Now Arriving at JFK...

New York City's Jamaica Bay seems an unlikely haven for wildlife, sandwiched between John F. Kennedy International Airport and Coney Island. But when you're an American woodcock that's just flown up from Florida with plans to summer in the Northeast, the bay makes a pretty good place to rest your wings and pick up a mate, maybe even lay an egg or two. In fact, with its 9,155 acres of salt marsh, bay islands, woodlands, and ponds, the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge is one of the most critical -- and threatened -- stopovers on the Atlantic migratory route. While most of us are busy watching the glorious plumage on display, NRDC has its sights set on something else: water pollution.

For example, a heavy storm in the early spring -- just before the birds arrive to mate and nest -- can wreak havoc on the bay. Rains flush snowbanks laced with oxygen-depleting de-icing fluids from the airport into the water. The city's wastewater outflow pipes shunt untreated sewage into that same shallow estuary (the aging system overflows during stormy weather). And there's also the waste that has been treated, which might seem harmless but for the fact that it's full of nitrogen, an element that feeds algal blooms, which in turn sap oxygen from the bay.

NRDC has been fighting on each of these fronts to stop the destruction of Jamaica Bay. Now the bay could soon be on the mend. In response to an NRDC lawsuit, the state agreed to revamp its discharge permit to reduce pollution from JFK airport. And with NRDC co-chairing the advisory committee that helped develop a protection plan for the bay, the city agreed to change its wastewater treatment process, reducing nitrogen pollution in the estuary.