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Sure The Hudson Is Poopy, But It Is Way Worse Upstate
By
Garth Johnston
Published Aug 10, 2011
Modified Aug 10, 2011
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By
Garth Johnston
Published Aug 10, 2011
Modified Aug 10, 2011
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The North River Wastewater Treatment Plant in Harlem is back in action and the DEP says our waterways are safe for swimming again. But are they really? A new Riverkeeper report regarding the Hudson Estuary says yes—most of the time. Also? Be grateful you don't live in Albany.
“Our findings show that while water quality in the Hudson has greatly improved in recent years we still have a significant problem with sewage contamination,” said John Lipscomb, Riverkeeper Boat Captain, said in a statement. “The recent 200+ million gallon sewage spill in New York City is only a minor part of widespread contamination that regularly occurs in the Hudson.”
To write the report (which is actually pretty interesting and which you can read below) the group tested more than 2,000 water samples taken from 75 sites between Albany and NYC from 2006 to 2010 and made some interesting findings. For instance, while the average water quality in the Estuary is, by the EPA's standards, safe for swimming Riverkeeper found that the samples it took were unacceptable for swimming 21 percent of the time (or 1.5 days a week on average). And it only gets worse after the rain, when many plants push excess sewage into the river untreated. After rainfall the percent of samples that were unacceptable jumped threefold.
On the plus side, the Hudson is way better than it was just a few decades ago and also? It is worse up river, despite the millions more people who live down here (seriously! The cleanest samples they took in for the whole report were from Dyckman Street in Manhattan). That's because up there few sewage plants disinfect their runoff, the river water is often narrower and shallower, and the it doesn't have the Atlantic ocean to help dilute the poo.
All of which is to say that after a rainstorm like yesterday's...you might not want to go kayaking?
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Garth Johnston
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