Westchester Sewage Plant Upgrade Is Behind Schedule

Westchester County is behind its state-mandated schedule in upgrading the Mamaroneck sewage treatment plant. They need permission from Mamaroneck Village to work longer hours, to get the job done by year's end. Nice reporting by Sound and Town Report, here.

Is Hypoxia in Long Island Sound Improving? It's Hard to Say

Everyone concerned about Long Island Sound wants to know if things are getting better or worse. The answer, of course, is yes.

Except where hypoxia is concerned. Then the answer is: who knows?

Hypoxia is defined as dissolved oxygen concentrations below 3.0 milligrams per liter. The Connecticut DEEP sent out its end-of-the-season hypoxia review the other day and it put 2011 in the context of the last 21 years, since 1991.

Average number of days hypoxia has lasted since 1991 -- 55.
In 2011 -- 54 days
in 2010 -- 40 days
in 2009 -- 45 days

So 2011 was average after a couple of better-than-average years.

Average number of square miles affected by hypoxia since 1991 -- 178
In 2011 -- 130 square miles
in 2010 -- 101 square miles
in 2009 -- 169 square miles

So for three years in a row it’s been better-than-average.

But I’m skeptical of averages because they can be skewed by the extremes. So I looked at the median.

Median number of days hypoxia has lasted since 1991 -- 55 (coincidentally, the same as the average).
in 2011 -- 54
in 2010 -- 40
in 2009 -- 45

Median number of square miles hypoxia has affected since 1991 -- 169.
in 2011 -- 130
in 2010 -- 101
in 2009 -- 169

So two of the last three years were below the median in both categories; and one year was just about at the median.

So it’s possible that things are getting slightly better. But it’s hard to know definitively. The DEEP says the full end-of-season report will be going up on their website. I couldn’t find it but will link to it when it’s up.

Progress on the Sound

The huge effort to remove nitrogen from treated sewage before it enters Long Island Sound will be judged a success only if it results in a major improvement to water quality in the western half of the Sound.

That hasn’t quite happened. My reading of the data collected by the Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection is that there has been some improvement but it’s not dramatic. Yet.


But if you believe that the people overseeing the cleanup are right that removing nitrogen from treated sewage will eventually lead to better water quality, then you have to also believe that things are going well, because the progress in nitrogen removal, in my opinion, has been good.

I’m basing this judgment on numbers I saw in the most recent biennial report of the Long Island Sound Study, which was released last week.

Remember that the original goal, set, if I remember correctly, in 1998, was to remove 58.5 percent of all the nitrogen that enters the Sound from sewage plants, by 2014 (that deadline has been changed to 2017 because of engineering problems in New York City and Westchester that have to do, as I understand it, with the size of the plants [NYC] and the fact that there is little room to expand the plants [Westchester]).

The biennial report says that we are 70 percent of the way to the 58.5 percent goal, an improvement of 18 percentage points since 2009. Here’s a quote from the report:

Since the early 1990s, when baseline discharges were calculated at 59,147 pounds per day, a total of 25,444 equalized pounds per day have been reduced. The ultimate goal is to reduce point source nitrogen inputs to Long Island Sound by another 11,000 pounds. In 2010, the states reached 70% of the final reduction target compared to 52% in 2009.

And this:

Ten plants, 8 in CT and 2 in NY, completed final or phased upgrades in 2009 and 2010 at a cost of $339.83 million. … About 60% of the reduction was the result of an interim project completed at the Hunts Point plant in the Bronx.

And this...

In 2010, The Wards Island Plant plant in New York City reduced 3,006 equalized pounds per day from baseline years as part of a demonstration project that involved the use of methanol. The innovative method, available for large plants, is called the SHARON (Single Reactor System for High Ammonia Removal Over Nitrate) process.

The progress at Wards Island and Hunts Point is encouraging because those treatment plants and two others in the Bronx and Queens -- Tallmans Island and Bowery Bay -- are huge: they are responsible for about 700 million of the 1 billion gallons of treated sewage discharged into the Sound every day.

If New York City is succeeding in removing nitrogen, that is likely to be very good news for Long Island Sound.

LI Sound Water Quality: Not Bad for August

Water quality as measured by dissolved oxygen is quite good in Long Island Sound this month. Here's the Connecticut DEP's explanation:

Bottom water dissolved oxygen concentrations were below 4.8 mg/L at 27 stations with 3 of those stations falling below 3.5 mg/L and none falling below 3.0 mg/L compared to 2009 when 34 stations were below 4.8 mg/L, 24 of those stations were below 3.5 mg/L and 15 stations were below 3.0 mg/L. The lowest concentration was observed at Station D3 (3.12 mg/L). In 2009 the lowest concentration was at A4 (1.49 mg/L).

The area of bottom water affected by hypoxia (DO <3.5 mg/L) is 33.9 square miles (87.9 sq. km). The area of bottom water with DO values below 3.5 mg/L was 33.9 square miles (87.9 sq. km), well below the ten year average of 217.6 sq mi (563.7 sq km), and no stations were observed to have values below 3.0 mg/L. Cooler than average temperatures and an east wind the week prior to our survey helped dissolved oxygen levels rebound, preventing the severe hypoxia normally observed this time of year. The average area affected by hypoxia from 1999-2010 was 217.6 sq mi (563.7 sq km).

A New Report of Water Quality Trends in Long Island Sound Show Things Getting Worse

The Connecticut DEP just released an excellent summary of water quality conditions in Long Island Sound in 2009 and of trends since 1991. It clearly shows that in many ways water quality in the Sound is getting worse.

I can’t say I know why it’s getting worse. The management committee of the Long Island Sound Study is meeting today and perhaps it will be part of the discussion. But the worst hypoxia – the conditions under which no, or very few, fish can live – is getting worse.

The DEP summary uses 2 milligrams of dissolved oxygen per liter as the threshold of severe hypoxia. When DO drops that low, the deep-water habitat of that part of the Sound is all but unlivable for fish – only 18 percent of the fish that normally live there can be found there.

Using 2 mg/l as the criterion, 2009 was unusually good: only 17 square miles of the Sound had dissolved oxygen concentrations of 2 or below. But 2009 was to be an outlier. In 1998, 48 square miles had DO of 2 or below. Eight of the 11 years since then have been worse. Here’s what the DEP summary said:

“It seems that there is an increasing trend towards severe hypoxia in LIS (i.e., hypoxia area at 2.0 mg/L seems to be getting worse).”

Here’s the graph that shows the trend:



For anoxia – DO concentrations below 1 mg/l – the data seems almost as clear, although the report does not say so.

When DO drops below 1, no fish can live there. In nine of the first 11 years of the water quality survey, anoxia affected seven square miles or less. But in five of the last eight years, anoxia affected 28 square miles or more. (And to confuse things just a bit, in two of the last three years, there was no anoxia at all.) The report said:

“Prior to 2002, the average area of bottom waters affected by anoxia was 5.92 mi2. From 2002-2009 the average area affected was 28.4 mi2.”



So what’s going on? Hypoxia is caused by pollution, specifically nitrogen that mostly comes from sewage treatment plants, but hypoxia occurs only when the water is warm and is at its worst when the Sound stratifies into two layers, with warmer water on top above slightly cooler water. The stratification prevents oxygen that gets churned into the water at the surface from mixing with deeper waters.

There are a number of charts and maps included in the DEP report that show temperature and temperature differences in the Sound. But I have to pass the buck and say that unless I get help, I won’t be able to understand them.

Perhaps someone who worked on the report will explain the connection between water temperature and hypoxia as depicted in the DEP maps and charts.

The DEP report, by the way, was sent out via email as a PowerPoint document, so I can't provide a link.

Dead in the Gulf

Hypoxia in Long Island Sound hasn't strengthened into what might be called a dead zone yet but it has in the Gulf of Mexico, where it seems both smaller and more intense than expected this summer.

About 250 estuarine areas in the U.S. alone are considered hypoxic. In other words, our pollution routinely makes it impossible for marine life to live in parts of 250 estuaries every year.

True As Far As It Goes...

From today's Connecticut Post:

... seven years after the state launched its Nitrogen Credit Exchange program, there is no clear indication hypoxia in the Sound is declining. The hypoxic area spiked in 2003, and from 2004 to 2008 has fluctuated slightly below the 20-year average, dropping in some years and rising in others, according to a state report.

And yet there are still five years to go until the 2014 deadline for reaching the nitrogen reduction goal (plus three years beyond that for New York City to reach the extended deadline it was put on). So while it's true there's no clear indication that conditions are improving, it's a bit unfair to expect that there would be.

Add to that the reality that New York City, by far the biggest contributor of nitrogen to Long Island Sound, has yet to finish its sewage upgrades (and that nitrogen from the city actually increases for part of the duration of its construction work) and that Westchester County is still getting its work underway and it makes worries about failure a bit premature, in my opinion.

Still Good

From the Connecticut DEP, which was out on Long Island Sound collecting water quality data on July 7 through 9:

Thirty-six stations were sampled. Bottom water dissolved oxygen concentrations fell below 4.8 mg/L at four stations, although none fell below 3.5 mg/L. This is an improvement over last year when 10 stations were below 4.8 mg/L and three of those stations were below 3.5 mg/L. The lowest concentration was observed at Station A4 (3.83 mg/L). The area of bottom water with DO concentrations less than 4.8 mg/L is 50.7 square miles (131.2 km2).

So things are good compared to last year. The DEP followed this with a word of caution though:

The next survey (HYJUL09) is scheduled for 20- 23 July. Concentrations will likely decline below 3.5 mg/L with the far west stations becoming hypoxic.

Westchester Gets An Extension to Meets Its Sound Clean Up Goal

New York State environmental regulators have given Westchester County an additional three years, until 2017, to finish upgrading its Long Island Sound sewage treatment plants to meet state and federal nitrogen removal goals.

Westchester contributes only a small fraction of the nitrogen that causes the Sound's hypoxia problem, but it discharges that nitrogen directly into the part of the Sound that is most heavily effected. And conditions were bad last summer. (The maps that show the extent of hypoxia in 2008 are not up yet on the Connecticut DEP website but you can see maps from earlier years here. Click on any of the August maps and look for the black area, indicating the worst hypoxia conditions -- it's the area off Westchester, Nassau and part of Fairfield county.)

Connecticut, New York and the US EPA, with the support of local governments throughout the region, set the nitrogen reduction goal in 1998. The county was an enthusiastic supporter of the Sound cleanup, until it realized how much it was going to cost -- about $235 million. Here's what the Journal News reported:

To make the local improvements, the county would need to borrow the money over 30 years and charge higher rates for the 38,414 households and 6,804 businesses across the four districts.

The bulk of the new rates would go into effect in 2014, with incremental increases starting in 2010.

County officials note that it could have been worse: The state negotiated a smaller project and extended the deadline for completion three years to 2017.

Under earlier terms of the requirement, Westchester would have been required to spend an additional $100 million for the renovations.

New York State granted New York City a three-year extension three years ago. Connecticut seemed to falter on its way to meeting the 2014 goal when state legislators and the governor for years neglected the state's clean water fund (I'm not sure if they're back on track, but it's worth pointing out that Connecticut's clean water fund does provide state money to local governments for the Sound cleanup, something that New York State does not do).

If you need background, it's here, here and here. And there's plenty more here, at the Long Island Sound Study website.

The three-year extension for Westchester came after long negotiations between the county administration and the state. The county Board of Legislators still must approve it. There's a public hearing on Monday, December 8.

Choking the Sound: Conditions in '08 Were Worse Than Usual

Conditions in Long Island Sound, as defined by concentrations of dissolved oxygen, were bad this summer, and they were bad for a long time. Using 3.5 milligrams of dissolved oxygen per liter as the point at which hypoxia starts (which is Connecticut's standard), the Connecticut DEP found:

...the maximum area affected by hypoxia was observed ... between 20 and 22 August and encompassed 360 square miles .... The aereal extent was the highest since 2003. ...

The duration of this year's hypoxic event concluded on our about 20 September after approximately 83 days. The duration of this year's hypoxic event is greater than the 16-year (1991-2007) average of 68 days.

Three hundred and sixty square miles is about 30 percent of the Sound.

Using 3.0 mg/L as the standard (which is what the Long Island Sound Study does), the duration was 79 days (as compared to an average of 57 days and the maximum extent was 181 square miles (the report the DEP sent out late yesterday didn't provide information on the average number of square miles affected.

Of course no one ever knows why conditions are more or less bad -- maybe the weather, maybe the rainfall, maybe the fact that New York City, Great Neck and Westchester County haven't completed their sewage treatment plant upgrades yet. Of course the fish don't really care. All they know is that they can't live there. And if it gets really low, like the 0.14 mg/L it sank to in mid-August off Great Neck, any fish that haven't fled probably will die.

The DEP puts its hypoxia maps online here, although this year's aren't up yet.

Acting Locally: in Westport, It's 'Paper or Paper?' In Westchester, Lawn Fertilizer Restrictions May Be on the Way In.

Westport last week became the first community east of the Mississippi to ban merchants from offering plastic bags to customers (thanks to my friends at Citizens Campaign for the Environment for the heads up). (11:13 A.M. -- Note the correction in the comments section)

And Westchester County will hold a hearing today on a bill that would restrict on the use and sale of phosphorus fertilizers, to protect up-county reservoirs,, prevent all lawn fertilizer use from November through March, and start a county-sponsored public education campaign designed to reduce the use of nitrogen fertilizers, to protect Long Island Sound. If I learn why the law doesn't restrict the sale and use of fertilizers with nitrogen, I'll let you know.

Nitrogen, of course, is the key cause of the low dissolved oxygen problem that hits the western half of the Sound each summer. Essentially all of the Sound off Westchester County had dissolved oxygen concentrations near zero late last month, which means a big part of the Sound was essentially worthless as habitat, as usual. I say "as usual," although Save the Sound notes that this year was probably worse that usual (I'm linking to this story, here, -- where's the apostrophe in the headline? -- because Save the Sound's press release doesn't seem to be online. Wednesday update: it's online now, here).

Dead Zones in Estuaries Around the World are Doubling in Size and Doubling Again

From the Washington Post...

... the number of oxygen-starved "dead zones" in coastal waters around the world has roughly doubled every decade since the 1960s, killing fish, crustaceans and massive amounts of marine life at the base of the food chain, according to a study released today.

... Diaz and co-author Rutger Rosenberg of the University of Gothenburg in Sweden counted more than 400 dead zones globally, ranging from massive ones in the Baltic Sea and the Gulf of Mexico to small ones that episodically appear in river estuaries. ...

Hypoxia has been seen for decades in such places as the Chesapeake Bay, Lake Erie, the Gulf of Mexico and Long Island Sound, but Diaz's survey has found new zones in the Florida Keys, Puget Sound and tidal creeks in the Carolinas.

"We're saying that hypoxia is now everywhere, it seems," said Diaz. "We can say that human activities really screwed up oxygen conditions in our coastal areas."

Sound Health, Beach Closings, Hypoxia

The Sound Health report, written and published by the Long Island Sound Study, came out about a week ago. Some newspaper accounts interpreted it as showing that environmental onditions in the Sound are improving. I've looked at it and I'm not sure I agree. You can read it yourself (and you should), here.

Meanwhile, the Natural Resources Defense Council issued its annual report on beach closings on the Sound. There were fewer in 2007 than in 2006. However you should not be encouraged by this. Since most beach closing are automatically triggered after a heavy rain, all it means is that it rained less last year than the year before. Here's the report.

Dissolved oxygen concentrations are really low in the western end of the Sound, which is bad even if it isn't surprising. Here's what the Connecticut DEP said in its most recent report, which is a week old already:

The 2008 July Hypoxia Survey was conducted 21 and 22 July. Twenty-nine stations were sampled. Engine trouble on 7/25 precluded sampling eleven stations in the central basin/western narrows. Bottom water dissolved oxygen concentrations fell below 4.8 mg/L at 18 stations with ten of those stations falling below 3.5 mg/L and five stations falling below 3.0 mg/L. The lowest concentration was observed at Station A4 (0.68 mg/L). The area of bottom water affected by hypoxia (DO <3.5>

I wish I had time to translate that into plain English, but I don't. Readership of this blog has peaked lately but unfortunately I'm finding less and less time to do the work it takes to keep on top of things, mainly because of work responsibilities -- I'm the acting executive director at Westchester Land Trust, where I've worked for almost eight years, while still serving as communications director. Given how little time I've had over the past two weeks, I don't think things will get better over the next two, and the I'm off for two weeks on Block Island. When school starts, and I'm getting out of bed an ridiculously early hours again, maybe blogging will pick up.

Helping Westchester Meets Its Long Island Sound Cleanup Goal

If you’ve been following the Long Island Sound cleanup, on this blog and elsewhere, you know that Westchester County has a problem. Years ago, when solutions to hypoxia were first being agreed on and the goal of reducing nitrogen from sewage plants was set at 58.5 percent, New York State told Westchester that nitrogen reduction probably would cost between $30 million and $50 million (I’m working from memory here, mine and someone else’s). Then the county did the actual engineering studies and learned that the cost was a bit higher – more like $355 million to $573 million. Since those costs have to be borne by taxpayers, that’s a problem. (There's background from my blog here.)

The county has known this for some time – at least two years, I think – and has been trying to convince New York State to authorize a nitrogen credit trading program similar to Connecticut’s, which is working well. But New York isn’t interested in establishing such a program for Westchester. For a nitrogen credit trading program to work, one sewer district has to be able to remove nitrogen to the extent that it exceeds the 58.5 percent goal. Let’s say its 58.5 percent goal is to remove 500 pounds of nitrogen a day. But in reality it removes 700 pounds. It has exceeded its goal and gets credit for the additional 200 pounds. Another district that is having a difficult time meeting the goal can then buy those credits, or some part of them.

The official reason New York State isn’t interested in nitrogen trading is that there are no sewage districts in New York with nitrogen credits to sell, according to the state. I’m told that an unofficial reason is that the state thinks that eventually the 58.5 percent nitrogen reduction goal will be increased and it wants to keep whatever gains and particular district makes so it can receive credit for it then.

But I’ve been told directly by two very knowledgeable people, and indirectly by a third who is equally knowledgeable, that there actually are sewage districts that could sell credits to Westchester.

Great Neck, for example, could undertake a nitrogen removal program that could allow Westchester to buy credits for perhaps 200 pounds of nitrogen a day, maybe more. That might allow the county to avoid having to do nitrogen removal on one of its two smaller plants (Blind Brook, which is in Rye, or Port Chester). But the state won’t consider it.

The situation is this. There are two sewage treatment plants in Great Neck, both of which have to remove 58.5 percent of the nitrogen they discharge into the Sound by 2014, just like all the other sewage plants on the Sound (except for New York City, which is big and politically powerful and so was granted a three-year extension).

The operators of the plants in Great Neck can meet their nitrogen reduction goal by either upgrading or undertaking a project to send their sewage to a Nassau County plant on the Atlantic Shore of Long Island, where hypoxia caused by nitrogen is not a problem.

If the plants in Great Neck are upgraded, they will meet their 58.5 percent goal. But if Great Neck chooses the diversion option, it will have eliminated 100 percent of its nitrogen discharge into the Sound, not just 58.5 percent. If it did that, Great Neck should get a reward. The reward could be that Great Neck could then sell the credits for all or most of the nitrogen above 58.5 percent to Westchester County.

I’m told that that could equal about 200 pounds a day. On the one hand, that’s a drop in the bucket. Westchester is required to remove 2,784 pounds of nitrogen a day, and 200 pounds is just 7 percent.

But the cost of nitrogen removal is estimated to be $355 million to $573 million. Assuming the costs are relatively proportional, a 7 percent savings would equal $25 million to $40 million (minus the cost of the nitrogen credits it will have to buy).

Unfortunately for Westchester, the two Long Island plants – one in the town of Great Neck, the other in the village – are planning to merge. One will be shut down and the other expanded and upgraded to handle the wastewater from both. Diversion was studied but rejected. Apparently some engineers in the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation favor closing the plants and diverting the wastewater, but DEC lawyers don’t.

Diversion can be very difficult politically, because people who live near the wastewater plant that the sewage is being diverted to feel as if the extra sewage will someone be a personal burden on them.

Westchester County and New York State experienced a political uproar not logn ago over a plan to take sewage from a treatment plant in Yorktown that empties into the New York City drinking water supply and divert it to a treatment plant in Peekskill that empties into the Hudson River. That plan seemed to be a no-brainer. Treated sewage has to go somewhere. Is it better to put it in the drinking water of the country’s largest city or in the Hudson? After years of listening to people and politicians in Peekskill and elsewhere scream that the diversion plan equaled environmental racism, the county and the state backed off.

Now the county wants to try it again, in a place that is safe politically (nobody on Long Island votes in Westchester), but the state flatly says no.

For what it’s worth, I think they ought to try again, perhaps with some new people negotiating who have cooler heads and haven’t established a personal stake in being right. If there’s a solution that can benefit Great Neck and Westchester, and which will be good for Long Island Sound, it’s worth a shot.

A Special Award for TruGreen ChemLawn

As someone who has long detested the amount of time and energy (in the form of greenhouse-gas emitting leaf blowers and mowers) spent on lawns, I was pleased to see that a New England watchdog group called the Toxics Action Center gave out a bunch of "awards" yesterday in Hartford to polluters and included one of the big so-called lawn care companies:

The group also cited the TruGreen ChemLawn Corp. for "blazing a new toxic path for chemical use" and urged the company to adopt environmentally friendly lawn care practices.

Bravo. Among other reasons chemical lawn products are an abomination, nitrogen fertilizers are among the culprits in Long Island Sound's hypoxia crisis.

Hundreds of Millions of Dollars Have Been Spent But Conditions in Long Island Sound Have Not Improved

Is Long Island Sound getting cleaner? Is hypoxia becoming less severe? Those are questions worth knowing the answers to. The Long Island Sound cleanup has been going on for more than a decade. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent on sewage treatment plant upgrades, and hundreds of millions more are still to be spent, all with an eye to restoring the Sound in just seven more years.

So how are we doing? The Connecticut DEP put together a handful of interesting graphs illustrating water quality trends over the last 17 years and made them available recently. I think they show that if you judge by the worst conditions – that is, dissolved oxygen concentrations below 2 milligrams per liter – the Sound is getting better, or at least it’s not getting worse.

But if you judge by the goal of having as little as possible of the Sound fall below 3.5 milligrams per liter, conditions are getting worse.

Here’s the first graph (you can click on them to make them bigger):



It shows the number of square miles of the Sound in which dissolved oxygen fell below 3.5 milligrams per liter each summer since 1991. There have been some really bad years – 1994, 1995 and 2003, for example – but the trend is clearly up. Two of the five worst years were 2007 and 2006, and both were well over the median (286, in 1998).

What, on the other hand, happened in 1997, when only 51 square miles were affected? Possibly an August hurricane to mix things up?


This graph shows how long hypoxia lasted, when it started and when it ended. Conditions were clearly better in the mid 1990s through 2000 than they have been in recent years.

The first two graphs use 3.5 milligrams of oxygen per liter of water as a standard. Dave Simpson and his fellow researchers at the Connecticut DEP have figured out than when dissolved oxygen concentrations are between 3 and 3.9 milligrams per liter, the biomass of fish living in the deepest part of the Sound is reduced by 4 percent (compared to when conditions are optimal). What is biomass? I think it basically means the total weight of all the fish they catch during their standardized research trawls.

When dissolved oxygen is between 2 and 2.9 milligrams per liter, biomass is reduced by 41 percent. When it’s between 1 and 1.9, biomass is reduced by 82 percent – in other words, the amount of fish is only 18 percent of what it should be. And when DO falls below 1, the reduction is 100 percent. So the reason for wanting dissolved oxygen to be 3 or higher is obvious, as is the reason for not wanting it to drop too low.

Here are two graphs that show the number of square miles with DO below 1 and below 2. I’m not sure what to make of them, except to say that conditions were bad in 2003 but have gotten better since.

Water Quality in Long Island Sound is Better than Average this Summer

The low-oxygen conditions that hit the western half of Long Island Sound every summer are not as bad in 2007 as they have been in recent years. The Connecticut DEP’s water quality survey results came out yesterday and the area with dissolved oxygen concentrations below 3.5 milligrams per liter (that is, the point at which things start getting bad) is relatively small – just 67.9 square kilometers (26.2 square miles):

The areal extent is well below the long term average and the lowest since 2002.

Most of the DEP’s 2007 hypoxia maps are now online, here.

Coincidentally, I wrote yesterday about a question from Sally Harold of The Nature Conservancy, who asked me what I knew about an apparent paucity of jellyfish in the Sound this summer. I had no clue, but the Connecticut DEP noticed the same thing that Sally did. In her water quality report, Katie O’Brien-Clayton wrote:

We have also not encountered many ctenophores in the plankton tows this summer.

Ctenophores are comb jellies.

So I guess it's true. For whatever reason, there are fewer ctenophores around this summer. I'd still like to hear some ideas about why that is so.

Water Quality Report

How are conditions in Long Island Sound? So far, not as bad as last year, using dissolved oxygen as a measure. Here’s what the Connecticut DEP sent out today, based on its regular water quality cruise:

The 2007 July Water Quality Survey was conducted 9-11 July. Thirty-eight stations were sampled. Bottom water dissolved oxygen concentrations fell below 4.8 mg/L at 13 stations. The lowest concentration was observed at Station 15 (3.5 mg/L). Last year nine stations had concentrations less than 4.8 mg/L, one station was between 3 and 3.5 mg/L and three stations had concentrations less than 2.99 mg/L. Hypoxia seems to be setting up slightly later than the average date of 11 July. The next survey (HYJUL07) is scheduled for 19, 20, and 23 July. Additional stations will likely have concentrations declining to 3.5 mg/L and stations currently at or very near 3.5 mg/L (Stations 15 and A4) will become hypoxic, especially as the current weather pattern of warm days, calm winds, and occasional thunderstorms is predicted to continue.
It emphasizes 3.5 mg/L because that’s the goal – to improve the Sound to the point where DO does not fall below 3.5. Station 15, by the way, is in Smithtown Bay; A4 is off Sands Point.

The DEP used to send out jpegs of the water quality map (these, which they don't seem to be in too much of a rush to keep up-to-date; maybe somebody at DEP can get this summer's maps online) but now it inserts them right into the e-mail and I can’t figure out how to post them here, which is too bad because they're worth seeing.

A Look at the Sound Cleanup, 20 Years Later

It was 20 years ago this month that Long Island Sound went through its worst period of hypoxia, with fish dying and a huge part of the western half of the Sound turned into a dead zone. The Stamford Advocate uses the anniversary to assess progress in the Sound cleanup, here.

The reporter, Tim Stelloh, does a good job summarizing the progress, or lack of it. He points out, for example, that $617 million has been spent and yet conditions in the far western end of the Sound are barely better than they were 20 years ago.

He quotes me as saying that it's critical to get New York City to complete its sewage treatment plant upgrades, but I think he does not pay enough attention overall to New York City's role. The city, after all, is responsible for a huge proportion of the nitrogen that causes hypoxia, and until it makes substantial improvements, dissolved oxygen concentrations aren't going to get a whole lot better. That's my opinion but it's based on what knowledgeable people involved in the cleanup have been saying for years. (And no one should infer that I think the city is not making progress.)

He also finds a number of people to say -- quite reasonably -- that fixing sewage plants and removing nitrogen will not be enough to restore the Sound. That's obviously true and it's why the Long Island Sound program has from the beginning included a habitat restoration component and the Long Island Sound stewardship component. But the story makes it seem as if the people he is quoting have a fundamental disagreement with the way the cleanup is being managed. I don't think that's true. When Robin Kriesberg of Save the Sound says there needs to be a more holistic approach, she's not implying that nitrogen removal is a flawed strategy. And the story does not point out that many of the people quoted are involved in the Long Island Sound cleanup program, which was set up partially as a way for experts to debate and challenge the cleanup strategies.

The story also gives way, way too much space and credence to Art Glowka. Art is a nice guy and has a long and illustrious history of effective environmental advocacy. But to give substantial space in the story to a non-scientist who claims that the Sound's problem is that it doesn't have enough nitrogen is really taking contrarianism to an unhelpful level. Glowka, for example, apparently thinks that New York City's role in the Sound's problems is negligible. The story describes him pointing to a map and asserting that at this point here, near Throgs Neck, the city's sewage stops and doesn't enter the Sound. It neglects to mention that 20 years of computer modeling indicate that the city's sewage has a substantial affect on the Sound. Nowhere does the story say, or quote anyone as saying, "We're glad Art is involved but the scientific consensus is that nitrogen is a problem and New York City is a significant contributor to it."

To the average reader some of that is inside baseball, though. There's lots of useful stuff in the story. Given what happened 20 years ago and all that has happened since, I hope it's just the first of many anniversary accounts.

I don't generally make a point of soliciting comments, but I'd be interested in hearing what people think about the various points of view in the story.

The New London Day Advocates Like No Other Paper for Long Island Sound

Of all the newspapers in all the communities on the coast of Long Island Sound, the furthest away from the western end, where seriously low levels of dissolved oxygen have caused an ecological crisis for well over two decades, is the New London Day. New Lodnon is almost 100 miles from the heart of the dead zone. And yet The Day is covering the Sound’s most important issue, and advocating for a comprehensive cleanup – to include the federal government, the state governments, local governments, and residents of New York and Connecticut – like no other paper.

The Day asked Greg Stone, who retired as deputy editorial page editor a couple of months ago, to organized a public forum about the Sound’s hypoxia problem (it was on June 19 and was The Day’s third forum on Sound issues this year; I participated in one in early April, on Broadwater, but I would have happily given up that one for the June 19 forum, alas). Greg wrote a good account of it yesterday, here.

Then read the case that Leah Schmalz, of Connecticut Fund for the Environment, makes in favor of the Connecticut General Assembly and Governor Rell putting enough money in the Clean Water Fund, which thus far this year they have neglected to do yet again, here.

And finally an editorial. Some excerpts follow, but you should read the whole thing, here:

Connecticut needs to build and maintain a healthy Clean Water Fund, which helps finance improvements to the sewer works in the Sound's watershed. The state Department of Environmental Protection has calculated it would require about $160 million a year merely to keep up with approved projects, not to mention the totality of the $5 billion in needed improvements.

Congress needs to step up to the plate again. The federal government, which invested heavily in the original public sewage systems, has left the expense of maintaining and improving those facilities to state and local governments, as it has with other important public investments. The health of Long Island Sound is a responsibility the federal government shares. Washington needs to become a significant investor again. The state legislatures in New York and Connecticut must urge that it do so….

With investment funds in the pipeline, government should turn its attention to land-use planning that will protect the Sound from damage from pollution. Connecticut needs to revisit its coastal management law and develop a more comprehensive plan to protect the Long Island Sound watershed….

The mere fact that the federal and state governments refer to a “dead zone” the size of southeastern Connecticut in Long Island Sound ought to drive public policy and public opinion in such directions.

The reality that there is such an expanse of water that has lost its capacity to support life and that the cause is likely manmade is another way of saying man is killing the Sound through carelessness and bad choices. But there is an alternative. It is not too late. People can take steps to restore this natural treasure to health and keep it healthy through enthusiastic stewardship.

They should.

The should, indeed. And other newspapers should take a lesson from the New London Day.