Being in the environmental consulting business for over 50 years (55 to be exact) lends itself not only to an abundance of experience, but also to a portfolio of some long-running legacy projects. These projects were/are fascinating as they have enabled us to track and analyze data collected over decades. And sometimes we get to continue the work even after the project itself has come to a close.
One of such legacy projects is the Hudson River Biological Monitoring Program (HRBMP). The HRBMP was a continuing and extensive (40+ years) annual biological monitoring program conducted by Normandeau staff that, from 1966 to 2020, had been performed to assess potential impacts of cooling water withdrawals from electric power generating stations on the Hudson River Estuary.
The HRBMP consisted of several individual studies (all conducted by Normandeau) including the river-wide ichthyoplankton survey referred to as the Long River Survey (LRS), water quality surveys, beach seine surveys, striped bass and Atlantic tomcod surveys, and the fall juvenile survey (FJS). The objective of the FJS was (and still is) to collect fall juvenile fish samples (and water quality samples) to determine the seasonal occurrence, relative abundance, and distribution of juvenile (and older) fish within the Hudson River Estuary (as well as for other management and research purposes).
The last year of the FJS as part of the historical HRBMP was in 2020. However, the FJS resumed in 2023 with funding from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (NYSDEC). Normandeau, in collaboration with the Chen Lab at Stony Brook University, conducted the survey in 2023 and 2024. Normandeau and Stony Brook will continue the FJS in 2025 with new funding from the Hudson River Foundation and the Hudson River Environmental Monitoring Program (HREMP). Long-term monitoring through the FJS and other monitoring surveys included in HREMP continues to give us a snapshot of the overall health of the Hudson River Estuary.
