Most of New York City's drinking water originates in reservoirs and is treated, but not filtered.The Greene County Legislature's Conservation Committee approved a proposal to help fund a lawsuit over the Environmental Protection Agency's granting of a 10-year filtration avoidance waiver to New York City, reports the Kingston Daily Freeman. The waiver, granted in August, allows the city to avoid building a multi-million dollar filtration plant.

In response to the new waiver, the Coalition of Watershed Towns, which represents dozens of communities in the Catskills, filed a lawsuit against the EPA arguing the federal agency did not have the authority to issue the new filtration avoidance determination. The coalition believes that the state Department of Health is now the agency in charge of negotiating a filtration waiver.

The new waiver is objectionable, some officials in the watershed towns say, because elements of the new waiver may impact the region's sustainability and future growth.