Environmental Valuation & Cost-Benefit News

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Rachel Mohl has nothing but good things to say about swimming in the Hudson River.

On hot summer days, she and her husband take their three kids and friends to a little secluded spot in Putnam County to splash around for most of the morning, or until other people start to gather.

Mohl, a Carmel resident, isn't so sure she'd like to see lifeguards and crowds changing her spot into something more formal than what now amounts to a summer swimming hole for her family.

"We like the natural look, and we like it because not very many people know about it," Mohl said recently on a sandy shore in Philipstown, while watching her children try to surf on bodyboards in the water. "We usually come every week, for about four years now. The kids always ask 'Is it swimming day today?' "

A recently completed state study designed to identify swimming sites with greater potential along the Hudson came up with 17, including seven spread among Westchester, Rockland and Putnam counties.

Unfortunately for Mohl, her Little Stony Point Park spot made the list.

Yet, she may not have to worry too much about public officials developing her location, or many others noted in the study. The amount of money needed to improve and operate the sites isn't part of any state or county budgets.

And there's always the issue of whether communities want to create bigger swimming venues.

"The good news in this study is that it reaffirms that the Hudson River is clean enough for people to swim in it," said Rockland County Executive C. Scott Vanderhoef. "But we're not prepared to invest in that now."

For the seven local sites in the study — three each in Westchester and Rockland and one in Putnam — the total amount needed to improve the beaches and build facilities could run to $7 million.

In addition, annual combined operating costs are estimated at $190,000 for five sites; two have no estimates and would require further evaluation.

Besides Little Stony Point Park, local spots on the list are Croton Point Park, Verplanck's White Beach and Sleepy Hollow's Kingsland Point Park in Westchester; and Stony Point's Riverfront Park, Haverstraw's Rockland County Park and Nyack Beach State Park in Rockland.

Two potential sites — Louis Engel Park in Ossining and Dobbs Ferry's Waterfront Park — were deemed to have too many obstacles to overcome, including dubious water quality and strong river currents.

Still, state officials say access to the Hudson is important enough that the administration of Gov. George Pataki spent $227,000 on the five-year, 109-page study.

One of the seven local sites — Croton Point Park — already has a beach and lifeguards but is open only on summer weekends.

Even so, it is one of only four official public swimming beaches left along the Hudson — a fifth recently closed in Port Owen. Moreover, three of the four are in Ulster County.

Pataki, who grew up in Peekskill, outlined in 2004 a plan to honor the 400-year anniversary of Henry Hudson's 1609 sail up the river by making its entire length swimmable.

Fran Dunwell, a Hudson River estuary coordinator for the state Department of Environmental Conservation, has a lot to do with getting the river ready for that goal, including overseeing the study's preparation. She's hopeful that one area named in the report could be improved and opened to swimmers by the anniversary in 2009.

Dunwell said the state already had spent billions of dollars to improve the Hudson's water quality and create a desirable environment for swimmers.

But she acknowledged that the public's perception of the river as still too polluted for swimming would slow efforts to increase access.

"The Hudson in the 1960s was an open sewer," Dunwell said. "People have lost touch with the Hudson. We have to reintroduce the river to people."

Public use of Westchester's Croton Point Park beach would more than triple, the study estimates, if $600,000 to $1 million were spent on beach house renovations.

The report called Croton Point one of the most important beaches on the Hudson.

Joseph Stout, Westchester County's park commissioner, said he knew of the park's potential before he read the study.

The parks department has allocated about $800,000 for on-site improvements set to begin in 2007 and, with the addition of a large covered picnic area, Stout believes more people will use the site.

"It's not actually as popular a location as you might think," Stout said of the Croton beach. "We get probably 150 to 200 people a day. A lot of people sunbathe, but they don't go into the water."

Park officials said other swimming locations with chlorinated pools draw an average of 1,000 people a day, so apparently the current wave of swimmers prefers chemicals in their water over flora and fauna.

Ibelka Pena was doing her own brand of cooling off during a recent visit to Rockland County Park.

The Haverstraw resident was drenched from the super soaking she got from her 6-year-old daughter, Ashley, who chased her mom with a giant squirt gun across the park's manicured grounds, laughing until her mother shot her back, eliciting squeals from her daughter.

"She likes to swim," Pena said of Ashley after the pitched battle was over. "But she likes the pool."

Asked if she or Ashley would swim in the river if a beach were built at the park, Pena wrinkled her nose.

"In that water?" she asked, shaking her head.

Another location with seeming potential is Kingsland Point Park, a few hundred strokes away from Philipse Manor Beach Club, a private beach that hosts all-day swimming throughout the summer.

Kingsland was a swimming spot until 1974, but Stout said the $2.5 million estimated by the state to fix a beach house built early last century was probably not enough.

He said a change in how the beach has been filled in at the site also could prove difficult to overcome, because at high tide the entire beach disappears under water.

"It would be hard to set hours around the tides, wouldn't it?" Stout said. "I don't know how we'd solve that."

Still, the news downstate is better for swimmers interested in the Hudson River than for other stretches of the 150-plus miles of waterway the state studied from Troy to Manhattan. The area from Albany to the northern Greene-Columbia County line, for instance, is not open to swimming.

Also, the DEC's Dunwell said the potential dredging of PCBs in the river's northern section should have no effect on swimmers in this area.

The state has grant money available each year through the DEC and the state parks department for projects like those on the study's list of potential swimming sites. Kingston Point Beach soon will receive a 2005 grant of $20,000 to spruce up its location.

Dunwell is hopeful that's the beginning of a trend.

"We want to put the idea out there that this is something you can do," she said. "Right now, people are afraid of it."

For the full Hudson River swimming report, visit www.dec.state.ny.us/website/hudson/swimhudsonfearpt.pdf.

By GREG CLARY, gclary@thejournalnews.com
THE JOURNAL NEWS (Westchester) www.thejournalnews.com
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