Over the past few years the Friends of the Mohawk Towpath Byway volunteers have partnered with River Keeper volunteers to sample Mohawk River water to monitor the water quality of the Mohawk as it flows through the Byway corridor. This stretch of waterway has a water quality classification of B meaning it is good for swimming and fishing.
Every month Jeff Slater, Mary MacDonald, and I sample up to a half dozen sites up and down the Mohawk River. In this image Libbie Cococcia captured me as I cap a sample near Mohawk Harbor in Schenectady. As you can see this is on a pleasant late spring day. The water sample is packed in ice to slow any bacterial change in the sample. These samples and those from other volunteers along the river and tributaries are delivered to a laboratory at SUNY Cobleskill. There they are analyzed for bacterial markers that are indicative of sewage contamination.
But the weather and the flow in the river varies from one sampling day to the next month’s sampling day. One sample might be taken after a day of rain or a heavy thunderstorm one of the previous afternoons.
So what have we found?
Generally the water quality is good along the Byway. However there are several areas of concern especially after a precipitation event.
One of these areas is right here near the Mohawk Harbor. There may be a problem with aging sewer system in the relative small watershed that starts in Niskayuna, runs west through the northern half of Union College campus, and enters the Mohawk upstream of the Rivers Casino. The lesson here is don’t fall in the river, don’t swim in the River here, and, personally, wash my hands after sampling before I eat lunch.
Another area of concern is the stretch of the Mohawk right around the I-87 Northway bridge over the Mohawk River. Immediately upstream is the Town of Colonie’s sewage treatment plant. So we look at the operating records, annual NYSDEC inspection reports, and flow records through the treatment plant using major precipitation events. No smoking gun.
But there is a small tributary that flows into the River just upstream of the sewage treatment plant. Could this be problem?
Finally there are three of five sampling points on branches of the Mohawk as it enters the Hudson River between Waterford, Cohoes and Troy. In these three points only one of two US EPA criteria for swimming and direct contact with surface water is consistently met.
Friends of the Mohawk Towpath Byway 