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[TOXIC AMERICA'S WATER CRISIS]
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 everyday
are a toxic nightmare.
Oil spills, PCB's
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
[EMERSON ROSENTHAL VICE] and testing the waters for ourselves
to see how the toxicity of the Hudson River
has become the norm for America's urban water ways.
Welcome to Toxic.
[AMERICA'S WATER CRISIS] [PART 1 OF 3]
You're not supposed to be in the water.
You got all that *** in the water.
You're really not supposed to be in the water.
If they catch you, they'll lock you up.
Alright.
I'm getting out.
Gonna take this sample
and make my way outta here.
I can't believe you went in the water though.
Alright.
That was it.
That's the river swim.
*** disgusting.
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 the water is what defines the city.
It 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.
Where you have older cities like New York City
and Albany and Yonkers
[TRACY BROWN RIVERKEEPER, RIVER QUALITY ADVOCATE] 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 their storage 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.
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. -Hello.
Hi Nina.
I'm Emerson. I'm here from Vice.
-I was swimming in it. -Okay.
I cut my foot on some rocks on the way.
Do you think that's a bad thing?
-Did you wash it out? -Not yet.
You should probably wash it out.
Okay. I'll take care of that as soon as possible.
Alright.
And then you let it incubate for 24 hours at 41 degrees Celsius.
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 70's.
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.
My particular group studies the early life stages of marine fish
and we're particularly interested in how the environments and habitat
[CHRIS CHAMBERS NATIONAL OCEANIC AND ATMOSPHERIC ADMINISTRATION] effects the survival and fitness of those animals.
This is a typical tomcod larvae hatching.
The head and eyes are dark at hatching
jaw is typically straight.
Here's not so nice baby fish.
What you see here is a greatly enlarged yolk sac that she referred to.
That jaw is malformed
the head has a bit of a point to it.
The eyes are not as dark
and the body tends to be more curved
or not as straight.
There's such limited commercial fishing still allowed on the Hudson
based on the health of the fish.
Commercial fishing has 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.
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.
Combined Sewer Overflows were the last remaining
[NEVIN COHEN ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES , NEW SCHOOL] uncontrolled form of water pollution in cities.
There are 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 Grey 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.
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 EPAs
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 recreational 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.
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.
You definitely shouldn't be swimming in the water.
-Shouldn't have done that? -No.
I hope you didn't swallow any.
Me too.
Tracy Brown and riverkeeper's 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 paddleboarding in a bunch of ***.
But while Governor Cuomo signed the Act in August
it's gonna take at least until May 2013
for provisions to take effect.
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 weren'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.
The Environmental Protection Agency is forcing 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.
[SAN FRANCISCO] Since 772 of America's cities
[SEATTLE] were built with combined
[BOSTON] sewage systems
[PHILADELPHIA] about 40 million people
[PITTSBURGH] living near urban waterways
will be up *** creek for years to come.
[VICE CONTINUED IN PART 2]