Don’t look now, but the Hudson River is on the mend. Marine biologists have reported resurgent oyster populations on the piers of western Manhattan, and humpback whales are returning to New York Bay in droves. No longer is the Hudson a mere receptacle for industrial waste and double-crossed mafiosi.
Unfortunately for the residents of Hudson County, one of the final obstacles preventing the river from being fully safe for swimming and fishing lies directly beneath their feet. Along with several waterfront communities in Bergen and Passaic counties, every city in Hudson County has a combined sewage and stormwater system that overflows during heavy rain events, pouring raw sewage into the Hudson River.
At the Hoboken Cove Community Boathouse, for example, half of the 18 water samples taken since May 2014 show bacteria levels deemed unsafe for swimming, most coming after rainfall in the four prior days, according to data from clean water watchdog Riverkeeper.
Such combined sewer overflows or CSOs are not just unsafe—they are illegal under the Clean Water Act of 1972. Rather than waiting for the EPA or federal courts to order a corrective plan, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection has issued new permits that require the entities responsible for New Jersey’s 217 combined sewer outfalls to develop long-term plans to reduce the frequency of polluting events.
One of these permittees is the North Hudson Sewerage Authority, which oversees 10 combined sewer outfalls into the Hudson River in Hoboken, Weehawken, and West New York.
“Whatever we do is a drop in the bucket, literally.”—Fredric Pocci
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According to Authority Engineer Fredric Pocci, the overarching goal of the permits is to limit the frequency of CSOs to no more than four per drainage area per year, a benchmark the NHSA currently exceeds.
The Authority’s overflow control plan will be implemented over 15 to 20 years. The new permit also requires smaller, more immediate steps like the installation of signs marking each sewer outfall.
High costs ahead
Before the NHSA can even produce a Long Term Control Plan, it must conduct a full appraisal of its system inside and out. That means full GIS mapping of all the Authority’s assets in order to develop a hydraulic flow model for the entire system.
“We have surveying crews out getting elevations of all our manholes, sewer inverts, and catch basins throughout the system,” said Pocci in February. “We’re about 60 percent done right now.”
This modeling will allow the NHSA to calculate exactly how much capacity it can generate at its sewage treatment plants. “It’s going to be information that we’ve never had before,” said Pocci, “because when we bought the sewer systems from the formal municipalities, we got very little information along with them.”
The NHSA will also set up video cameras to monitor all 106 miles of its sewers, according to Pocci. Currently, only a quarter of the sewers are televised.
According to Wolff, these pre-planning steps alone could cost the Authority around $3 to 4 million.
From there, costs will continue to rise as the NHSA moves to fix sewer leaks found in its full system appraisal. With relatively minor improvements like these, Pocci believes the average daily flow of water into the Adams Street sewage treatment plant in northern Hoboken could be decreased, allowing the plant to absorb and clean more sewer overflow during heavy rain events.
Bringing back the wetlands
Beyond pipe upgrades, the NHSA can pick from a variety of alternatives to lessen the impact of its overflows.
“We’re going to be very creative in terms of coming up with ways that we can store so we can reduce the volume of water that will have to be discharged,” said Pocci.
“What we can’t store, maybe we can disinfect it. We’re talking about possible restoration of tidal wetlands in certain areas to naturally treat and remove pathogens,” he added.
Separating the storm sewers from the sanitary sewers has the benefit of definitively ending the threat of CSOs, but the cost would be “astronomical” on a system-wide basis, according to Pocci.
However, Wolff said the NHSA was considered separating the pipes in a special underdeveloped “Eco-District” of northwest Hoboken surrounding its treatment plant. The costs of that limited project alone could run over $30 million.
Sharing the load
As it looks into options for infrastructure that can slow or prevent the entry of rainwater into the sewer system, the North Hudson Sewerage Authority has a natural ally in the city of Hoboken, which has made flood mitigation a main focus of its capital spending since Mayor Dawn Zimmer took office.
Zimmer and the Sewerage Authority have already worked together on the construction of two flood pumps, with the NHSA bearing the construction costs for the first one and Hoboken picking up the slack for the second one, approved in February.
The pumps won’t help address sewer overflows into the Hudson River because they deal with the opposite problem, when a combination of high tides and heavy rain pushes sewer water back up through the storm drains into the streets of western Hoboken (in fact, the flood pump automatically creates a CSO when it is turned on).
However, other flood mitigation projects currently being considered by the city tailor perfectly to the NHSA’s needs. Earlier this month, the Hoboken City Council approved two applications for low-interest state loans to cover the construction of a new park in southwest Hoboken and the purchase of six acres for another in the northwest.
Both parks are expected to include underground water retention chambers that could hold up to 5.2 million gallons of rainwater collectively. However, Zimmer said last month that she would only pursue a five million gallon chamber for the Northwest Park if the NHSA could commit to extending its “Eco-District” to link up with the park.
The key question for Hoboken and the NHSA is not whether the cisterns should be built but who will pay for them.
Mayor Zimmer said green infrastructure projects like her water-retaining parks would be “more cost effective” that separating out the full sewer system.
“The North Hudson Sewerage Authority will have to devise a financially feasible spending plan and rate structure to comply with the terms and conditions of their new state permits,” said Zimmer.
In his interpretation of the new permits, said City Council President Ravinder Bhalla, the NHSA will “technically” be legally responsible for funding future green water infrastructure projects in Hoboken. In practice, said Bhalla, “we are going to have to collaborate with the NHSA, recognize our respective budgetary constraints, and assist the NHSA in identifying means to fund the DEP’s mandate, even if it means that the City will have to share in the cost burden.”
Still, Bhalla said, his Council mates are right to question NHSA’s financial obligations every time a project like a resiliency park comes before them for funding.
Positive sign?
Jon Miller, the President of the Hoboken Cove Community Boathouse, is optimistic that the new sewer permits could mean an end to his organization’s monitoring of water quality in the Hudson River someday soon.
“We have partnered with water testing professionals at Riverkeeper, Hackensack Riverkeeper and Resilience adventures among others, to make sure we run a program that is safe for all involved by monitoring outflows and water quality,” said Miller in a statement. “Hopefully in the future this type of monitoring will no longer be necessary as the river becomes even cleaner through the efforts of so many local state and federal organizations.”
However, Fredric Pocci said he doubts New Jersey’s efforts to combat CSOs will be enough to make the Hudson River consistently swimmable on their own. Before coming to the NHSA, Pocci was the chief sewer engineer for New York City, which has 650 combined sewer outfalls in Manhattan alone.
“Whatever we do is a drop in the bucket, literally,” said Pocci. “From what I see right now coming out of the city of New York, I don’t think that they’re planning on attacking [CSOs] the way the state of New Jersey is planning on attacking it, and without them on board with the same kind of game plan, it’s not going to have a positive effect.”
Pocci still thinks Hudson County’s combined sewers are a task worth tackling. “Aside from the fact that this is going to be a very expensive proposition for everyone,” he said, “as a civil engineer, this is very exciting.”
Carlo Davis may be reached at cdavis@hudsonreporter.com.