Episode Details

This summer, people are boarding whale watching boats and seeing humpbacks feeding in sight of the Manhattan skyline. Fifty years ago, that same water was an open sewer, and every toilet on Manhattan's West Side flushed straight into the Hudson River, untreated. Andrew tells the story of how the whales got here, and why it took most of a century.

He starts with the cause: sewers built to empty into the rivers, roughly 590 million gallons of raw sewage a day by the early 1900s, and floating screens at Coney Island to keep it away from swimmers. Then the turn. The city began testing the harbor in 1909 because people demanded it. In 1966, Hudson River fishermen met in an American Legion hall in Crotonville and used an 1899 bounty law against polluters, founding what became Riverkeeper. The Clean Water Act followed in 1972. The North River treatment plant, first proposed in 1938, finally opened in 1986 and ended daily raw sewage discharges into the Hudson, with the West Harlem community carrying the cost of its siting and sparking the environmental justice group WE ACT.

The results are hard to argue with: bacteria below dry-weather swimming standards since 1992, record oxygen levels, and 500 individual humpbacks identified in New York waters by Gotham Whale, helped by menhaden catch limits that let their food rebound. The work isn't finished, since heavy rain still pushes sewage through roughly 700 overflow outfalls. Andrew closes with one action: find your local Waterkeeper and follow your own water.

Takeaways:

• New York's sewers were designed to empty straight into the Hudson, the East River, and the harbor.
• By the early 1900s, roughly 590 million gallons of raw sewage a day flowed into the harbor.
• The city's Harbor Survey began in 1909 because of public outcry, and it still runs today.
• In 1966, Hudson River fishermen used an 1899 bounty law against polluters and founded what became Riverkeeper, now a model for more than 300 Waterkeeper groups.
• The 1972 Clean Water Act required real treatment and funded it.
• The North River plant took nearly 50 years from proposal (1938) to opening (1986).
• The plant's siting in West Harlem led to the founding of WE ACT for Environmental Justice.
• Bacteria have stayed below dry-weather swimming standards since 1992.
• Humpback sightings in the harbor estuary jumped from 1 (2011 to 2013) to 45 (2014 to 2016); 500 individuals have now been identified.
• Cleaner water and 2012 menhaden catch limits worked together to bring the whales back.
• Combined sewer overflows during heavy rain are the unfinished business.