Testing the Water After Hurricane Sandy
When Hurricane Sandy innundated parts of New York City and the Jersey Coast this fall, damage from high water was not the only concern. There was the question of what was in that water. To find out, aquatic ecologist Andrew Juhl voyaged down the Hudson River on the Riverkeeper research vessel, sampling water at numerous sewage outfalls and other suspicious locations throughout the estuary. While they did detect levels of microbial pathogens in the water right after the storm, the more serious finding the study highlighted was that the levels after Sandy were not an anomaly, but in fact occur after much less severe weather events.
On this episode of Locus Focus we talk with Andrew Juhl, about his efforts to document water quality in the interconnected waterways around Manhattan in the days following hurricane Sandy and the concerns that his study raises about general water quality issues on the Hudson River.
Andrew Juhl is a Lamont Associate Research Professor at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Earth and Environmental Science at Columbia University.
- KBOO