Reading the River and Its Contents, With an Eye on Its Health

How is the water? It’s a question Capt. John Lipscomb is asked all the time as he patrols the Hudson estuary for Riverkeeper, an environmental group that works to improve water quality.

The answer, according to a report analyzing river swimmability that the group plans to release Thursday morning, is variable. When the water is good it is surprisingly good, but when it is bad, it’s not safe to splash on skin. And the quality varies day by day, block by block.

“Half the people say, ‘I wouldn’t touch the water with your foot,’ ” Mr. Lipscomb, 54, said recently as he guided the group’s 36-foot motorboat, the R. Ian Fletcher. As he spoke, he paused periodically so two scientists could hang over the side to scoop up water samples to be tested for bacteria, oxygen levels and cloudiness. Until now, the best information available about the Hudson’s cleanliness has been annual averages of bacterial levels nearly two years old in reports from New York City’s Department of Environmental Protection. Riverkeeper’s new report, titled “Swimmable River,” is online at www.riverkeeper.org/document.php/837/Swimmable_River.pdf. Based on regular samples from 67 test sites between New York Harbor and Troy, it is updated monthly and will provide something closer to real-time conditions, with their spikes of good news and bad.

The initial report is based on up to 35 samplings from the 67 sites taken since 2006, and found that pollution fluctuated based on both weather and geography, and that much of the water off Manhattan was surprisingly clean but that some stretches of the Hudson routinely exceed safe levels.

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