At 3:15 in the morning, Jamie Powers and Kevin Thomas, environmental conservation officers for New York state, ease their 31-foot boat into the inky waters of Jamaica Bay, which bisects the boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens.
Every day four waste treatment plants feed more than 250 million gallons of nitrogen filled wastewater into the bay, a massive expanse of 20, 000 acres of water sitting where Brooklyn and Queens meet at their southernmost point.