A group of fishermen who say Hurricane Sandy pollution ruined their catch want the city to pay them a whole lotta clams.
The Baymen’s Protective Association — representing 76 clammers — filed a million-dollar lawsuit against the city in Manhattan Supreme Court on Friday.
The city allowed billions of gallons of raw sewage to spill into the Hudson River and New York Harbor after Superstorm Sandy, the lawsuit alleged. The result was two months of shellfish that the clammers couldn’t harvest because the clams were tainted.
“We were out of work from essentially Halloween until two days before Christmas,” said Keith Craffey, 48, a lifelong clammer who heads the Baymen’s Protective Association, which fishes in the Raritan and Sandy Hook bays in New Jersey. “The two weeks before Christmas are our busiest time, and to be unable to sell clams really hurt, I’m not gonna lie,” he said. “We’re not going overboard here — we just want to make up for our lost revenue.”
According to Craffey and the lawsuit filed on behalf of his group, state and federal officials shut down all clamming operations immediately after Sandy because of high raw sewage levels.
New York state officials traced the contamination to sewage treatment plants maintained by New York City, the lawsuit said.
Additional overflow also came from plants in Middlesex and Passaic Counties in New Jersey, Craffey said.
In the wake of the October 2012 storm, sewage and wastewater treatment plants from Orchard Beach in the Bronx to Coney Island and the Rockaways were without power, court papers said.
That permitted gallons of gushing pollution to wend its way into the area’s only open shellfish harvesting spot, according to Craffey.
Affected plants included the Coney Island Wastewater Treatment Plant, Orchard Beach Water Pollution Control Plant, Rockaway Wastewater Treatment Plant, Hunt’s Point Wastewater Treatment Plant and North River Wastewater Treatment Plant, among others, the lawsuit said.
While Craffey and his group got the go-ahead to resume clamming at Christmas, other fishermen weren’t so lucky, the suit said. “For some areas the shellfish beds remained closed through and after February 28, 2013, causing immediate and permanent damages to the individual and corporate plaintiffs,” the suit said.
Craffey said the average clammer can rake in $1,000 to $2,000 a week — and even more during the busy pre-Christmas season.
The city’s Law Department declined immediate comment pending a review of the case.
According to the city’s Department of Environmental Protection, 10 of its 14 plants were inundated by the Oct. 29 storm surge. “They were all up except the Rockaways plant by Nov. 3. Rockaways was restored Nov. 10,” a DEP official noted.
From Nov. 10 onward, there were no interruptions in normal wastewater treatment, even as Sandy-related repairs to the facilities continued.
An independent study by an environmental group said the biggest sewage offenses were committed by plants outside the city, in Nassau County and New Jersey.
Lawsuits will be filed against those plants too, plaintiff lawyer Sean Regan said.
The clammers sued the city once before — after the August 2003 blackout — when sewage overflows swamped their workspace. The suit was settled amicably with the city paying out undisclosed amounts to cover the clammers’ lost revenue, said Regan.
