Category: Students

Posts written by students

26th Ward: Using Grey & Green Infrastructure as Way to Tackle CSO

One of New York City’s wastewater sewer sheds, the 26th Ward is responsible for servicing the neighborhoods of the south Brooklyn and Queens area. A major issue challenging the 26th Ward is combined sewer overflow (CSO). CSO occurs when stormwater on roofs, streets, and sidewalks, in addition to wastewater from residential and commercial businesses, is carried through to treatment plants, causing an excess of water in the treatment system. This excess then spills into and pollutes the nearby Jamaica Bay. The implications of CSO are severe. With continually rising sea levels as a result of thermal expansion from the emission of greenhouse gases, CSO exacerbates the issue of pollution and the damage caused by weather-related disasters like Hurricane Sandy. However, a key way to tackle CSO is through the implementation of grey and green infrastructure. In particular, the development of a storage tunnel-interception system would allow CSO to be contained through the construction of interceptor tunnels. These tunnels will release the excess water into the system once the system has the capacity to effectively process it. In addition, public green spaces in surrounding neighborhoods can be made impervious so as to slow down the rate at which water flows into the system. These practices would ultimately lead to a reduction in the magnitude of the devastation caused by extreme weather events, as well as create a more safe environment for residents. Although these solutions cannot be implemented overnight, they signify an important step in the process of moving toward an environmentally friendly and sustainable future.

Dangerous Development for New York Metropolitan Area Water Management

There is a proposed plan for expanding the Teterboro Airport put forth by the US Army Corps of Engineers.  This plan proposes to fill 11 acres of wetlands around the airport to accommodate aircraft that are increasing in size.  However, filling in these wetlands pose a severe threat to the wellbeing of the surrounding area, both in terms of flooding and biodiversity.  After these wetlands are filled in, impervious asphalt airstrips and parking areas as well as metal hangers will fill the area.

This threat is being downplayed by the project managers, but local politicians and residents are more nervous about the potential expansion of the airport. The Meadowlands area already has issues with dealing with their runoff and flooding and this plan would only further the problem.  The local politicians are pushing for enhanced storm water retention systems to combat the flooding and runoff effects that this plan would potentially cause.  This system would not help to ameliorate the damage to biodiversity that this expansion could cause. Although local politicians and residents are fighting against it, the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection determined the plan was okay and “it does not require local approval.”

The impact on the environment and water management needs to new land development, particularly  when it extends into biodiverse wetlands. Although it seems that its impact is suitable, the fact that there is this much of a public uproar about the possible negative impact of the plan is worrying. Biodiversity needs to be protected and it seems it is being left behind in favor of the efficiency of airports, as the airport is being expanded to fit the growing size of planes. Considering water management is already an issue in this area, a plan that has a distinct possibility of negatively impacting an already tenuous system of water management seems worrying.

Newtown Creek & Greenpoint: How Activism Helps

Though our presentation does not directly focus on the oil spills that have dramatically changed Newtown Creek for the worst, rain runoff still contains the remnants, and continues to be a huge issue both in the soil and in the water.

What our project does directly focus on, however, is the important place of community activism and engagement in reinvigorating the Newtown Creek area. Innovative activism will be able to target all the issues facing the Creek, including discussing runoff, CSOs, current pollution, and the eventual elimination of the remnants of oil spills and waste in and around the creek.

Jan Mun is one of these activists – and she is an artist. Her land art installation and social sculpture, titled Fairy Rings at Exxonmobil Greenpoint Petroleum Remediation Project Site, aims to navigate science, art, and sustainability using mycoremediation. The process using fungi to decompose surrounding pollutants and eventually shape a new, better ecology.

Pouring Contaminated Water into Coney Island Creek

The main thing that I learned in this Macaulay Seminar was that creating a sustainable world means everyone must take part in caring for the environment. My group is specifically looking at the solutions for Coney Island Creek, and researching the reasons why it got to be one of the dirty dozens and violate the Clean Water Act in the first place. We have learned that a combination of uncaring actions from residents and lack of care from government officials has led Coney Island Creek to suffer from events like CSO and flooding.

According to an article from Brooklyn Daily New York approved a permit “for the city to pour up to 7.2 million gallons of filtered, contaminated groundwater into Coney Island Creek every day for up to two years while the city upgrades sewer and water mains in Coney’s west end.” The problem is these waters have heavy metal that can pollute bodies of water and harm wildlife living in parks and beaches near the area. Officials claim that these metals will not reach dangerous concentrations since it will be diluted once poured into the large bodies of water. I believe this is the exact reasoning that has lead Coney Island Creek to deteriorate in quality like it has. Every little action we take can either improve or worsen the quality of Coney Island Creek. It is even worse that government officials do not seem to be transparent about their actions and are not always experts in the affects of water. I hope that our project can convince some people to use water conservatively and realize that we must work together to protect the safety of out water for future generations.

Starting here at Brooklyn College

For our group project, we were assigned to address the problem of the Coney Island Sewershed and propose some solutions. Through realizing that we were currently IN our assigned sewershed, we began to think of solutions that could be done here at brooklyn college. After learning about the one water solutions in class and how water is being conserved by integrating lots of water systems in order to recycle the water, this implemented an idea of how we could recycle water here. Brooklyn College has lots of impermeable surfaces such as the roofs on most of the buildings. We think that maybe if we could catch rain water from these roofs and collect it in a basin, we could use the water to irrigate some plants on the plenty of greenspace at our college. We proposed a “farm to table” solution and maybe some of the restaurants in our area would buy some of these crops to use. This idea would allow a more sustainable environment for our community and we would be able to manage some water here so it doesn’t go to waste.

 

Red Hook, Brooklyn, on the Rebound

“The area’s industrial and freight port history has left a muscular legacy of brick and concrete architecture, towering container cranes, parking lots and few trees.” This is an apt description of Red Hook, Brooklyn, New York, written by Julie Besonen in the New York Times article “Red Hook, Brooklyn, on the Rebound,” published on October 12, 2016. Due to its high concentration of concrete and cement, the ground in Red Hook is mostly impermeable to water which causes mass flooding during storm surges.

The area is being redeveloped to counteract this problem, however that is causing a problem in and of itself. With 22 townhouses underway, as well as 70 new condos, the area is slowly being gentrified. This is a huge problem for the roughly 10,000 residents that live in subsidized rentals at Red Hook Houses. On top of that, most solution being implemented to handle the excess of water employ grey infrastructure, which, as we know, is really just paint over the cracks as well as non-sustainable. These are exactly the problems we tackle in our project, to be presented at the Macaulay building.

The Champagne of Drinking Water

While New York City’s driving water is famous for its pristine taste, it may not be “Champagne of drinking water” as its referred too. New York is still at the better half when it comes to drinking water in the nation. The city ranked 13th place among the 100 metropolitan areas included in the EWG’s most current rankings. The rankings are based on the amount of chemicals detected pollutants in the water. But where does the city’s drinking water come from? Ninety percent of the water comes from the Catskill Mountains where waters from tributary rivers collect in 19 reservoirs. The other 10% comes from smaller watersheds in Westchester and Rye.

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26th Ward

The combined sewer overflow of storm water is not properly managed in the 26th Ward. It is the leading cause of water pollution. 
Currently, an estimated 189 million gallons of raw sewage overflows annually into the Jamaica Bay. Combined Sewer Overflow is storm water that falls on roofs, streets and sidewalks, in addition to wastewater from homes and businesses, is carried through the sewer system to treatment plants. 
About 50% of land in the 26th Ward is used for residential purposes . The Sewer shed takes up 5,575 acres- smallest sewer shed in Jamaica Bay area which is not large enough to tackle CSO.
 About 70% of land in 26th Ward area is impervious and 30% pervious. A possible solution to the 26th ward is the implementation for a grey green infrastructure. More specifically, a storage tunnel interception that can contain CSO’s and  impervious ground that can slow down infiltration into the system without increasing runoff.

Amsterdam’s “Green” Light Festival

Art has always been a medium to spread a message, raise awareness, express your inner thoughts, and make a statement. The medium is diverse, ranging from traditional paintings and sculptures, to cinematographic interpretive videos. From late 2015 to early 2016, Amsterdam held a large scale light festival, with bright artworks made on the theme of “Friendship.” The event is held annually, with a different theme each year, and the whole city participates in it. The artworks are visible wherever you go, especially enthralling when taking the famous boat ride on the city’s canals. During this particular event, 35 site-specific artworks were displayed throughout the city and featured work from both local and international artists. Most importantly, the entire project ran entirely on renewable energy and 95% of the lights were low-energy LED lights (Lisa).

This event not only lit up the city and promoted the theme of unity and integration throughout the world, but also helped shed light to the importance of sustainability and “being green” in all the work we do, even in creating artwork. Through art, even if the light festival is not based on the theme of sustainability, it utilized sustainable practices to create these masterpieces. This allows for the artwork to raise awareness on the importance of protecting the environment and incorporating the idea of environmental protection into our daily living and infrastructure projects in the future.

Flood Protection Measures Finally Taken by Lower Manhattan

After Hurricane Sandy and the surfacing of the detrimental effects of how humans have changed the climate, it seems that New York City has finally understood the importance of taking precautions to one of its biggest storm water management problem: flooding. After Sandy had “absolutely devastated” Lower Manhattan, as described by the director of the Mayor’s Office of Recovery and Resiliency (Durkin), the city announced that it will be spending 100 million dollars to build a flood protection system, including levees, flood walls, and green spaces to soak up storm water through creation of parks. Similar measures are going to be carried out in the Lower East Side as well. The city is utilizing engineering firms and design teams to attempt to raise elevation levels along the coast and add the parks to not only help the flood issue but also to make it more neighborhood-friendly.

This project highlights the importance of understanding the mistakes humans have made by building their progress in industrialization without taking into account the effects it will have on the environment. The changes we have made in the climate are now becoming aware to us, especially in how it will negatively affect us. The rise in sea levels and stronger storms will exacerbate the flooding problem we already have in New York City Lower Manhattan, and now the city is making a stand to install precautions, even utilizing green infrastructure through the creation of extra parkland. Now that we are at the brink of actual catastrophe, we start to implement these changes and understand that the effects of the climate changes will be detrimental enough to “shut down the city” (Durkin).