Despite a historical reputation for pollution, New York City's harbor waters are now regularly safe for swimming, with the primary safety concern being the impact of recent rainfall on combined sewer overflows.
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there's an episode of Seinfeld where the
ever courageous and occasionally
thoughtless Kramer is having trouble
with New York City's pools being too
crowded I got to find a new place to
swim cuz that pool can't hold me Jerry
frustrated he does what many wouldn't
even dream of he decides to swim laps in
the East River but the question remains
can you swim in the New York Harbor is
it safe turns out that you can and that
it is but it depends on the day at risk
of bragging our office is literally the
southernmost building on Manhattan
Island so all I see out the window is
water but no beaches no entry points I
had to look into it I found that today
the water regularly tests safe people
jump in swim and reemerge unscathed all
the time heck there are even
organizations such as Urban swim and New
York open water who regularly hold races
in it and even legally it's fine as long
as you're not entering restricted areas
or interfering with both traffic in
urban swims 10 plus years of staging
Open Water swims uh we have fortunately
not have a had a situation where a
swimmer has gotten sick from the water
so why all the stigma what is everyone
afraid of I mean the history has been
that um in and around Manhattan
companies were dumping chemicals
straight into the water
industrialization was not kind to New
York City Harbor and was even less so to
the upper Hudson River for years
following World War II human waste and
Tra crash was thrown straight into the
waterways chemical pollution pcbs heavy
metals and fecal matter choke the water
of oxygen making it uninhabitable for
marine life factories up River namely
General Electric disposed of millions of
pounds of toxic chemical compounds
causing a 70E long 200 mile stretch of
contaminated water over the last four
decades though industries that once
polluted the Waterfront have slowly
disappeared and the city has steadily
spent $45 billion in total to improve
water quality further improvements will
be made including upgrading sewage
treatment facilities and adding green
infrastructure such as green roofs
permeable pavement and more rainwater
catchments to reduce runoff the goal
everyone feels is for all of the
rainwater to be soaked up which New York
City was never really designed for the
city's Department of Environmental
Protection has said that the rivers
harbors and bays are cleaner now than
the have been since the Civil War sure
you might occasionally see garbage on
the shoreline but the middle of the
Waterway the deepest parts is pretty
darn clean think of it as seeing a
discarded candy bar wrapper on the beach
has that ever really stopped you from
swimming in the ocean there's I think a
lot of fear in just that making the jump
into the East River or the Hudson River
um but then once you're in there you
realize okay it's swimming I know how to
swim today environmental nonprofit
profits regularly check post storm water
quality at 74 different locations their
test measures among other things the
levels of salinity oxygen temperature
suspended sediment chlorophyll and most
importantly ano a fecal indicator
bacteria in the water and the results
have been encouraging the fact that it
is a tidal Estuary means that uh the
Water washes in and out of the harbor um
on a regular basis twice daily you have
uh the ties so that definitely um helps
in terms of water quality the harbor is
sort of self cleaning if you will in
fact Atlantic Manhattan the fish not the
island have started to show up as well
along with bottle-nosed dolphins and
humpback whales to eat them so is the
idea of swimming really so Unthinkable
is it safe technically and generally it
is but it depends on one big
everchanging thing how much rain has the
city gotten lately to understand the
safety of swimming in the New York City
Harbor it's so essential to understand
something called combined sewer
overflows let's break it down the
majority of the city was built before
1950 and has what's called a combined
sewer system this just means that a
single pipe carries both the rainwater
runoff and the sewage from buildings
during dry conditions this isn't a
problem the water's just transported to
a wastewater treatment plant but during
heavy rainstorms overflow can occur and
some of the gross untreated water is
sent directly into the city's Waterfront
via sewer outfalls annually more than 20
billion gallons of this nasty overflow
is sent back into the harbor which is
still a major improvement from 110
billion gallons in 1985 that post
rainstorm overflow includes toxins oils
bacteria and Street garbage so it's
definitely not a good idea to swim for
the next 48 hours but if it's been dry
for the past few weeks and it's a nice
day that's up to you in organizing the
swim around the Statue of Liberty most
people breathe to their left so as
you're swimming around you're always
looking up the statue you're seeing her
from the water you're seeing her from
behind from the front like I'm I'm
getting chilled just talking about it it
is so exciting cuz you're seeing it from
a different perspective uh one that you
can't get from a boat one that you can't
get from the land it's hard to describe
but it is
it's magical for me anyway as for the
future of swimming in New York's Harbors
only time will tell when people start to
think about the recreational
possibilities of the water in and around
their City then they start to care it's
like if I'm going to swim in that I I I
want to know I want to know what's going
on and then once you learn what's going
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