Riverkeeper Data Informing Study of Tidal Rondout Creek
August 27, 2014
Riverkeeper Team
A citizen scientist delivers a water sample from the Rondout Creek to Capt. John Lipscomb aboard the Riverkeeper patrol boat in 2013.
Three communities are coming together to study the watershed of the tidal Rondout Creek, and develop a management plan that is expected to put a high priority on improving water quality in the largest tributary to the tidal Hudson.
Riverkeeper has been sampling three points on the tidal Rondout Creek monthly since 2008, and citizen scientists working with Riverkeeper have been sampling 17 sites on 43 miles upstream since 2012.
Riverkeeper's water quality monitoring data are being used to inform the management plan under development by the City of Kingston and the towns of Esopus and Ulster. The effort is funded by the New York State Department of State, which could also fund its implementation.
This watershed management plan will be the third for the Rondout Creek. New York City and local partners are implementing a watershed protection project in the portion of the upper Rondout that feeds the Rondout Reservoir in Sullivan County. A group of citizens organized by the Hudson River Sloop Clearwater developed a second watershed plan for the portion of the Rondout that flows through Ulster County from the reservoir to the dam at Eddyville—the same section that citizen scientists working with Riverkeeper now sample.
This latest study focuses just on the 11.25-square-mile portion of the watershed that feeds the tidal Rondout, from the Eddyville dam to its mouth at the Hudson River.
A view of the tidal Rondout Creek in Fall 2013, as seen from the Riverkeeper patrol boat. The management plan under development has the goals of improving water quality and creating a "vibrant" waterfront.
The citizens and consultants developing the plan are considering strategies that are familiar to other watershed plans, such as encouraging land use and zoning changes, restoring vegetation along streams, and installing green infrastructure to manage stormwater.
Given that the watershed of the tidal Rondout includes the City of Kingston and the hamlet of Port Ewen, a relatively large portion of this watershed could actually be considered a sewershed. To improve water quality, therefore, the management plan must also contend with combined sewer overflows from Kingston, operation of the sewage treatment plant shared by Kingston and Port Ewen, and issues like infiltration and inflow in sewer pipes that lead to untreated discharges. The diversion of water from the a tributary to the Esopus Creek to the Rondout during high flows is another challenge.
The watershed plan may also call for using the Clean Water Act, for instance, by seeking an upgrade of the state's classification of the tidal Rondout from Class C to Class B. This would set a new legal standard governing decisions about such things as pollution discharge permits and stormwater management, with the goal of making the Rondout suitable not only for fishing but also for swimming. Seemingly at odds—but not so, legally—the plan could call for listing the tidal Rondout as impaired on the state's 303(d) listing—a listing that Riverkeeper's data supports.
In fact, Riverkeeper's sampling on the Rondout Creek suggests that the entire stretch from the Rondout Reservoir to its mouth at the Hudson is impaired by pathogens. Every location fails the Environmental Protection Agency's recommended criteria for defining safe recreational water quality.
Outside of the Capital District and New York City waters like the Newtown Creek and Gowanus Canal that receive exceptional combined sewage overflow discharges, the Rondout Creek stands out in Riverkeeper's study for its high rate of failure against the EPA's recommended safe-swimming guidelines.
On the tidal Rondout, in testing from 2008-2013, 23% of samples at the Eddyville dam have failed—suggesting that water flowing into the tidal Rondout is often contaminated, as citizen sampling since 2012 has confirmed. At the Kingston Public Dock at the site of a combined sewer overflow outfall pipe, 44% of our samples failed, and at the sewage treatment plant outfall, 53% of samples have failed.
Riverkeeper's data shows how challenging it will be to improve the Rondout Creek's water quality, and we are encouraged that this new watershed protection effort is setting that as a goal. In the Capital District, where water quality is also severely compromised, regulators and communities have set the goal of achieving swimmable water through a series of investments to curb combined sewage overflows under the region's Long Term Control Plan.
There's no reason we shouldn't set the same goal for the tidal Rondout--especially since people are already swimming.
Students with the Kingston High School rowing program jump in the Rondout Creek in 2013.
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