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Audio Feature: Hudson River Stories

Aug 27, 2022 4:55 am

Here are some stories from the Hudson River this week. Click here to hear an audio version of this report. (4:15)

The U.S. Geological Survey reports temperatures this week in the Hudson River near Albany are between 78 and 80 degrees.

ABC News reports that the City Club of New York, and Tom Fox, a representative of the club who serves on the Hudson River Park Advisory Council, plan to sue Con Edison for alleged "ongoing violations" of the federal Clean Water Act. They allege that Con Ed is dumping water used to cool a power station off of Hudson River Park's Pier 98 into the river at "dangerously high temperatures," and are also dumping wastewater containing "toxic pollutants," such as chloroform, into the estuary sanctuary in violation of its state permit. A Con Ed spokesperson said the company is "in compliance with our permit for both water temperature and discharge of chemicals at Pier 98." Read more about this story at the ABC News website.

The Post Star reports that the lower levels of the Hudson River west of the Glens Falls/South Glens Falls Route 9 bridge have exposed riverbanks, drainage pipes, the underside of a swimming dock, and old mid-river piers once used when logs were moved downstream by force of the current. The low levels of the river are not from the drought, but a summer drawdown to allow for routine dam maintenance. Because of the up-to-8-foot reduction in water levels there is no summer swimming at municipal beaches in Glens Falls and South Glens Falls, and regular water levels won't return until September. Read the full story in the Post Star.

Paul Kirby reports in the Daily Freeman that a two-foot-long sea lamprey was fished out of the Hudson River by the Department of Environmental Conservation in June. Lamprey are strange-looking jawless fish that “feed parasitically on larger fish using their round mouth ringed with hooked teeth,” the department said on social media. They are rarely found the agency’s Norrie Point Environmental Center in Staatsburg in Dutchess County, where DEC Estuary Educator Ben Harris caught one with a cast net. “Sea Lamprey occurs as ammocoetes in medium-sized streams near the mouths, and in areas with clean sand,” the DEC said. “The adult phase is parasitic and typically found only in the big lakes or the ocean.” Sea lampreys attack fish in the Hudson River, not humans. The National Ocean Service calls the lamprey, "an efficient killer of lake trout and other bony fishes is its disc-shaped, suction-cup mouth, ringed with sharp, horny teeth, with which it latches on to an unfortunate fish.” Read more about this story in the Daily Freeman.

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