NYCkayaker Yonkers Raceway Settles Bronx River Pollution Probe

[mike pidel]

http://1010wins.com/pages/107302.php?contentType=4
<http://1010wins.com/pages/107302.php?contentType=4&contentId=222075>
&contentId=222075

ALBANY, N.Y. -- Yonkers Raceway will pay $9 million in penalties and
costs to settle an investigation into the dumping of raw sewage into the
Bronx River, state officials said Thursday.

 

Under the agreement announced by Attorney General Eliot Spitzer and the
Department of Environmental Conservation, the harness track will pay a
$2 million fine, stop all discharges of human waste into the river and
pay $6 million for projects to reduce pollution from storm runoff.
Another $1 million will go to a local environmental education center.

 

An investigation found the raceway has for years flushed human waste
from several buildings into a storm sewer that feeds into the river
instead of the city's municipal sanitary sewer. Investigators also found
that horse manure was routinely flushed into storm sewers when workers
cleaned stalls.

 

Testing done where the storm sewers empty into the river showed E-coli
levels reaching from 110,000 to 500,000 bacteria per 100 milliliters of
water. The normal range is 100 to 1,000, Spitzer spokesman Marc Violette
said.

 

The agreement is part of recent efforts by the attorney general's office
to stop pollution into the Bronx River.

 

Previous settlements have been reached with the Bronx Zoo and the New
York Botanical Gardens. In 2004, Spitzer's office obtained a court order
requiring the city of Yonkers to stop polluting the river with
sewage.....

 

 

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