In 1996, Parks Commissioner Henry Stern recruited a 23-yearold Harvard graduate named Cas Holloway to come work for him, as part of an initiative by Stern to recruit the best and brightest recent college graduates from across the country.
But Stern came under fire from critics who contended that more than qualified candidates for the jobs were in New York City.
Thirteen years later, Mayor Michael Bloomberg weathered the exact opposite criticism in November, when he appointed Holloway as the new commissioner of the Department of Environmental Protection. This time, critics wondered how after conducting a 13-month, nationwide search, Bloomberg could select a 36-yearold who sat a few desks away from him in the bullpen.
Holloway is taking leadership of one of the city’s largest and most difficult to manage agencies, a department with a massive capital budget, a diverse set of missions and a staff of 6,000 spread from watersheds upstate to the department’s headquarters in Flushing. Over its history, the department has also had its fair share of mismanagement, corruption and nepotistic hiring practices.
Holloway’s background in the Bloomberg administration was as a special advisor to mayor, and as chief of staff to fellow former Stern alum Ed Skyler. In his time at DEP so far, Holloway has reportedly implanted several Bloomberg-esque features to the office, including a bullpen-style set-up.
Holloway was not available to comment about his plans for DEP, but others say that in his first weeks as commissioner, he spent much of his time meeting with a wide array of stakeholders, including with State Sen. John Bonacic, concerning issues with the city’s upstate water supply, and Eric Goldstein, a lawyer at the Natural Resources Defense Council, who is frequently involved in litigation with DEP.
Goldstein, for one, said he came away impressed from the meeting.
“For this job, you need strong management skills, a close working relationship with the mayor and a real sense of environmental stewardship,” said Goldstein. “Cas Holloway certainly seems to qualify in those areas.”
Holloway’s biggest challenge will likely be controlling the cost of DEC’s spiraling deficit, which has caused the New York City Water Board to implement large rate hikes on city residents in recent years.
Currently, approximately $1 billion of the agency’s $2 billion budget goes to pay for debt service. At the same time, with the economy down, water consumption has dropped in the city by 12 percent over the past two years, necessitating that the Water Board charge consumers higher rates for its product in order to pay for the debt.
Environmental advocates are also so far taking a positive view of Holloway. Dan Hendrick, spokesman for the New York League of Conservation Voters, said he was heartened recently when Holloway indicated the city would not stand in the way of an EPA Superfund designation for Newtown Creek.
Holloway recently hired Carter Strickland, a former senior advisor for the mayor’s PlanNYC initiative, in the newly created position of deputy commissioner for sustainability.
Meanwhile, federal mandates continually demand cleaner drinking water, forcing the city to build more and more treatment plants in order to comply. The Clean Water Act, for instance, has forced the city to build a number of $500 million water storage tanks to prevent the overflow of raw sewage from treatment plants during rainstorms.
Holloway appears to be looking for ways to cut these capital costs. He was already working on a new technique to allow the city to remove nitrogen from the water supply cheaply, according to Council Member Jim Gennaro, head of the Environmental Protection Committee.
“This is a cutting edge, innovative technique, and even before Cas became commissioner, he was already doing this,” Gennaro said.
