Hudson: N.Y. funds to cut river contamination
Millions of gallons of raw sewage dumps into waterway annually
The city is planning a major modernization of its sewer system to cut down on leaks, sinkholes and the millions of gallons of raw sewage the system injects into the Hudson River each year.
Hudson’s sewer system — some parts of which date back nearly two centuries — handles both raw sewage and precipitation runoff in the same pipes. The pipes lead to a wastewater treatment plant in the city’s northwest corner, but during significant rainstorms, the system becomes overwhelmed, and the combined storm water and raw sewage is pumped directly into the Hudson River, untreated.
The project, which is made possible with $2.15 million in state grants matched with $350,000 in city money, will replace a major combined sewer line in the city with separate pipes for sewage and runoff.
Hudson’s Common Council voted to appropriate the $350,000 at last Tuesday’s regular meeting. The vote was unanimous after being urged through by Hudson Mayor Kamal Johnson and City Treasurer Heather Campbell.
Hudson Superintendent of Public Works Robert Perry said he was ecstatic that the project got the go-ahead.
The combined sewer line being replaced was constructed in the 1830s out of stone, according to a 2014 city engineering report laying out the improvements.
Failures of the trunk line, which runs through a residential area of the city, have become increasingly common, leading to serious public safety issues, according to the report.
“The typical failure mechanism of this pipeline is a total collapse of the sewer, which results in large sink holes in Front Street up to 20 feet deep,” the report said.
As well as leaks and sinkholes, the combined pipeline leads to more than 20 million gallons of combined sewage being released into the surrounding environment each year. This sewage is ejected into a city pond at three release points, and into the Hudson River at six release points, according to the engineering report, including into two bays just north and south of the city.
Hudson’s archaic system is far from unique. In the Hudson Valley, Catskill, Kingston, Newburgh, Poughkeepsie and West Point all release sewage into the Hudson, according to the state Department of Environmental Conservation, and the Capital Region and New York City have hundreds of release points between them.
Discharging sewage into the Hudson can have health consequences.
Riverkeeper, the Hudson River’s preeminent environmental group, continually collects samples from the river, testing them to ascertain the Hudson’s health. One of the major things they test for is the bacteria enterococcus, which is found in the human intestine and fecal matter.
The amount of enterococcus bacteria in a sample indicates the concentration of sewage in the water and correlates to the concentration of other pathogens found in fecal matter that can effect human health.
If a sample has more than 60 enterococcus bacteria per 100 milliliters of water, the water is considered unfit for swimming, according to the federal Environmental Protection Agency. A sample taken May 20, 2020, off the city of Hudson showed only 2 enterococcus per 100 milliliters of water. However, a sample taken Oct. 27 — after 1.9 inches of rain fell in the previous four days, causing the city’s sewage system to discharge into the river — showed more than 2,420 enterococcus per hundred milliliters of water, more than 40 times the threshold.
Dan Shapley, co-director of the Science and Patrol Program at Riverkeeper, said the EPA defined water as safe for swimming when less than three percent of people taking a dip become ill. Shapley said the illnesses generally amounted to stomach aches as opposed to significant sicknesses.
Ever since the federal Clean Water Act of 1974 began regulating pollutants released into water bodies, the state of New York has been pushing communities with combined sewer lines to upgrade their systems to avoid discharges, according to Shapley.
New York does this through state pollutant discharge elimination system permits, which are issued to waterway polluters, including companies and municipalities, and seek to regulate and limit pollution.
The idea is to further limit the amount of pollution allowed each time the permit is renewed, according to Shapley. Municipalities generally reach these goals by first upgrading their wastewater treatment plants, then by separating their combined sewer systems starting with the major pipes near the system’s end-point and working their way back up the system.
The 525 feet of pipe being replaced in Hudson collects wastewater from smaller pipes further up the system, some of which are already separated, and some of which will be separated in subsequent projects, according to the city engineering report.
The current project in Hudson is a significant step, since the pipes being replaced collect water from the rest of the system, but city’s sewer system involves miles and miles of pipes that would cost millions of dollars to replace.
It may take many more years for sewer systems in Hudson and other river towns to completely separate their sewage and run-off components.
When the Clean Water Act was signed by President Richard M. Nixon in 1972, it had ambitions of stopping all pollution discharges — including sewage — into fresh waters within 13 years.
Fifty years later, the goals have not been achieved.