Data sources and partners: Swimming and boating
Riverkeeper Water Quality Portal bibliography
August 29, 2025
Riverkeeper Team
Riverkeeper’s water quality monitoring program, with data that we present on the Riverkeeper Water Quality Portal, is a collaborative effort involving volunteer community scientists, watershed associations, environmental organizations, and academic partners. The program began in 2006 primarily as a research project undertaken in the Hudson River estuary by Gregory O’Mullan and Andrew Juhl, both professors at Columbia’s Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory at the time, along with John Lipscomb, Riverkeeper’s Boat Captain.
Before this study, there was no systematic widespread testing of the Hudson River for recreational water quality. During the study, we discovered that the mouths of many tributaries often had worse water quality than the main stem of the Hudson River, so in 2010 the program expanded from sampling just the Hudson River estuary to tributaries, going upstream to find the sources of pollution.
Since 2010, Riverkeeper has worked with volunteer community scientists, watershed associations, and municipal environmental advisory committees. Over the years, we have formed partnerships with Bard College, SUNY Cobbleskill, Union College, CUNY Queens, Media Sanctuary, and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, as well as operated a small laboratory in the Hudson River Maritime Museum to collect and analyze samples from tributaries.
Since its inception, the program has grown both in geographic extent and by the number of parameters monitored. The original 74 sites on the mainstem study have been expanded to 123 plus over 120 tributary sites throughout the watershed; all of these locations are monitored on a regular basis during the recreational season from May to October.
Additional partners in the New York City area collect and share data on the Riverkeeper Water Quality Portal via a collaboration of community science organizations, academics, and citizen scientists. The data that the original research team at Lamont Doherty collected and all of the data collected subsequently is available on the Riverkeeper Water Quality Portal.
In addition to data collected by Riverkeeper and our partners, data and map layers shown on this page are provided by a number of open source datasets. The partners who have provided these data are as follows:
Current water temperature:
The Hudson River Environmental Conditions Observing System (HRECOS)
HRECOS is managed and operated through a growing collaboration of governmental, academic, and private institutions with a shared interest in the health of the Hudson River watershed including:
The Hudson River Environmental Conditions Observing System (HRECOS)
HRECOS is managed and operated through a growing collaboration of governmental, academic, and private institutions with a shared interest in the health of the Hudson River watershed including:
- New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC)
- United States Geological Survey
- Hudson River Foundation
- Hudson River National Estuarine Research Reserve
- NY/NJ Harbor and Estuary Program
- NEIWPCC
- Cary Institute
- Hudson River Park River Project
- Sarah Lawrence College Center for the Urban River
- Marist College
- Lamont Doherty Earth Observatory
- Passaic Valley Sewerage Commission
- Hudson River Pilots Association
Potential pollution sources and Environment layers:
DECinfo Locator
DECinfo Locator is an interactive map that lets you access Department of Environmental Conservation documents and public data about the environmental quality of specific sites in New York State, as well as outdoor recreation information. This tool and available information are maintained by the DEC.
DECinfo Locator
DECinfo Locator is an interactive map that lets you access Department of Environmental Conservation documents and public data about the environmental quality of specific sites in New York State, as well as outdoor recreation information. This tool and available information are maintained by the DEC.
Riverkeeper Water Quality Portal
Use this interactive map to explore water quality throughout the Hudson River watershed with data that Riverkeeper and our partners collect. Dive into when and where it is safe to swim and boat, how clean your drinking water is, and the health of the region's fish.
Related campaigns
Water quality monitoring
Riverkeeper is the go-to source for information about the quality of the water along the Hudson River and its tributaries
Sewer and stormwater pollution
Working to keep sewage and street pollution out of our waterways
Swimming and public access
Working to make it safe and free for everyone to swim in the Hudson