This is a question that we hear frequently. Some people say that under no circumstance would they swim in the river, believing it to be too polluted. Others swim in the river all the time because they believe the water to be clean enough.

Beach north of Little Stony Point

Currently, there aren’t great answers to this question. New York City has an inadequate testing program, and very few municipalities/counties along the river have even minimal testing. Many have no testing at all.

Since September of 2006 we have been engaged in a pilot study with the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University. We have been testing for sewage-related microbes at 30 locations between Stony Point and New York harbor. We have found that many locations once thought to be clean are actually sometimes very polluted with microbe levels many times over the violation limit. Other locations, including water bodies like the Harlem River, which we thought would be extremely polluted, were sometimes found to be well within federal standards for swimming.

We will continue the pilot study until September of this year, and are currently seeking funding to continue this project into the future and extend the study area to the full estuary--Troy to New York City. We feel that this data will help give the public a clearer answer to this very important question of water quality.

In the meantime, as a general rule, it is safer to wait three days after moderate to heavy regional rain events before swimming in the river. In many locations, this is an unnecessary precaution, but in others this waiting period is essential.

Feel free to contact Riverkeeper for more details of this study, but also be sure to call your local county health department and ask them the same questions because they need to know that you’re interested.