How will your NYC waterway be affected by NYS’s proposed water quality criteria?

Use this chart to find waterways that are Class I or Class SD, which include most waterways around New York City, including the Hudson River, East River, Harlem River and others. Learn more about the NYS proposal to update water quality standards for these and other saline waterways, and how Riverkeeper is seeking to strengthen them, in this blog post. This chart can help you make specific comments about the waterways that matter most to you. Use our action alert template and personalize it with this information to help make a comment by June 20.

The state is proposing water quality criteria related to recreational uses of the water. Recreational water quality is assessed by measuring the concentration of the fecal indicator bacteria Enterococci (Entero) in the waterway. The presence of Entero in the water indicates the likelihood that pathogens associated with untreated sewage are also present. Two different measures are identified here in the rightmost columns, a Geometric Mean (GM), which can be thought of as way to measure average levels of contamination, and a Statistical Threshold Value (STV), which can be thought of as a way to measure the frequency of occasional high-contamination events. Learn more about these ways of measuring water quality in our How’s the Water report (see page 13).

For a list of all waters affected by the state’s rulemaking, see this list of all of NYS’s saline waters, including:

• Class SC waterways, which would newly benefit from Entero criteria meant to be protective of swimming;
• Class SA waterways, which would be updated to better protect shellfishing; and,
• Class SB waterways, which would will not be affected by this rulemaking, and which already have criteria that are meant to protect swimming;