Wednesday, August 8, 2018

Overdevelopment hath wrought horrible flooding


When you pave just about everything over, and fail to upgrade infrastructure, you get a foot of water flowing across streets and into basements. This isn't a hard concept to understand. Yet we continue down that road, and call it "progress".

18 comments:

Anonymous said...

DEP is saying it was a water main rupture.

Anonymous said...

But, of course!
And who will put a stop on overdevelopment?
NOBODY without money or power.
Queens Civic Congress?
Hmmm!

Anonymous said...

I was out driving in the worst part of this horrible storm, the likes of which I haven't seen for 20 years. Lots of people were pulling over to wait it out by the curb, often not parking parallel and sticking out into the left or right lane, making it even more hazardous to drive. The fact that NYC has let its lane markings wear away without replacement and is not using reflective paint to paint them made the driving even more hazardous. You had to be on the top of your driving game to be able to navigate between lanes of traffic, plastic traffic barriers, and parked cars, all with several inches of swirling dark water to drive through. You had to be careful not to drive too fast through deeply flooded areas lest you stall out. Meanwhile, lightning was crashing and thunder was booming over and over again. The rain pummeled the tops of cars; it sounded like someone firing pebbles at the top of your car. Usually, a heavy rainstorm passes in a short while, but as soon as one passed, another violent storm stepped up to take its place, lasting over an hour or more. I hope not to repeat this experience any time soon.

Anonymous said...

Got to pet blame where it is due - not the pols, good god not the mayor, its the civic culture of Queens that has done nothing to fight for communities.

All you do is have the pols give you marching orders, as they fund your coffee klatches, swear you into office, and send underlings to spy on your whining.

Anonymous said...

I don't see the problem. A free car wash every time it storms.

Anonymous said...

Climate change is just as much a culprit as development.

Anonymous said...

This is absolutely true and the continued over-development and the deferred maintenance otherwise know "kicking the can down the road" combined with clearly more intensive storms with heavier rains is a bad combination.

Tony Notaro said...

Gotta make way for third worlders

Misc BS said...

Of course, the paving over of front yards for parking has no effect on how much water runs into the streets and/or then into basements.
With or without Curb Cuts - legal or not (with most being illegal) - this is a problem.

Anonymous said...

@Anonymous Anonymous said...
"Climate change is just as much a culprit as development."
Yes but man made ! https://www.geoengineeringwatch.org/

TommyR said...

Broken main, yards and green spaces can only absorb so much, would've done nothing in such a situation (although I'd prefer less concrete and paving everywhere in any case). This flooding is climatic change and poorly maintained drainage infrastructure looking you in the face.

This area looked much the same for decades on decades...going back to Cord Meyer developing the boulevard corridor from a "Real Good" place all the way through Whitepot.

Anonymous said...

All over the country. Take away vegetation and the water just flows and flows.

Anonymous said...

Ease up on the "climate change" folks.
First off, the climate has always "changed",
during Roman times the ports were much farther inland,
ruins in those areas prove that water levels were much higher.
The middle ages saw a mini-ice age where England was frozen solid, including
the Thames river.

Millions of years ago the mid-west was a shallow ocean full
of nightmarish creatures with mouths even bigger than whiny Democrats.

Billions of years ago, even Oxygen was a toxic pollutant to burgeoning single-celled life forms used to anaerobic conditions.

The point is; the climate has always changed and will continue to do so with or without man's help.

That being said,
One of the biggest claims of climate change activists has always been that hurricane activity will necessarily increase with a heating planet.
Go and google "Total Accumulated Cyclonic Energy" graphs and you will be surprised to discover that the trend over the past 30 years is actually DOWN on a global average.

Floods and fires here and there are business as usual when it comes to an indifferent mother nature.
Stick to the science to guide you and assuage the tendency to personalize normal natural phenomena.

Harry Haller

JQ LLC said...

It's funny how when the city/de Faustio forced those bike lanes on the boulevard that they didn't put any green space or vegetation next to it like the beautiful bike lanes on the Hudson by Greenwich Village and Chelsea Piers.

Silly and bitter as that sounds, the extreme storms from the current effects of climate change, even in it's brevity is enough to put the city's infrastructure in peril and transit at a standstill.

Anonymous said...

We need more bioswales!!!

Anonymous said...

@ Harry Haller
So why do I see Chemtrails every day in NYC ?

Anonymous said...

This is not climate change. This is the overdevelopment in the area stressing the electrical grids and sewer systems. Keep packing us in like sardines. A simple rain event causes so much flooding. So much for the rain gardens in the area too. Some are flooded to the top and can’t hold all this water.
How about putting back the grass and trees and getting rid of the cement all over too.

Anonymous said...

@Anonymous said...
"This is not climate change."
Are kidding me ? Look around the globe and see all the changes. Weather is not only local. It's global climate change with man made manipulation. Look up and see the Chem-trails for yourself.