First there was the county dump, a 60-year exercise in foul odors and contaminated runoff that finally ended in 1986 when the State Department of Environmental Conservation got involved to protect the nearby Hudson River.
The state transportation agency, in an effort to settle a decade-old lawsuit, has agreed to redesign state highways to stop polluted runoff from fouling the coastline.
But untreated sewage, agricultural runoff and industrial waste have fouled its waters for decades, and hydroelectric projects and dams threaten to choke off its waters in spots.
In recent years, problems have fouled acquaculture's reputation: pollution from waste runoff, high disease and parasite rates due to a high density of fish and the uptake of industrial chemicals harmful to humans have combined to make fish less healthy to eat.
State and local emergency preparedness and response personnel have been called in to respond to extreme weather situations, and sanitation and water inspectors have helped identify the effects of excessive rainfall, such as stormwater runoff and well contamination that fouls drinking water.
There are, or used to be, two main landmarks in the slum: a concrete wall with ads for Italian tiles ("Beautiful Forever") that give the book its title, and a foul-smelling sewage lake: a junk-rimmed pool of excrement, monsoon runoff and petrochemicals.
The goal, Mr. Holloway said, is for the city's landscape to absorb about 12 billion gallons of untreated runoff and wastewater a year that now fouls up the waterways.
In June, when Ghani took 56% of the votes in the runoff, topping Abdullah's 43%, Abdullah cried foul and threatened to form his own government.
Election officials declared Mr. Kenyatta the outright winner, narrowly avoiding a runoff, but the second-place finisher, Raila Odinga, who just stepped down as prime minister, cried foul, pointing to widespread breakdowns in the election commission's computer systems.
