The Westchester County Board of Legislators Committee of the Whole convened on Thursday, August 13, 2026, at 11:19 AM in the Committee Room to discuss the power failure and resulting partial treatment incident at the Yonkers Joint Wastewater Treatment Plant that occurred over the July 4th holiday weekend. The meeting featured a detailed presentation from Department of Environmental Facilities (DEF) Commissioner Vincent Kopicki and First Deputy Commissioner Louis Vetrone, followed by extensive questions and discussion from legislators. Key topics included the root cause (an 8% voltage reduction by Con Edison), the plant's emergency response, the nature of the discharged effluent (partially treated, not raw sewage), communications failures, and future prevention measures.
Incident Timeline and Cause: Commissioner Kopicki explained that on July 2, 2026, at approximately 9:00 PM, Con Edison implemented an 8% voltage reduction without notifying DEF. The reduction caused equipment to trip. When operators attempted to restart a large 1,750-horsepower roots blower, a breaker was damaged, leading to a total plant blackout. Because the plant never lost power completely, the emergency generators did not activate (they only trigger after 30 seconds of total power loss). The plant operated without secondary treatment (aeration) for about 14 hours. Partial primary treatment (screening, sedimentation, chlorination) continued throughout. The plant regained full power and fully restored secondary treatment on July 3 at 1:45 PM.
Effluent Characteristics: DEF stressed that the discharge was not raw sewage but partially treated effluent that had passed through screening, primary settling, and chlorination. Despite the incident, the plant met all its SPDES permit limits (85% removal of pollutants) for the duration. Approximately 39 million gallons of partially treated effluent were released into the Hudson River.
Communication Failures with Con Edison: Legislators repeatedly criticized Con Edison for failing to notify DEF of the voltage reduction, for not having staff available to assist when DEF called at 11:23 PM and 11:53 PM on July 2nd, and for not convening a critical infrastructure meeting during the prolonged brownout. DEF met with Con Edison after the incident and updated the utility's contact list for all seven wastewater plants and pump stations, but no formal protocol for future alerts (e.g., text or phone lists) has been finalized.
Plant Capabilities and Capital Projects: The Yonkers plant serves about 500,000 residents, processing roughly 24 billion gallons in 2025 and over 12 billion gallons so far in 2026. Currently, approximately $68 million in capital projects are underway at the plant, with another $400 million in projects starting within the next year, including a total electrical system upgrade (about $200 million) and an anaerobic digester gas engine project expected online by January 2027 to increase self-sufficiency.
Legislator Concerns and Suggestions: Multiple legislators expressed frustration that Con Edison was not held accountable and called for state delegation involvement with the Public Service Commission. Legislators also raised the need for better coordination of public notifications (e.g., the IAlert system from DEC, county press releases) to avoid mixed messages about water safety. Several legislators suggested installing voltage detection equipment at the plant to alert staff autonomously to voltage drops, rather than relying solely on Con Edison notifications. DEF indicated they are exploring this with their engineering consultants.
Good morning, everyone calling to order this meeting of uh the committee of the whole um time is 1119 on August 13th. Um taking attendance, Vice Chair Clements, yeah. Majority leader Holstein president. I heard that uh minority leader concealer, uh majority with uh Williams, uh minority with Nolan. Yeah, legislative bar. That's not so important after all those titles. Okay, um here legislator puja. Here we should no that was far. Um uh legislator Woodson Sands present. Uh let's say our memorial here, let's set a Mat and BR. Legislator Pierce. Present, legislator Smith here. Uh Legislator Chubiola, present legislator Uli. Legislator Alvarado, present, legislator Williams Johnson on the way. All right. Um, and I am present tonight, today rather. Uh we're here to discuss the Yonkers joint water uh wastewater treatment plan, power failure and resulting uh sewage spill that uh impacted our community that's raised so many questions. Um we are joined today by the Department of Environmental Uh Facilities Commissioner Vincent Kapicki. Vincent, do you want to join us at the table? Uh first Deputy Commissioner Lou Patron uh as well as Peter McCartney. You're gonna join us at the table. Uh Emily Saltzman's also here, and you're welcome to choose um so um would you like to start with the presentation and then we can uh get a few questions follow? Um sure. Uh morning everyone. It's in Kopicki, Commissioner for DEF. So I think probably the best way to start is just to give a little background about how the treatment plant works, how the author plant works. I know a lot of legislators have been to the plant. Um if you haven't, please let me know. We'd love to give you a tour of the facility. Um so the plant uh treats uh uh sewage from approximately 500,000 uh residents of Westchester County. And just to give you an idea of the how much we process, um for 2025 we processed uh a little under 24 billion gallons, and so far this year, uh a little over 12 billion gallons. So the way the treatment plant works is flow comes in, it comes in, and the first thing it hits is the uh the screenings, and that's where it takes out um all of the heavy the rags, heavy pieces. Uh there's bar screens that uh that the scrapers that pull it up and we we take that off site. Uh from there, um, and and just so you know, you know, during this event, the uh um those were always operational. So we have emergency generators just for the screenings, so those continue to operate throughout the power event. Uh after that, it goes to our primary settling tanks, which our deep tanks and all the solids uh basically go to the bottom. So there's uh flights that that move and take the uh skim off the top, and the solids will settle. So excuse me. Sorry. Um a lot of things happen this morning, so I'm sorry. I'm a little uh uh after the the settling tanks, uh it goes to the erasing tank where we feed air into the system. Uh the air feeds the bugs, which basically break down it's a biological you know, uh process that treats the waste, and from there it goes to the final settlement tanks, which settle again all solids, and it goes to finally the chlorine contact tanks where we do chlorination and declorination and then discharge the which is now not sewage, sewage comes in at the end. It's treated effluent wastewater. So that's a basically an overview of how the plant works. Our permit limit is 85% removals. We typically achieve 94 to 96% removals, which is great. We do in excess of what we are required to do. So now I'd like to talk a little bit about what happened, you know, on starting on July 2nd. So at approximately 9 o'clock PM on July 2nd, we experienced a voltage reduction from Con at about an 8% voltage reduction. DEF was unaware that this voltage reduction was taking place.