Seneca as Ohi:yo’, the Beautiful River.
The Seneca Nation sounded the alarm. The river flows past their lands, their homes, and the sacred bends where they fish and pray. This was not a single mistake. Since 2007, there have been more than forty documented overflows from Olean’s system, releasing millions of gallons of waste into the water. In 2024 the Seneca Nation filed a formal notice of claim, citing events that released more than four hundred fifty thousand gallons of raw sewage.
The river is not a line on a map. It is a living thread through Seneca territory, carrying stories and medicines. Each overflow is not just pollution. It is violation.
When the DEC allows these systems to fail, it does not just fail a city. It fails a Nation. It fails history itself. The Allegheny is part of the covenant between people and creation. Damage done there is damage done to memory and belonging.
DEC’s responsibility is not only scientific but moral. It holds the duty of trustee, charged to protect the land and water for all people. In matters touching Native lands, that duty should mean collaboration and respect. Instead, it has too often meant silence and delay.
Until the state stands beside the Seneca Nation as an equal guardian, the Ohi:yo’ will remain a wound that keeps reopening.
From Hudson to Ischua
The names change. The pattern remains.
DEC responds only after the harm is visible. Its decisions have become a collection of apologies to nature. Inspectors still care deeply, but the structure above them has grown timid.
You cannot guard what you fear to defend.
The Pattern Beneath the Waterline
The failures of the DEC are not random. They follow a rhythm, like erosion working beneath the surface.
Reactive Instead of Preventive
The agency moves after the harm. Every action begins only once the damage has already entered the bloodstream of the land.
Enforcement Without Teeth
Penalties have become the cost of doing business. Polluters pay and move on. The river never heals.
Silence as Policy
The DEC manages perception rather than confronting the truth. Reports come faster than remedies. The state’s environmental conscience has learned to whisper.
The Erosion of Field Knowledge
Inspectors retire. Their replacements inherit endless territories and outdated tools. Knowledge that once smelled the change in a creek’s breath now sits locked behind screens.
Cultural Amnesia
Olean’s overflows into Ohi:yo’ were not just bureaucratic failures. They were moral ones. To injure Native waters is to forget the first promise made between the state and the land: shared stewardship.
The Paper Wall
Budgets shrink while mandates grow. The department drowns in documentation. It files more than it feels.
A Lost Moral Center
The DEC was born to guard the wild. Now it too often acts like a referee between the polluter and the public. True guardianship requires confrontation, courage, and faith that truth is worth the fight.
The cost of forgetting is not only ecological. It is spiritual. When oversight becomes avoidance, the people lose faith that the state can protect what it claims to love.
What Must Come Next
To restore trust, the state must rebuild the DEC in both muscle and spirit.
- Fund real fieldwork.
- Modernize its data and labs.
- Create automatic fines for permit violations.
- Require independent audits and citizen panels.
- Protect whistleblowers and local monitors.
- Publish findings without delay.
- Establish co-governance with Indigenous Nations when sacred lands and waters are affected.
Silence must be treated as a failure of duty. The public should not have to pry truth from the state with legal filings.
The Creed of the Creek
Water tells the story of what we have done.
When DEC was founded, it was meant to be the conscience of New York’s land and water. Today it behaves like a clerk of disasters, filling out reports after the pulse has stopped.
We can do better. We must.
Not for policy. Not for image. For life itself.
The creek knows. When lost, return to water and begin again.
This Has Been Going On for a While
History runs like groundwater. The failures of today were seeded in the years before anyone noticed the smell. What happened in Ischua, in Olean, and along the Mohawk did not begin last summer. It began decades ago, in slow drips and budget cuts, in quiet compromises and forgotten inspections.
Here is what the record shows.
2005–2014: The Long Erosion Begins
2005 — DEC expands its regulatory duties but not its workforce. Early signs of structural strain appear. Audits already note outdated dam safety plans.
2006 — Upstate industrial permits renew under obsolete standards. Staffing peaks above three thousand employees but retirements soon outpace hiring.
2007 — The first recorded Olean sewage overflow releases untreated waste into the Allegheny. DEC and EPA launch the Hudson River PCB dredging project.
2008 — Recession cuts DEC funding deeply. Permit renewals stall and enforcement slows.
2009 — The Marcellus Shale debate consumes agency resources. Climate and air-quality staff shrink by twenty percent.
2010 — DEC field staff warn that floodplain maps and stormwater plans are dangerously outdated. Citizen science groups begin forming to fill data gaps.
2011 — Hurricane Irene and Tropical Storm Lee expose fragile infrastructure and overworked inspectors. Massive sewage overflows hit the Mohawk and Hudson.
2012 — DEC faces over two hundred thousand public comments on fracking regulations, grinding other programs to a halt.
2013 — Scientists warn that Hudson dredging leaves toxic sediments behind. Agricultural runoff increases in the Southern Tier.
2014 — Staffing falls below twenty-nine hundred. Regional offices consolidate. Environmental funding remains stagnant. The branch bends before it breaks.
2015–2025: The Modern Collapse
2015 — DEC’s financial struggles officially recognized. The watchdog’s bark softens.
2016 — Algonquin pipeline expansion approved near Indian Point despite safety objections.
2017 — Hudson River PCB cleanup declared “nearly complete.” Fish remain contaminated.
2018 — Mohawk River overflows and Rochester odor complaints ignored.
2019 — CLCPA passes, promising climate reform that will never arrive on schedule.
2020 — Federal wetlands protections rolled back. DEC pledges to fill the gap but fails to enforce consistently.
2021 — Odor violations documented again near Rochester. No fines issued.
2022 — Comptroller begins audits of wastewater and dam oversight.
2023 — Findings show DEC lacks data on high-risk dams and expired wastewater permits.
2024 — Olean overflows twice into Ohi:yo’, the Beautiful River of the Seneca Nation. A lawsuit follows. DEC finds long-term violations at Covanta Hempstead.
2025 — Ischua Creek suffers catastrophic fish kill. Earthjustice sues DEC for climate inaction. DiNapoli audit calls for urgent reform.
Twenty Years of Unheeded Warnings
Two decades. One pattern.
Each year brought fewer inspectors, older data, more apologies.
Each budget chipped away at vigilance.
Each report came too late for another creek.
This has been going on for a while.
The rivers remember. The soil remembers. The people who live along these waters remember.
The only question left is whether the state will remember in time to change.
Author Bio:
Tiger Hulin is a registered nurse, writer, and advocate based in Western New York. His work blends investigative journalism with reflective prose rooted in the Genesee watershed. He writes to protect truth, beauty, and the living world they share.
