New YorkReport
News from the MWA
Fair to Muddling
By Carter Craft and Ethan Yankowitz
Edited by John Bollinger
To the small squadron of area researchers
studying it lately, harbor mud is more than a silty goopy
mess. It’s more like an MRI or X-ray of the harbor,
providing a finely detailed portrait of harbor health. So what’s
the diagnosis?
The harbor sediment and waters are in better shape than before
the passage of the 1972 Clean Water Act, according to Dennis
J. Suszkowski of the Hudson River Foundation (HRF), “The
levels of contaminants in new sediment are lower because of
better sewer treatments plants, and the ratcheting down of
industrial effluents.” Suszkowski co-authored a recent HRF
report on harbor health. Among its findings:
» Fish contamination is
decreasing, although toxic areas remain. Tests of shellfish
found the most toxicity in Newark Bay, followed by Jamaica
Bay. The cleanest waters were in Western Long Island Sound and
the Bight Apex.
» Shellfish harvesting has
increased dramatically since the late ’80s.
» Clams harvested from
Staten Island have grown from about 5,000 to 80,000 bushels,
while New Jersey harvesting has risen from about 20,000 to
120,000 bushels.
» Waste treatment plants
are better designed and release less
contaminants into the harbor, but combined sewer overflows are
still a problem, one that’s expensive to solve, says
Suszkowski. “One solution is catching and holding
wastewater, and sending it back for treatment after the rain
stops,” he says. “But the problem is finding vast space to
store wastewater.”
In general, Suszkowski cautions against letting the improved
harbor health lull us into inertia. “The numbers are going
down nicely, but they’re not going down fast enough,” he
says. “We need to look at where we want to go in next few
years.”
The Port Authority of NY/NJ has invested about $20 million so
far on a forward-looking program called CARP (Contaminant
Assessment and Reduction Project) to solve mysteries of harbor
mud using a computer model. To outfit the harbor for
supercargo tankers will involve dredging, and since dredging
clean sediment is much cheaper than dredging contaminated
sediment, CARP aims to ferret out the locations of old
contaminants, as well as finger-point the culprits of new
contaminants, such as illegal dumping.
“It’s that kind of detective work that’s necessary to
get at these contaminant sources,” says Suszkowski. The
Hudson River Foundation is helping with the CARP project,
along with researchers from over a dozen universities and
government agencies.
Contaminants can be washed out of sediment, but since that
gets expensive, some have treated dredged material with
materials like Portland Cement , which binds or stabilizes the
contaminants so they aren’t harmful. The fill used for the
Jersey Gardens Mall parking lot in Elizabeth is comprised of
such a material, and a landfill in Bayonne was converted to a
golf course using similar technology, according to Suszkowski.
Another area researcher looking to find something useful in
contaminated sediment is Rutgers University researcher Gerben
J. Zylstra. Zylstra is “bioprospecting” Meadowlands
sediment, on the lookout for microbes that have evolved useful
properties by surviving in a toxic environment. “The
intriguing thing about the Meadowlands is that it is a
breeding ground for microorganisms to develop the ability to
degrade organic and inorganic chemicals,” says Zylstra.
In other words, studying how microbes have managed to break
down toxic chemicals may improve our own methods of doing so.
“Due to exposure to these chemicals, the bacteria in the
Meadowlands have developed the ability to perform biochemical
reactions similar to those performed by the chemical industry,”
says Zylstra. “Exploiting these microbial processes (using
the genes and enzymes) will take the place of the chemical
reactions that are currently used.”
For more info, contact: annquigley@mindspring.com
