No. 3 - New York, USA

With close to 20 million inhabitants New York City is the third largest coastal city in the world. This huge population has had many deleterious effects on the surrounding marine environment. The area offshore New York is used for waste disposal, transportation, recreation, and commercial and recreational fishing. The largest deposit of sewage sludge in the country has been dumped in the apex of the New York Bight. This dumping ceased in 1997 but totalled 125 million cubic metres over 64 years. Harbour dredge spoils that are contaminated with heavy metals and organic pollutants also have been disposed of in the area, while additional wastes are carried directly from land by regional currents. Other pollutants include metals, carbon, bacteria, and organic contaminants. These materials have been dispersed and diluted over time, however, sediments are still polluted.

The loss of habitat around New York has been drastic. New York City rural watershed filters over 1.2 billion gallons of water per day. Traditionally the water was of a very high quality and the city found no need to filter water before supplying it to consumers. However aggressive land development around New York has weakened the watersheds filtering capabilities. Rather than spending US$7 billion to build water treatment facilities, New York has opted to pay just one-tenth of that amount to help upstream counties protect watersheds around drinking-water reservoirs. This protection will centre around agricultural land and practises in an effort to protect water quality. Hypoxia, low dissolved oxygen in water, is severe and prevalent in the western portion of Long Island Sound and a plan to reduce the influx of nitrogen from pollutants into the Sound is being initiated to combat this.

Ditching and filling account for the largest salt marsh losses in New York and there is an extensive restoration plan in place to regain past losses.

Enforcement of environmental legislation and reduced use of the oceans for waste disposal have resulted in fewer sources of pollutants to coastal sediments in recent years.