New York's Toxic Wasteland: America's Water Crisis (Part 1/3)

EMERSON ROSENTHAL: New York City's full of ***-- real ***, 27 billion gallons of *** that get dumped into the Hudson River every year. And that's billions, with a b. Even though the city pipes in crystal-clear drinking water from a collection of reservoirs up north, the waters that New Yorkers see and smell every day are a toxic nightmare. Oil spills, PCBs, rotting corpses, human feces, and 15 feet of something called "black mayonnaise" are just a few of the pristine features Mayor Bloomberg isn't bragging about. We're dipping our toes in and testing the waters for ourselves to see how the toxicity of the Hudson River has become the norm for America's urban waterways. Welcome to "Toxic." All right, I'm getting out. I'm going to take this sample, make my way out of here. All right, so that was it. Hudson River swim. *** disgusting. TRACY BROWN: New York City wouldn't be New York City if it wasn't for the Hudson River. The fact that it is on the river and surrounded by water is what defines the city and gives it its character. One of the lingering problems we still have to address is sewage pollution. -In the early development of New York City, wetlands were considered wastelands. And they were basically filled in with garbage to create solid land. TRACY BROWN: Where you have older cities, like New York City, and Albany, and Yonkers, where they used to build the wastewater infrastructure where the sewage and the stormwater went through the same pipe. So when too much rain happened, it would overwhelm those pipes, and they didn't want all that rain and stormwater to go to their sewage treatment plant and overwhelm the sewage treatment plant or back up into people's houses, so they just bypass it directly into their local waterway. And that's what happens in New York City when it rains. That's what happens in other cities around the country. EMERSON ROSENTHAL: The River Project has been systematically testing the bacterial content of the Hudson River for years now. So we took our sample to their lab to evaluate it for bacterial content that signifies the presence of fecal matter in the river. -Hello. EMERSON ROSENTHAL: Hello. -This is Nina. EMERSON ROSENTHAL: Hi Nina, I'm Emerson. I'm here from Vice. I was swimming in it. -OK. EMERSON ROSENTHAL: I cut my foot on some rocks on the way. Do you think that's a bad thing? -Did you wash it out? EMERSON ROSENTHAL: Not yet. -You should probably go wash it out. -You should. EMERSON ROSENTHAL: OK, I'll take care of that as soon as possible. All right. -And then you leave it to incubate for 24 hours at 41 degrees Celsius. EMERSON ROSENTHAL: Commercial fishing on the Hudson was put to an end after the fish were deemed too toxic for consumption. So after I cut my foot, I started to worry that, I, too, like many of the poor, native fish species, might end up jawless, three-eyed, and sterile. The Atlantic tomcod has the unique honor of being the first fish species to adapt to PCBs, the toxic factory coolants GE poured generously into the Hudson in the '70s. Usually known to cause cancers and deformations in the fish, some tomcod have adapted to thrive in a PCB-rich environment and have since evolved to survive in such a toxic world. CHRIS CHAMBERS: My particular group studies the early life stages of marine fish. And we're particularly interested in how the environments and habitat affects the survival and fitness of those animals. This is a typical tomcod larva hatching. The head and eyes are dark in hatching. Jaw is typically straight. Here's some not so nice baby fish. What you see here is a greatly enlarged yolk sac. That's the edema I referred to. The jaw is malformed. The head has a bit of a point to it. The eyes are not as dark. And the body tends be more curved or not as straight. TRACY BROWN: There's such limited commercial fishing still allowed on the Hudson based on the health of the fish. Commercial fishing, as a way of life, on the Hudson was destroyed and taken away because of the pollution in the river and its effect on the fish stock. EMERSON ROSENTHAL: The 14 wastewater treatment plants around the city process 1.3 billion gallons of raw sewage a day. That's 15,000 gallons per second. Before they were built, and for most of the 20th century, all that sewage was just loaded onto a boat and dumped 12 miles east of the Jersey shore. Later, they decided to dump further out-- 106 miles instead. In 1991, somebody thought it was a good idea to load all the sludge onto a train and send it 2,000 miles to Sierra Blanca, a little town in west Texas. New York State sent Texas 250 tons of sludge a day for over 10 years. NEVIN COHEN: Combined sewer overflows were the last remaining uncontrolled form of water pollution in cities. There are a few things that a city can do. It can build holding tanks. It can actually enlarge the sewer pipes. But those are really expensive, and the alternative to gray infrastructure for CSOs is green infrastructure. And that means building parks, and gardens, and bioswales, and other permeable surfaces in the city to both absorb and slow down the flow of stormwater. EMERSON ROSENTHAL: All right. So yesterday, after my delicious dip in the Hudson River, we took a water sample and came here to the River Project, let our sample incubate for 24 hours, and now we're back to find out what was really in the water I was swimming in. -If our MPN is below 30, then that is a green light from the EPA. So you can basically do whatever you'd like in the water. You can go swimming. If it is over 100 for the MPN, you should be careful, whether you're recreating in the water But you definitely don't want to get the water in your face, in your eyes, or anything like that. 259 bacterial colonies. EMERSON ROSENTHAL: So not only was the water I was swimming in above the EPA limits-- which nobody had told me-- it was about 2.5 times above federal standards. -Yeah. -You definitely shouldn't be swimming in the water. EMERSON ROSENTHAL: Shouldn't have done that? -No. I hope you didn't swallow any. EMERSON ROSENTHAL: Me too. Tracy Brown and River Keepers' Sewage Right to Know Act mandates that the public are notified immediately when sewage is dumped into the Hudson. But it's almost too obvious that public officials should warn the people when they're paddle boarding in a bunch of ***. But while Governor Cuomo signed the act in August, it's going to take at least until May 2013, for provisions to take effect. TRACY BROWN: This is the new, more dangerous pollutant. As people get back in the water, sewage gets in the water, there's less money for testing, and there's very few requirements to tell the public that you aren't testing. I can tell you that New York City was not supportive of the Sewage Right to Know Law. They worked hard in the legislative process to water down the bill. And we hope that, now that it's passed, we'll implement it in the way that it's intended to be implemented. I would say based on my experience that it does not seem that the Bloomberg administration is interested in letting people know about the sewage problem around New York City-- absolutely not, no. EMERSON ROSENTHAL: The Environmental Protection Agency has forced New York City to solve many of its water quality issues since the days of hauling our sewage by train to Texas. But our test sample found that even a mile or so upstream of Manhattan, the Hudson River contained 2.5 times the legal limit of feces. And this isn't only New York City's problem. Since 772 of America's cities were built with combined sewage systems, about 40 million people living near urban waterways will be up *** creek for years to come. -Some days are just unforgettable-- the birth of a child, your first day at school, the day you fell in a giant sinkhole. EMERSON ROSENTHAL: So we're right outside of Gainesville. And this house right here has a huge *** hole in its backyard. Holy ***, it's cold.