Testing New York City's Waters After Hurricane Sandy

During Hurricane Sandy, the seas rose a record 14-feet in lower Manhattan and flooded city streets, subways, tunnels, and sewage treatment plants. As plants lost power, they were forced to divert untreated wastewater into the Hudson River. Four days after Sandy, the environmental group Riverkeeper attempted to measure the storm's effect on water quality. Though by then, if the river had been widely contaminated, any evidence had washed out to sea. A week later, a more typical nor'easter hit the area. Andrew Juhl, a microbiologist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, joined Riverkeeper the next morning to test the waters again.

Transcript

00:00:05 during Hurricane sandy the seas rose a record 14 feet in lower Manhattan water flooded city streets subways tunnels and even sewage treatment plants it is unclear how much sewage may have been released as plants lost power or were forced to divert untreated wastewater into the Hudson River for days after sandy the environmental group Riverkeeper attempted to measure the

00:00:26 storms effect on water quality if the river had been widely contaminated by then any evidence had washed out to sea a week later sandy was followed by a more typical nor'easter Andrew Jewell a microbiologist at Columbia University's lamont-doherty Earth Observatory joined Riverkeeper the next morning to test the waters again he and River keeper Captain

00:00:46 John Lipscomb were curious to see what mark both storms had left more than a week ago this area got hit real hard by Hurricane sandy and that caused a lot of flooding and a lot of infrastructure damage now the recovery efforts are well underway but we're getting a lot of questions about what the water quality is like and you know we can't tell without actually going out in sampling

00:01:09 on a blustery November morning Jewell and Lipscomb pulled away from westerly marina in Ossining New York today their first stop is an outfall pipe off Piermont pier where the orange town new york sewage plant releases its treated wastewater the boat rocks as jewel hangs over the side to scoop up a sample in six years of testing this spot often turns up unacceptable levels of

00:01:30 Enterococcus bacteria an indicator for raw sewage after Piermont they will grab samples off Yonkers Harlem midtown Manhattan Hoboken the sampling will end in Newtown Creek the federal Superfund site that divides Brooklyn and Queens in several batches jewel will mix the samples in a medium that allows the Enterococcus to grow the bacteria will then be processed

00:01:54 and counted and the results made public on Riverkeepers website four days after sandy Lipscomb measured high Enterococcus levels and Brooklyn's Gowanus Canal today he and Jules he continued signs of trouble we noticed as we were coming in that the water there was sort of grayish and then we actually could see that there was very slow flow of this gray

00:02:14 water out of the discharge and there was a faint smell that I caught every once in a while that suggests that this was maybe a combine with some some sewage it wasn't just Street runoff it's dry weather right now that discharge should not be flowing from Gowanus they head to Newtown Creek if you think that free above the bulkheads lining Newtown

00:02:50 Creek smokestacks mountains of crushed cars in Mammoth oil tanks loom a reminder of New York City's industrial past as jewel shots down the creeks pH and other parameters he double checks his instrument dissolved oxygen levels are 30% in abnormally low level even for water as polluted as this but the instrument is working the low oxygen levels could be a product of colder

00:03:12 temperatures inhibiting algae growth or it could be something more sinister something to investigate next time says Joule the Sun is now setting turning the Manhattan skyline gold Lipscomb drops jewel at a dock in Greenpoint he waves goodbye while pointing his boat toward a bulkhead where he will tie up for the night a day later jewel reviews their results from his office at

00:03:31 lamont-doherty in Palisades New York probably about three-quarters of our samples were more unacceptable and you know we've seen this before this is what happens when it rains around New York City and in other parts of the Hudson Valley but rains that trigger csos sewage gets released and you see widespread contamination and that's something that happens here all the time

00:03:58 there was any impact of the hurricane that went away but because we've got another storm behind it we got another contamination event if you look in detail at the numbers there is a second there's a second story there if you you drill down a little further and you look very specifically for example at Gowanus Canal for example at the pyramid pier sewage treatment plant

00:04:20 outfall for example at the Yonkers sewage treatment plant outfall the numbers there are very high there you know Gowanus Canal once again we had more than 24,000 200 Enterococcus cells per 100 milliliters that's really really high and we don't know how high it was we just know that it's greater than that because that completely maxes out our ability to measure

00:04:47 and same thing at paramount sewage treatment plant those kinds of counts those kinds of really high counts are what we expect when we have some sort of an infrastructure problem this is where it's really nice to have a partnership with an organization like River keeper and so they'll be able to follow up they'll be able to follow up with the city and with the state agencies that

00:05:09 are responsible for managing the system and hopefully we'll see some action to fix the problems it's very possible that the infrastructure problems that we've discovered are not known to the people who are you know running the sewage treatment plants