The city is building more than 300 rain gardens on streets in western Queens, part of a $7.3 million project to help curb pollution flowing into nearby Newtown Creek, according to the Department of Environmental Protection.
The 321 gardens — also known as bioswales — are being built in Sunnyside, Maspeth and Ridgewood, largely clustered east of the Kosciuszko Bridge and in neighborhoods around the Queens-Midtown Expressway in Queens Community Boards 2 and 5.
Built into the sidewalks, the gardens are designed to collect and absorb rain that would otherwise go into the sewer system, potentially overwhelming the city's wastewater treatment plants and overflowing into local waterways, including Newtown Creek, a notoriously polluted Superfund site.
And why is there so much runoff into the Creek?
17 comments:
Do these guys ever do the math? The combined footprint of these (probably expensive) little patches won't but capture a tiny sliver of a percentage of the total runoff. I wonder how much was paid to some connected consultancy to determine that replacing a few spare patches of sidewalk with gardening really makes a difference.
And who will maintain them???
They installed them in Brownsville Brooklyn. They look great for a week but no one maintains them. The plants die, and the pits fill with garbage and stagnant water. It's a waste of money unless they will be maintained at least once a week.
That is what happens when you appeal to hipshits thinking the clueless will sustain your stupid fantasies of a political hack.
The hipshits will overnite pull up stakes and move to the rustbelt factories getting artspaces and techcenters for pennies and old Victorians for a few grand.
All we will be left is the towers paid for with the hot money of indulgent cosmopolitans from behind the iron curtain and 3rd world riff raff to indulge their every whim.
These were also installed by the Gowanus Canal.
You know the only reason I believe that they are installing these things is not because they are environmentally good, but to act as sort of an air freshener. Like if you plugged in a glade effects or sprayed febreze in a Call-A-Head. Or a douche used by crack whore.
I'm not nor have I ever been appointed to be a city planner, but a better way to improve the air and remove any toxicity in those cesspools would have been to clean up the superfund sites before over-developing there. Or even fabricating high property and rental speculation and the hotness and trendiness of the areas too.
How about plain old common sense. NO more removing yards from homes period. No more building to the edge of the perimeter, period. I know a law was passed, several years ago and a lame one at that where a new house/building much have a certain percentage of green (very little) but even that does not happen, because it is not ENFORCED. Many of our quality of life issues are due to NO ENFORCEMENT. So we waste money on shit like this, which does really nothing, except make someone money, we pass bills where laws already exist and all the other bullshit.
There is no secret in running a large city, you just need smart leadership, non-corrupt agencies and oversight and cut out all the fucking wasted fat.
Exactly Joe. Just enforce all the laws that exist and Queens would be a better place.
Perfect example of what happens to Bioswales,especially in places like Jamaica>
https://cleanupjamaicaqueens.wordpress.com/2016/01/02/major-downtown-jamaica-garbage-pile-up-in-flower-bed-next-to-offices-of-community-board-12-greater-jamaica-development-corp-continues/garbage-1-2-15-024/#main
https://cleanupjamaicaqueens.wordpress.com/2015/10/10/so-much-for-jamaicas-nicest-cleanest-block-at-161st-in-downtown-inappropriate-garbage-dumping/garbage10-10-15-007/#main
While I am all for anything that will help with all the sewage entering into our waterways, I've seen a few of the bioswales and they are going to be a problem.They look like a tree pit and have the three sided guards to deter pedestrians from falling in but they are sunken in to catch water and people getting in and out of their cars will be falling into a hole.I see law suits.
This is some of the most stupid bullshit I can think of. In what bizarro world does this make sense? We have severely polluted soil surrounding really really polluted water ways and we believe that making exposed dirt holes in the sidewalk that will do a really good job of collecting dog shit and human vomit will somehow collect beautiful rain water and then filter it through the polluted soil which will clean up the really fucked up water way.
Genius, simply genius. Please take more of my tax money for this shit.
Thanks for the new homes for me and my family.
Bzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz..........................
http://www.wired.com/1994/07/alt-pave/
So when a bioswale is installed, maintenance becomes the responsibility of the home/propertyowner that the bioswale is sited IFO? Will DEP or Sanitation write tickets enforcing maintenance?
Joe Moretti, FYI, those links are photos of tree pots, not bioswales but the maintenance question still applies.
http://www.nyc.gov/html/dep/pdf/green_infrastructure/bioswalecare_handbook.pdf
Why do I hear 'Bioswale!' sung to the tune of 'Monorail!'?
Heres an idea.clean: the weeds and loosen the soil in tree pits.they absorb plenty....but not when the soil is compacted.
Or when idiots concrete over it - all the way up to the bole of the tree.
What is really sad about this effort and the comments here are that bioswales are actually really needed. Except we need about a few thousand more than will ever be proposed along with sea walls, berms, regulation against paving existing lawns and woodeded areas and many millions of dollars to take care of it.
There is a reason roads were built on the coastlines instead of luxury apartments, they have been cyclically flooding since this was the land of the Lenope and Esopus. Now that the unfettered craze to build as much as possible as fast as possible has gone into full swing you suddenly have to build all this environmental remediation infrastructure instead of just closing a few roads.
No one is going to do it right that is for sure.
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