NEW YORK, NY March 14, 2007 —City Council Speaker Christine Quinn says the Bloomberg administration needs to loosen the purse strings if it wants to maintain its upstate watershed lands. WNYC's Bob Hennelly has more.

At a budget hearing yesterday, the Department of Environmental Protection announced it had $65 million set aside to continue buying land around the reservoir over the next decade, but council members said with the direction of the current real estate market, that amount should be closer to $300 million.

For years, the city had been purchasing acres of upstate land to avoid pollution as well as a federally mandated multi-billion dollar water filtration. Council members sited plans like the proposed upstate casino and other developments that will put an upward pressure on land prices. Meanwhile, the DEP also told the council it's currently trying to identify potentially thousands of customers using city water services without ever being billed.

They both estimate that sewer and water bills owed the city top $200 hundred million. For WNYC, I'm Bob Hennelly.