Water

Albany Water Reservior Basins

Albany Water Reservior Basins

Where the City of Albany gets it's water from -- the Alcove and Basic Reservoirs.

The Alcove Reservoir is not only a larger reservoir and basin, it also has much higher water quality due to land cover. The Basic Reservoir is connected to the Alcove Reservoir via pipeline and Silver Creek but used only occasionally due to lower water quality and quantity.

Eastern Hellbender

Bill Hopkins, professor in the Department of Fish and Wildlife Conservation in the College of Natural Resources and Environment at Virginia Tech, talks about the eastern hellbender and their ecological importance.

Region 4 Combined Sewer Overflows

The dataset represents the locations of combined sewer overflow (CSOs) outfall locations in DEC Region 4, specifically the Albany Pool. It also includes overflow detection capabilities of CSO communities and overflow frequency data within a specified timeframe.

Combined sewer systems (CSS) are sewer systems that are designed to collect storm water runoff, domestic sewage, and industrial wastewater in the same pipe and bring it to the publicly owned treatment works (POTW) facilities. During rain events, when storm water enters the sewers, the capacity of the sewer system may be exceeded and the excess water will be discharged directly to a waterbody (rivers, streams, estuaries, and coastal waters). http://www.dec.ny.gov/chemical/48595.html

The cities of Albany, Troy, Cohoes, Rensselaer, Watervliet, and the Village of Green Island make up the partner communities in the Albany Pool Communities. Among the six communities there are nearly 100 CSO discharge points. The Albany and Rensselaer County Sewer Districts are connected to the CSO program through their State Pollution Discharge Elimination System (SPDES) permits, and are cooperating with the Pool communities in implementation of the Long Term Control Plan (LTCP) for the abatement of CSOs. Read more about this program at http://www.cdrpc.org/CSO.html.

Data Source: https://data.ny.gov/Energy-Environment/Combined-Sewer-Overflows-CSOs-Beginning-2013/ephi-ffu6

The Bridges That Go Underwater πŸŒ‰

Nebraska Bridge

Nebraska Bridge

Nebraska Bridge is behind the Tionesta Storm Control Reservoir. Built before the reservoir. When water levels are high like in the spring, the bridge is submerged. As there is little current there, as it’s behind the dam, the bridge just gets wet and covered with branches sometimes. Water level drops, bridge reopens. Happened hundreds of times since dam built in 1940. Bridge built in 1933.

Upper Lisle Bridge

Historic Merrill Creek Road Bridge

There is a similar bridge on Whitney Point Reservoir in New York. Under water part of the year above water in the summer and dry spells. The Whitney Point submerged bridge dates back to the 1880s. With little current, the bridge is unharmed by the slow rise and fall of water around it.

NPR

Researchers find a massive number of plastic particles in bottled water : NPR

Microscopic pieces of plastic are everywhere. Now, they've been found in bottled water in concentrations 10 to 100 times more than previously estimated.

Researchers from Columbia University and Rutgers University found roughly 240,000 detectable plastic fragments in a typical liter of bottled water. The study was published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.