Within hours of a four-alarm fire on July 20 that caused the North River Wastewater Treatment Plant between 137th and 145th Streets on the Hudson River to shut down, untreated sewage began to flow directly into New York waters at combined sewer overflow (CSO) outfalls on the Hudson and Harlem Rivers at the rate of five million gallons an hour.

As Larry Levine from the National Resources Defense Council wrote, "Just last weekend, NRDC joined tens of thousands of New Yorkers in celebrating City of Water Day, an annual event that highlights the multitude of recreational, educational, and economic opportunities afforded by the rivers, bays, and open ocean waters that surround our island city. Less than a week later, the big local story is "water water everywhere, but not a drop to play in" -- even as the city swelters through the worst heat wave of the summer and New Yorkers would love to cool off at their nearest beach or riverfront. As has been widely reported by now, a massive, ongoing sewage spill in Manhattan is fouling our local waterways and beaches."

At least through the weekend, all boating and swimming has been canceled for the Hudson River, the Harlem River, the East River from the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge to the Verrazano Bridge, and the Kill Van Kull to the Goethals Bridge. Consuming fish caught in these waters is not recommended until the pollution advisory has been lifted.

"You've got a big problem up at the water treatment plant," WOR radio host John Gambling told Mayor Bloomberg this morning, Friday, July 22, during the Mayor's weekly appearance. Mayor Bloomberg said he'd spoken with DEP commissioner Cas Holloway and "our hope is the flow should stop sometime today." The Mayor said one of the plant's engines should be pumping within a few hours, and another engine will "get back on later today."

"That's all they need," the Mayor said. "Two out of five engines."

Environmental and boating groups are concerned at what they say was delayed and inadequate information from DEP. Unaware of raw sewage pouring into the water, boaters and swimmers set out late Wednesday, and even on Thursday, in affected waters. NY Kayak Polo played a match in the Hudson River near 26th Street as a nearby CSO outlet expelled untreated wastewater. In a post on the NYC Water Trail Association site, Phillip Musegaas, Hudson River Program Director at Riverkeeper, described guys swimming near the main CSO outfall, on Thursday afternoon.

Mr. Musegaas said the City's notification efforts "do not fully inform the public as to the risks posed by such a massive discharge of sewage into the Hudson." Nancy Brous and Rob Buchanan of the NYC Water Trail Association are scrambling to advise their member groups, which are located from Yonkers to the Rockaways to the northermost part of the Bronx, of "the most accurate, up-to-date, and consistent information possible to best serve the public health without unduly curtailing activities where the risk is negligible." National Resources Defense Council (NRDC) and Storm Water Infrastructure Matters (SWIM) are calling for better public notification in water emergencies.

Here's another excerpt from Larry Levine's blog: "Over 50 times a year, when we get as little as one-tenth of an inch of rain, our outdated sewer systems get overwhelmed and spew poop from some or all of 400+ locations along the shoreline, in all five boroughs. To add insult to injury, unlike the current spill in the Hudson, there's not any public warning when those rain-induced spills happen -- even though the city is required by federal, state, and local law to notify the public of the location and occurrence of sewage overflows, and of the nature and duration of the resulting health risks."

"Our waters are healthier than they have been in a long time. We can't go backwards. The success of our great new plans for our waterfront depend on a clean harbor," said Roland Lewis of the Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance. "We need to build failsafe redundancies to ensure that a calamity like this never happens again."

 

NYC, Westchester County and New Jersey agencies, along with Riverkeeper, are taking water samples in the harbor and at local beaches. Click here for Riverkeeper's page on water quality testing locations. The DEP has diverted some of the sewage flow to the Ward Island's treatment plant, and is treating some CSO outfalls with chlorine.