There’s been some success on the Catskill Creek in Greene County, where volunteers taking water samples discovered a spike in unsafe bacteria levels at Leeds. The problem was traced to a multifamily dwelling owned by an absentee landlord, who, instead of fixing a broken septic system had instead piped the sewage from the tank into the storm drain, where it entered the creek. The detective work by Riverkeeper and the citizen scientists caused the DEC to shut the offender down. Catskill then voted in favor of hooking up Leeds to its municipal system.
“The public knows where the problem is in many cases,” Lipscomb said. “Someone knows where there’s a leaking septic field. We want that person to make the authorities aware of the problem and hopefully they will deal with it. Or the community goes to the county or township and says, We need to raise money for infrastructure investment.”
Not all the news is negative, Lipscomb said. Gathering the data has a positive goal, which is to let people know where it’s safe to swim. In Westchester, the Tarrytown Marina has unsafe levels in 40 percent of the tests, while nearby Irvington has only an eight percent failure rate. “There’s a beautiful three-mile stretch of water between the towns that’s clean and a great place to swim,” Lipscomb said.
“The last thing we want is for people to say, Yuck,’” he added. “The waterways cannot advocate for themselves, and if we don’t have a concerned public they’re doomed. Happily, what we have seen is the opposite. People are fighting for clean water.”
