Riverkeeper and our partners sampled more than 410 locations in the Hudson River Watershed in July. The data reinforced what Sewage Pollution Right to Know Alerts made plain: When it rains, sewage overflows in high volumes from multiple communities.

In the week of July 22, there were at least two and as many as 12 communities with sewers overflowing into the Hudson River or its tributaries each day. In all, 21 communities reported 47 overflow events, totaling more than 20 million gallons of sewage. This is almost certainly an underestimate, as not all communities can accurately measure, nor do all estimate overflow volumes. The majority of these were from cities with combined sewers, including New York City, Troy, Newburgh, Kingston, Poughkeepsie, Newburgh and Glens Falls. Combined sewers carry both rain runoff and sewage in the same pipes, and are they are designed to overflow when water flowing from the street exceeds their capacity. Others, such as Middletown and Walden in the Wallkill River Watershed, have separate sewers that should not overflow, but they suffer from inflow and infiltration - a condition common with old infrastructure.

These overflows are nothing new - unfortunately. What is new is that we know about them, thanks to the Sewage Pollution Right to Know Law, advanced by Riverkeeper and signed by Governor Andrew Cuomo in 2012. Public awareness about the extent of these overflows helped to build the case for the 2015 Water Infrastructure Improvement Act and the landmark $2.5 billion Clean Water Infrastructure Act in 2017. Together, these represent New York State’s largest investment in water infrastructure in a generation.

But we know that even that landmark investment it is not enough. Communities with combined sewers that overflow are working on 15- and 20-year Long Term Control Plans to come into compliance with the Clean Water Act, and even compliance won’t fully eliminate overflows. Statewide, our need for drinking water and sewer infrastructure improvements is the greatest in the nation, at some $80 billion. If we are to dump less raw sewage into the water, we’ll need to make bigger investments that speed up our progress. That’s why we are asking Governor Cuomo to provide details about his exciting proposal $10 billion fund for water infrastructure and other environmental benefits.

Check out the latest data on fecal contamination in the Hudson River Watershed, the best indicator of water quality for recreation. Remember that the data show a snapshot in time, and don’t indicate water quality today.

Nearly 50 partners make the collection and processing of data possible. In 2018, partners include: