Harboring Cleaner Waters
With 522 miles of shoreline, the waterways that surround New York City are one of our greatest assets. We are leading efforts to restore New York Harbor’s natural ecology—and the work is paying off. We’re now seeing plant and animal species returning to our waterways in numbers we haven’t seen in decades — including whales!
To protect and improve the health of our local waterways, we have invested more than $12 BILLION to upgrade our wastewater treatment system and expand the nation’s most ambitious green infrastructure program. Moving forward, we will invest another $4.4 BILLION to implement a series of cleanup plans for the Gowanus Canal, Newtown Creek, Flushing Bay, the Bronx River, and other local waterways.
Our work has already lead to significant achievements, including an increase in our combined sewer overflow capture rate from 30 percent (in the 1980s) to 80 percent (today), a rise in dissolved oxygen levels in all four areas of the harbor, and a dramatic decrease in ammonia and chlorophyll ‘A’ concentrations in Jamaica Bay.
