Crain's New York reports the state has added sewage spills to its alert system. "These alerts give the public the opportunity to protect themselves from exposure when there's a sewage spill," said Dan Shapley, water quality program manager for Riverkeeper, an activist group that work to protect the Hudson River. "But just as important, the alerts really raise awareness of the decaying state of our water treatment infrastructure and the need to make significant investments." Albany passed the "Sewage Pollution Right to Know" law in 2012 and was supposed to be implemented by May 2013. Now the state Department of Environmental Conservation is acting, requiring plant operators to report discharges of untreated and partially treated sewage from public sewers and treatment systems to the DEC within two hours of discovery and to notify the public and adjoining municipalities within four hours. Environmental Advocates of New York said sewer overflows discharg about 1.2 billion gallons of raw sewage into the Hudson River in the Albany area annually. On July 12, 7,700 gallons of raw sewage spilled into Coxsackie Creek in Greene County, from the Village of Coxsackie Wastewater Treatment Plant. Read the full story in Crain's New York.