This page has Waterway Fact Sheets for the Charles River, Lake Champlain, and the Hudson River.
Just scroll on down to find the waterway that interests you...
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Charles River Facts
(Many thanks to The Charles River Watershed Association)
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| Charles River outlet at Echo Lake (Dam is visible in background). Photo: C. Swain. |
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The Charles River is the longest river with its entire length in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
European "Discovery": by Captain John Smith.
Named for: King Charles I of England.
Begins: Wetlands and springs north of Echo Lake in Hopkinton, Mass.
Drains into: Atlantic Ocean (Boston Harbor).
Length: approximately 80 miles (129 km).
Flows through: 23 cities and towns.
Area of watershed (Drainage Basin): 308 square miles, encompassing pieces of 35 communities, all within the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.
Wetlands: More than 8,000 acres of wetlands in the Charles River Watershed are protected forever from development as part of the US Army Corps of Engineers Natural Valley Storage Project.
Dams: 20 (five with fish passage).
Drop: Approximately 350 feet on its way to the Atlantic Ocean.
Aquatic Life: There are 20 species of fish found in the Charles River, including two species of River Herring (Alewife and Blueback Herring) that are anadromous (migratory) and swim upriver from the sea to spawn (lay eggs) each spring. These fish must climb a series of fish ladders set up at each of the lower 5 dams on the river.
Some of the contaminants found in the Charles River include: raw sewage, PCBs, lead, phosphorous, mercury, selenium, nitrates, dioxins, ammonia, and petroleum products.
If you would like more information about the Charles River please consider visiting:
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| photo: Christopher Swain |
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Lake Champlain is the sixth largest natural lake in the United States--only the five Great Lakes are larger.
European "Discovery": by Samuel de Champlain, on July 4, 1609.
Begins: The southernmost tip of Lake Champlain is found at Whitehall, NY. The lake flows slowly northward.
Drains into: Richelieu River, Province of Quebec, Canada (and then into the St. Lawrence River, and finally into the Atlantic Ocean).
Length of Lake Champlain: approximately 125 miles (201 km).
Contains: 6.8 trillion gallons of water.
Width: Up to 13 miles (21 km) wide.
Average depth: 64 feet (20 m).
Deepest point: approximately 400 feet (121 m).
Monster: "Champ" or "Champie". By all accounts, a friendly beast.
Coral Reefs: One of the world’s oldest known coral reefs is found on Isle La Motte in Lake Champlain. It formed 480 million years ago when the Lake was actually part of a warm tropical sea.
Major tributaries: 31.
Surface area of lake: 435+ square miles.
Size of Watershed (Drainage Basin): 8,234 square miles, including portions of New York state, Vermont, and the Canadian Province of Quebec.
Terrain composition in Watershed (Drainage Basin): 71% forested, 18% agricultural, 6% developed, 5% water.
Wildlife: The Lake Champlain Basin is home to approximately 81 species of fish, 318 birds, 57 mammals, 21 amphibians, and 20 reptiles.
Wetlands: There are over 300,000 acres of wetlands in the Lake Champlain Drainage Basin.
Some of the contaminants found in Lake Champlain: raw sewage, PCBs, lead, phosphorous, mercury, arsenic, nickel, dioxin, detergents, and petroleum products.
If you would like more information about Lake Champlain, The Lake Champlain Basin Program has compiled several excellent fact sheets which can be downloaded for free:
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European "Discovery" by: Henry Hudson, English ship captain, September 11, 1609.
Highest source: Lake Tear of the Clouds, (elevation 4293 feet, length 500 feet, depth 3-5 feet), on Mt. Marcy, New York state.
Drains into: Atlantic Ocean at the (Verrazano-)Narrows.
Length of Hudson: 315 Miles.
Widest Point: 3+ miles (Haverstraw Bay).
Dams: 9.
Locks: 7.
River elevation drop from Lake Tear of the Clouds to Troy, NY: 4291 feet.
River elevation drop from Troy, NY to Atlantic Ocean: 2 feet.
Length of tidal estuary: 153 miles (Up to Troy, NY).
Species of fish found in the estuary: 200+, including shad, sturgeon, striped bass, perch, bluefish, herring, carp, needlefish, menhaden,, shiners, darters, tomcod, and sunfish.
Dredged shipping channel in estuary: 32 feet deep, 600 feet wide.
Bridges across estuary: 14.
Length of George Washington Bridge: 3500 feet.
Length of Verrazano-Narrows Bridge: 4,260 feet.
Navigable waterfront in New York Harbor: 650 miles.
Tidal fluctuation in New York Harbor: approximately five feet.
Most dangerous pollutant in the river: PCBs, which contaminate the lower 200 miles of the Hudson River--the longest Superfund site in the United States. (See PCB Fact Sheet below).
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| Hudson River PCBs Fact Sheet
Courtesy of:
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Q. What are PCB's?
A. PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls) are a group of synthetic oil-like chemicals of the organochlorine family. Until their toxic nature was recognized and their use was banned in the 1970's, they were widely used as insulation in electrical equipment, particularly transformers. Reputable chemists have since concluded that "it was probably a 'mistake' ever to make or use PCBs".
Q. Why are they dangerous?
A. They are serious poisons which have been shown to cause damage to the reproductive, neurological and immune systems of wildlife and humans and are known to cause cancer. Specifically, because PCBs in the body mimic estrogen, women of child-bearing age and their infants are particularly susceptible to a variety of development and reproductive disorders. A National Academy of Sciences committee has stated that "PCBs pose the largest potential carcinogenic risk of any environmental
contaminant for which measurements exist."
Q. Where are they?
A. There are numerous known contaminated sites around the U.S. Among the most dangerous of these, and of particular concern to residents of the Hudson Valley, are the forty "hot spots" in the Hudson River resulting from the dumping and leakage from General Electric (GE) plants at Fort Edward and Hudson Falls. There are PCBs in Hudson River water, biota, and sediment from Hudson Falls to New York City -- 200 miles that
comprise the nation's largest Superfund site.
Q. How did PCB's get into the water?
A. During the period when they were used, General Electric legally dumped some 1.5 million pounds of PCBs into the Hudson River, and unknowingly saturated the bedrock beneath both sites with at least that much again. Pure PCBs are oozing out of the bedrock to this day, constantly recontaminating the river.
Q. Isn't this just a local problem?
A. No. Once bottom-dwelling organisms absorb the material it is passed along up the food chain. Insoluble in water, PCBs are not readily excreted and remain, in ever-increasing concentrations, lodged in the fatty body tissues of fish as they grow. As one consequence, a once-thriving commercial fishing industry in the Hudson Valley, earning about $40 million annually, is now all but dead.
Almost all of the river-dwelling fish are migratory, and the effects are such that the New York State Department of Health has issued an advisory telling people to severely limit their consumption, even of fish caught recreationally in the Hudson. Women of child-bearing age and children under fifteen are advised to eat none at all. Since subsistence fishing is common in the lower reaches of the river, there are particular concerns in these areas. Further, unless the contaminated material is removed, there is an ever-increasing risk that, while remaining dangerous, it will be dispersed gradually, carried downstream, and thus become irrecoverable.
Q. Is the Hudson River really better now?
A. The Clean Water Act, which was passed in 1972 in spite of GE´s strong opposition, required sewage treatment and minimization of industrial discharges. Standards for water quality have improved over the past few decades, but PCB´s have persisted and continue to poison fish, humans, and other organisms.
Q. Is the Hudson really healing itself?
A. Not when it comes to PCBs. PCBs don´t disappear, they just go somewhere else. Every day, and especially after heavy rain, PCBs move downstream into the ecosystem of the tidal Hudson, affecting the region´s fish, wildlife, and people. These PCBs enter the ocean and migrate throughout the world. Hudson River PCBs have been found in human and animal fat from the Arctic Circle.
Q. Will dredging make the river worse, as GE claims?
A. No. Many advances have been made in the last 15 years, and suction removal has been successfully employed at a number of other Superfund sites around the country. Often this has allowed fish consumption advisories to be lifted after just 2 or 3 years. Suction removal does not stir up the river. On the contrary, the Eddy Pump, for example, works like a straw in a milkshake. Likened to liposuction, this vacuum process leaves the river so undisturbed that operators can monitor the
sediments with underwater cameras mounted at the base of their equipment. The dredged spoils enter a contained system of storage and transportation that is closed off from contact with the environment.
Q. Was GE´s dumping of PCBs legal, as they always claim?
A. Not always. For years the state DEC had been trying to get GE to reduce its staggering discharges, but GE threatened to leave the state, taking its jobs with it, and made DEC´s position politically untenable. GE had permits to pollute -- but frequently violated them.
Q. Will the cleanup be financed by my tax dollars?
A. No. Superfund law stipulates that the polluter must pay.
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Looking for another perspective? Here's GE's version:
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An Introduction to PCBs
What Are They?
PCBs belong to a class of organic chemicals known as chlorinated hydrocarbons. For 50 years, the manufacture, sale, use and discharge of PCBs were legal in the United States. More than one billion pounds of PCBs were produced and sold.
PCBs were considered a miracle chemical because they would not burn and were widely used in electrical equipment installed in wooden factories and school buildings where fire was a constant threat. In fact, some city codes and some insurance companies required the use of PCB-type transformers and capacitors.
PCB Chemistry
PCBs are a family of compounds produced commercially by directly chlorinating biphenyl. Many different combinations are possible. In chemical terminology, "phenyl" denotes a ring structure of six carbon atoms attached to something else; "biphenyl" results when two such rings are attached to each other. And polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) is any molecule having multiple chlorine atoms attached to the carbon atoms of a biphenyl nucleus. Chlorine atoms can be placed at any or all of 10 available sites, with 209 PCB mixtures theoretically possible.
PCBs were manufactured and sold as complex mixtures differing in their average chlorination level. The 209 possible PCB compounds are referred to as "congeners." PCB congeners with the same number of chlorine atoms are known as "homologs" or "isomers" of each other. The materials now collectively referred to as PCBs are actually several dozen individual PCB congeners clustered around some average degree of chlorination.
Congeners may be grouped in terms of the number of chlorine atoms attached to the biphenyl molecule. For instance, one chlorine would produce a mono-chlorobiphenyl, two a di-chlorobiphenyl, 10 a deca-chlorobiphenyl. Any biphenyl molecule with two or more chlorines is commonly referred to as a poly-chlorinated biphenyl.
Their Physical Properties
The physical properties of PCBs vary among the different homologs. Lower-chlorinated PCBs (the mono-, di-, tri- and tetra-chlorinated PCBs) tend to be light, oily fluids. Penta-chlorobiphenyls are heavy, honey-like oils. The most highly chlorinated PCBs are greases and waxy substances.
In general, PCBs are nonflammable and water-insoluble. They have high boiling points and low electrical conductivity. They are chemically and thermally stable. These physical properties made PCBs extremely desirable for a wide variety of industrial applications, including dielectric heat transfer fluids, hydraulic fluids, solvent extenders, flame retardants, organic diluents, dielectric fluids, inks, dyes, paints and adhesives. For example, PCBs were found in carbonless copy paper, newsprint and caulking compounds.
This fact sheet courtesy of:
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