'Green' Median Project between North and South Conduit Aves. to Take Strain Off Sewers by Lisa L. Colangelo - NY Daily News

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Construction worker labors North and South Conduit Aves. project, which would reduce rainfall flowing into city sewers.

The grassy median between North and South Conduit Aves. in Ozone Park has become a test area for one of the city's largest green infrastructure projects.

The 13,000-square-foot site will be transformed into a natural water filter in an effort to keep stormwater and rainwater from overwhelming the sewer system, according to officials from the city Department of Environmental Protection.

"It's an innovative, ecological, green way to treat stormwater," said John McLaughlin, director of the DEP's Office of Ecological Services. Instead of treating stormwater as waste "it should be viewed as a resource."

As part of the $730,000 project, the grass will be enhanced with trees, wildflowers and shrubs. But the major work will take place below the surface where a bio-retention zone will be created with vegetation, sand and soil.

It is designed to divert about 200,000 gallons of stormwater from existing sewer lines. That's about 90% of the water from a moderate storm.

The project is part of a larger citywide push to find more environmentally-friendly and cheaper ways to cleans stormwater, officials said.

Mayor Bloomberg announced in September the $2.4 billion NYC Green Infrastructure Plan. The goal is to cut the amount of sewer overflows by 40%.

In many parts of the city, stormwater and wastewater are carried through one sewer system. When that system is overwhelmed - often by a influx of stormwater - a mix of the two is discharged into New York Harbor.

The city has been looking for ways to divert some of that stormwater through so-called green roofs and other places where water can be naturally absorbed and cleaned.

The alternative is additional sewer infrastructure, which could cost billions, officials said.

The challenge is finding and creating patches of green, large and small, around the city.

Green spaces have disappeared in Queens and other parts of the city, partly because of overdevelopment. Lawns have been paved over and open tracts of green land have been replaced with commercial and residential buildings.

"One system alone may not make a dent in the combined sewer overflow problem," said DEP Deputy Commissioner Angela Licata. "The idea is to have several of these strategies in an area."

lcolangelo@nydailynews.com

For Leaky New York Aqueduct, Bypass Tunnel Is Planned by Mireya Navarro - NYTimes.com

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Working on the Rondout-West Branch Tunnel of the Delaware Aqueduct in 1942. Cracks have caused flooding in Wawarsing, N.Y., in Ulster County. Photo NYC DEP

New York City plans to build a three-mile-long tunnel to divert water from a leaking aqueduct that carries from the Catskills about half of the city’s drinking water, officials announced on Friday.

The tunnel, to be built under the Hudson River and parts of Dutchess and Orange Counties, will address a problem that has daunted the city since leaks were first discovered in the Delaware Aqueduct in 1988: some 15 million to 35 million gallons of water, coming down from the Catskills, have been escaping daily through cracks.

The tunnel will bypass the worst of two leaks, said Caswell F. Holloway, the city’s environmental commissioner. Construction work is expected to begin in 2013 and be completed by 2019 at a cost of about $1.2 billion, officials with the city’s Department of Environmental Protection said. Officials said that cost, spread out over nine years, was built into the department’s capital program.

For years, the city has faced criticism for its long delays in stanching leaks in two sections of a 45-mile stretch of the aqueduct known as the Rondout-West Branch tunnel, in Orange and Ulster Counties. The cracks in that branch, which was completed in 1944, have caused chronic flooding in the Ulster hamlet of Wawarsing.

Environmental groups accused New York City of dragging its feet, and a 2007 report by the state comptroller criticized city officials for failing to “adequately monitor the extent and nature of the leaks” and to establish “an adequate plan to protect the public in the event of a sudden or imminent substantial loss of water.”

New York City officials countered that they faced a challenge in identifying a way to halt the leaks while enabling them to get enough water to the city. Studies of the problem have involved sending robotic vehicles and deep-sea divers into the aqueduct in recent years to inspect and photograph the cracks.

Their plan calls for constructing a bypass tunnel at depths of 600 to 800 feet from Newburgh, in Orange County, under the Hudson to Wappinger, in Dutchess County. The aqueduct will be shut down for eight months to a year beginning in 2018, to allow workers to connect the tunnel in the last phase of the project.

“We’ve settled on a design for a fix, and we’re moving ahead doing that design and taking steps to address the leak,” Mr. Holloway said in an interview.

The leaking portion of the aqueduct would then be sealed and its use discontinued, the officials said.

During the shutdown, engineers will also enter the aqueduct to repair smaller leaks at Wawarsing from inside the tunnel, the officials said.

The 85-mile-long aqueduct, among the world’s largest, is one of two systems bringing water from upstate reservoirs to eight million residents in New York City and another one million people in Orange, Putnam, Ulster and Westchester Counties. The other is the Catskill system.

The shutdown will require lining up other sources for the 500 million gallons of water that the Delaware Aqueduct carries each day from the Rondout Reservoir in the Catskills. About 290 million gallons would come from the New Croton Aqueduct in Westchester County, which is now used only as a backup water source until a filtration plant in the Bronx is completed in 2012.

The city plans to spend another $900 million in water supply projects to make up for the loss of the aqueduct during construction. It has already spent more than $300 million to prepare for long-term repairs of the aqueduct, as well as better monitoring of tunnel conditions and repair methods.

Designed to last at least a century, the aqueduct’s troubled Rondout-West Branch section, which reaches depths of up to 1,200 feet, developed leaks a few decades after its completion. In the Wawarsing area, the tunnel has cracked along a 500-foot stretch. At Roseton, officials said, the cracks run along 5,000 feet.

Mr. Holloway said the leaks had penetrated the tunnel’s concrete lining but were also found in areas where the branch passed through limestone, which is softer and more vulnerable to water corrosion than the harder rock of sandstone and shale found elsewhere in the tunnel’s path.

But the commissioner said monitoring showed that the amount of water leaking had not increased since 2002 and did not pose the risk of an emergency, like a collapse. “We don’t see a substantial risk of this getting worse,” he said.

In a statement on Friday, the Ulster County administrator, Michael P. Hein, called the plan “a real and substantive solution.”

“In light of the hardships being encountered by the residents of Wawarsing, time is clearly of the essence,” he said, adding that the bypass “will not only eliminate the problem for the residents of Wawarsing, it will have profound economic benefit to our area through job creation.”

Paul Gallay, executive director of Riverkeeper, said the plan was a sensible approach. “It’s a big investment in solving a big problem,” he said, adding that the city should also move to compensate homeowners affected by the leaks for damages suffered.

Mr. Holloway said that other solutions, like bypassing the entire Rondout tunnel altogether, had been considered, but that the idea was dismissed as unnecessary.

“We know where the leaks are and why,” he said.

Another possibility was to drain the aqueduct for a longer time to repair it from within, but that raised uncertainty about how long the aqueduct would be out of service.

“You want to know how long the water is going to be off so you know where the supplemental water is going to come from,” Mr. Holloway said, adding, “It’s absolutely critical to get it right.”

Jamaica Bay's Revival Begins with Mollusks by Gary Buiso - YourNabe.com

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Oysters, plants cleaning the plumbing like Ty-D-Bowl

Troubled Jamaica Bay is going from stinky to stunning!

Pilot projects using natural water cleansers such as oysters, and improvements to the sewer system are yielding tangible results, according to a report released by the city on Monday and — more important — those who live and play along the 39-square-mile bay.

“In the past, we would observe a plume of discolored water atop Paerdegat Basin [one of the bay’s inlets], and people would be driven from their patios because of the horrendous smell,” said John Wright, a board member of the Sebago Canoe Club. “We are very pleased to see the progress.”

The bay, part of the National Park Service, borders Brooklyn, Queens and Nassau County, and includes approximately 142 square miles of meadowland, marshes, dunes and forests and open water — habitats that support 91 species of fish and 325 species of birds, reptiles, amphibians and small mammals.

Humans, such as Wright, and his 220-member club will also be the beneficiaries of a cleaner bay, but there is still a long way to go before it’s as clean as it could be.

To that end, the Department of Environmental Protection has tweaked its Jamaica Bay Watershed Protection plan, focusing on upgrades to the wastewater treatment plants that dump approximately 300 million gallons of treated wastewater in the bay every day.

That water has a high concentration of nitrogen, which results in poor water quality that allows harmful algae to thrive. The algae diminish the bay’s oxygen, killing wildlife.

The city — compelled by law by the state to do so — announced that it would invest $115 million to improve the overall water quality and mitigate marshland loss in Jamaica Bay, the bulk of the money going to the installation of new nitrogen control technologies at the four wastewater treatment plants located on the bay. The money, along with $95 million taxpayers previously committed, will reduce nitrogen in the bay by nearly 50 percent by 2020.

Agency commissioner Cas Holloway said the mayor has made the restoration of the bay “a special priority” in the effort to improve harbor water quality throughout the region.

“We are on track to achieve the goals outlined in the [plan] that will substantially improve the overall quality of the bay’s ecology,” he said.

The report notes that the city has already planted 1,000 eelgrass marine plants as part of a $350,000 pilot program to evaluate the potential for establishing small beds, which are seen as beneficial to fish and mollusks; and restored 10,000 oysters to help filter excess nutrients from the water.

Yo Mike Bloomberg Please Save the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge Now by Dana Lee Cohen - YouTube

Here's a witty and informational YouTube video about Jamaica Bay by Dana Lee Cohen of Brooklyn, NY that I recommend watching and passing on to others...

The Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge is one of the world's most important estuaries as well as a stop over for 300 different species of wildfowl as they migrate across the Americas. Yet as I perused Mayor Michael Bloomberg's PlaNYC, supposedly a plan to make my hometown more viable through the future's tides and tribulations, I couldn't find the Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge, as if it did not exist! Nor did I hear mention of the seven city sewage plants along its lovely shores, nor how we need to reduce nitrogen in our treated sewage to reduce fishkill caused by de-oxygenation of Jamaica Bay's Wildlife Refuge secondary to the nitrogenous and Chlorine-rich under-treated 300 million gallons of sewage New York City releases on a good day, nor did I read of how successful ecological restoration efforts led by the National Park Service's George Frame have been, nor how important it is to fix the sinkholes in the Bay and research the pollutants. These were left off in favor of the dicussion of storm management systems which, while glorious, will not in and of themselves save our glorious bay, particularly given the onslaught of continued immigration into NYC in the next few years which will certainly increase the load on our sewage systems.

According to the Clean Water Act, the Bay must become swimable by 1992...oops, what happened? Permits to pollute our harbor illegally and leave it less than swimable and fishable have been given to the Department of Environmental Protection through 2017! What is needed is not the legal research Bloomberg suggests but the legal backbone to get on the Department of Environmental Protection to remind them that they are a not-for-profit agency subject to the law!

This film is a letter to Mayor Bloomberg to give him something to do besides tax and jail the poor and entertain the rich and militarize the cops. He should save Jamaica Bay and restore 50 acres of salt marshes each year through George Frame's tried and true methods, at the cost of 25 million dollars per year, and take it all out of the Department of Environmental Protection's HUGE budget until they start building green Guggenheims, or Living Machines, ideas which I have already testified about twice in the City Council, skyscrapers of bioremediation, or other reasonably priced and non gas-guzzling bioremediation efforts based on John Todd's work at the University of Vermont, so that our treated sewage, or black water, becomes aerated and healthful to the wildlife which proliferate and participate in New York City's self. This film takes you along into the adventure of activism and invites you to become part of the movement toward sustainability and freedom from bankers and fictionalists in government. We must call them on their crap. Mayor Mike is so fond of calling us on our crap, fictional arrests of innocent citizens, fictional fines, infringements on our freedom all over the place, like his veto on public gatherings at Central Park. I call his efforts to save Jamaica Bay weak, fictional, and complicit with the illegal deal-making in Washington so common that no one really remembers, it's, um, illegal. I remember and let's all remember, for our children's sake, for a beautiful city that deserves the real protection from storm swells that salt marshes provide, and for the infrastructure, schools, churches, apartments and lives that might be lost if we do not make a concerted effort to restore The Jamaica Bay Wildlife Refuge today.

This film was produced, edited, directed, written and is starring Miss Dana Lee Cohen, with the assistance of Saiming Char. It is dedicated to George Frame and to Jesus the Christ Almighty. But a lot of it was improvisation. I really hope you enjoy it!

Press Release: Weiner, Velazquez Call for Newtown Creek to be Designated as a Federal Superfund Site

Newtown May Be Eligible for $15 Million in Federal Funding - Up to 90% of the Average Cleanup Costs

Lead, Mercury, Cancer-Causing Agents, Heavy Metals among Chemicals Cited

New York City - Newtown Creek, home to the largest coastal oil spill in American history, could soon be designated as a federal Superfund site and receive federal clean up support, according to Representatives Anthony D. Weiner (D - Brooklyn and Queens) and Nydia Velazquez (D - Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens). The Representatives released a letter to the federal Environmental Protection Agency today, calling on them to conduct preliminary tests at Newtown Creek. If these environmental tests find high levels of toxic chemicals, the entire Newtown Creek area could be included on the federal Superfund list and may be eligible for federal funding of up to 90% of the cleanup costs. Based on the average Superfund site cleanup cost, this could be up to an estimated $15 million in federal funding.

The Superfund program is the federal government's principal program to clean up the nation's hazardous waste sites Despite containing an oil spill one and a half times as large as the Exxon Valdez spill, Newtown Creek is not a part of the federal Superfund program and has never been tested by the federal EPA for admission into the nation's Superfund program.

To date, an estimated 9.4 million gallons of oil have been cleaned at Newtown Creek. Between 17 and 30 million gallons were spilled over an area which covers 55 to 60 acres. Estimates indicate it will take until at least 2026 to finish the remediation.

Rep. Weiner, a member of the Energy and Commerce Subcommittee on Environment and Hazardous Materials, the House panel with jurisdiction over the Superfund program, together with Subcommittee Chairman Gene Green (D - Texas), Vice Chairwoman Hilda Solis (D - California) and Rep. Velazquez, today released a letter to the EPA identifying four sites along Newtown Creek for priority federal review, including two former hazardous waste facilities, a former copper smelting plant, and a former coal gasification complex.

The designation would trigger a lengthy four-point process. First, the site would undergo immediate stabilization, which includes a one-year clean up to stop any immediate threats to the community, if necessary, such as erecting a security fence or repairing a hazardous waste storage unit. Then the EPA would perform a comprehensive investigation of the site and analyze cleanup options Traditionally this takes months to years. The EPA would then work to develop a plan to clean up the site On average this takes 2 years. Finally, the EPA would clean up the site, or force responsible parties to clean up the site. On average, the cleanup process takes 8-11 years.

The federal Superfund program, created in 1980 in response to the presence of chemical waste in the groundwater and even basements of neighborhood homes and an elementary school in upstate New York, gave the government the authority to take direct action to clean up uncontrolled hazardous chemicals that are endangering public health or the environment. Superfund also provides the government with the authority to compel responsible parties to clean up contaminated sites.

Funding for the Superfund, however, has dropped from a recent high of $3.8 billion in 1997 to only $178 million in 2007. The drop in funding is the result of expired taxes on the oil and chemical industries as well as an expired corporate environmental income tax in 1995.

In order to be considered for the Superfund program, the EPA performs preliminary tests to decide if the site poses a threat, and where the site should rank in priority on the Superfund list While some parts of the Newtown site are being addressed by state Superfund cleanups, there has not been any federal testing or consideration to date for admission into the federal Superfund program.

Working with the EPA, Weiner and Velazquez identified four sites as the highest priorities for federal environmental testing in consultation with Riverkeeper, Inc. on the basis of New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and New York State Attorney General records State tests have found the following toxic chemicals and heavy metals in the area: cadmium, chromium, copper, lead, and mercury, petroleum-related hydrocarbons, an underground plume and/or tanks containing polychlorinated biphenyls and petroleum waste, and up to 70,000 gallons of PCBs-laden waste oil and additional amounts of solvents.

Rep. Weiner said, "While the oil companies lag in their cleanup responsibilities, the health and safety of Newtown Creek's residents hang in the balance. Testing these four sites will help us find answers to basic questions about the spill's health risks and give this national environmental disaster national attention."

"It's time for the EPA to acknowledge what the people who live here already know: the contamination of Newtown Creek is nothing short of a human tragedy," Congresswoman Velázquez said "The EPA should use its strongest tools possible to begin remediation The time to act is now."

"Riverkeeper continues to fully support Congressman Weiner's and Congresswoman Velasquez's efforts to ensure a comprehensive cleanup of Newtown Creek," said Basil Seggos, Chief Investigator and Hudson River Program Director. "Listing Newtown Creek as a Superfund site would undoubtedly bring us closer toward realizing our shared vision for cleaner waterways and greener communities."

In 1978, the Newtown Creek spill was originally estimated at 17 million gallons - one and a half times larger than Exxon Valdez. Evidence of the spill has been found across 55 acres, seeping into the Creek and settling under homes and businesses in Greenpoint, Brooklyn.

It is the single most polluted waterway in New York City, a legacy left by more than a century of heavy industrial activity.

In April 2008, the House of Representatives passed language to fully map the Newtown Creek oil spill. The provision requires new field testing and will create a three-dimensional study of the plume location, detailing - for the first time ever - the extent of the Newtown Creek's groundwater, soil, and vapor contamination. Pending Senate passage, the study, the biggest, most comprehensive data
collection to date, would also be completed by the EPA.

In 2007, Weiner and Velazquez released the findings of an EPA study of Newtown Creek, which found that the spill may be larger than originally estimated, but left many questions unanswered.

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