Such dumping still occurs but to a far lesser extent (when heavy rain overwhelms the city’s waste treatment plants) because of the passage of environmental laws and upgrades to the plants allowing them to handle a daily average of 1.3 billion gallons of wastewater generated by city residents.
To mark the 2009 centennial of the water surveys, the city’s Department of Environmental Protection just released a report, “New York Harbor Survey Program: Celebrating 100 years,” detailing the history of wastewater treatment and efforts to improve the harbor’s health. (The report was published a year after the actual centennial because data collected in a given year is not analyzed until the following one.)
Among its “water quality snapshots”: fecal bacteria levels are 99 percent below 1970s levels harborwide.
“New York City’s waterways are the healthiest they have been in a century, and this report explains how we got here and where we’re headed,” said Caswell F. Holloway, commissioner of the environmental department.
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