3-2 



At present, effluent from three primary sewage treatment 

 plants flows into New Haven Harbor. The East Street and Boulevard 

 plants discharge at their shoreline locations on the west side of the 

 harbor; the East Shore plant empties its wastes through a shallow 



subaqueous discharge south of the New Haven Harbor Station; their 



3 

 combined volume is on the order of 4.4 m /sec (100 million gal/day or 



3 

 156 ft /sec) . In addition, the West Haven facility (secondary treat- 

 ment) near Sandy Point empties into the main channel area east of Sandy 

 Point via a subsurface discharge. 



Several inland communities discharge their municipal wastes 

 into the Quinnipiac River, although all now have secondary sewage 

 treatment facilities. According to the Connecticut Department of Envi- 

 ronmental Protection (1977) , the waters of New Haven Harbor are at pres- 

 ent classified as follows: inner harbor, SD (ijnacceptable) ; outer 

 harbor, SD and SC (unsuitable for bathing) ; and adjacent Sound beyond 

 the breakwaters, SB (suitable for bathing). 



General Hydrography of New Haven Harbor 



To delineate the harbor area for purposes of this study, three 

 breakwaters are considered to boiond the harbor on the Sound side and 

 locations in the three rivers, Quinnipiac, Mill, and West, are used as 

 boundaries at the head of the harbor (Figure 1-1) . For the purpose of 

 this report, the harbor is divided into two parts by a line between 

 Sandy Point and Fort Hale Point which separates it into inner and outer 

 portions. These boundaries were also used by Duxbury (1963). 



The bottom of the outer harbor is sandy with large areas of 

 shell reefs and some exposed bedrock, while the inner harbor bottom is 

 composed chiefly of fine-grained sediments with a high organic content. 



According to Duxbury (1963) , the total area of the harbor 



2 

 within the arbitrarily chosen limits is approximately 18.4 km , with 4.2 



