Court Directs City Of Yonkers To Stop Bronx River Discharges

Attorney General Spitzer said today that a State Supreme Court judge has ordered the City of Yonkers to make repairs to its sewer systems to stop the discharge of raw sewage into the Bronx River.

An investigation by the Attorney General's Office found that since 1999 the City of Yonkers has been illegally discharging thousands of gallons of untreated raw sewage into the Bronx River each day. The Attorney General commended the Department of Environmental conservation for its technical assistance in the investigative effort.

This practice raises a number of environmental and public health concerns since sewage contamination can cause gastrointestinal illnesses, hepatitis, skin irritation, eye infections and other problems. Sewage also damages the river's habitat for fish and other organisms and diminishes public use of the Bronx River.

In a lawsuit, the Attorney General's office documented that Yonkers' sewage discharges contributed to high levels of bacterial contamination in southern stretches of the Bronx River, where people swim, wade and boat.

Laboratory tests showed that discharges from Yonkers stormwater pipes contains the bacteria fecal coliform, an indicator of raw sewage, in concentrations as high as 25,000 times the level allowed by state water quality standards.

The court directed the City of Yonkers to stop the discharge of raw sewage into the Bronx River at the city's major discharge pipes within eight months.

The city will submit quarterly reports to the court demonstrating progress on repairs to its sewage system. Yonkers also will videotape the inside of other sewer lines and conduct dye tests to identify possible other sources of sewage discharged by the city into the Bronx River.

This case is the third enforcement action brought as part of the Attorney General's Bronx River Watershed enforcement initiative. The Bronx River begins at Davis Point in Valhalla and runs 24 miles before flowing into the East River at Hunt's Point in the Bronx.

The case was handled by Assistant Attorneys General Philip Bein and Lemuel Srolovic, Environmental Scientist Patricia Primi and Chief Scientist Judith Schreiber. Department of Environmental Conservation staff also worked on the case, including Robert Bode, Head of the Stream Biomonitoring Unit and Scott Crisafulli, Chief of the Bureau of Enforcement and Compliance Assurance.