Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Help for chronic flooding?

From the Daily News:

The city is launching a new pilot project to help ease chronic flooding problems in southeast Queens.

Two reverse seepage basins will be installed along Linden Blvd. at 155th St. and 165th St., according to Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Carter Strickland.

“We could get 2 million gallons of water a day from each of these,” Strickland told Queens Borough President Helen Marshall and community board members on Monday. “And it doesn’t require a lot of pumping.”

People who live in those neighborhoods have long complained about flooding.

A large part of the problem stems from the fact that residents who used to receive water through the Jamaica Water Supply are now serviced by the city system.

“The water table is so high because they are not pumping water anymore,” said City Councilman Leroy Comrie (D-St. Albans).

Strickland said the city is looking into pumping some of the groundwater from the old wells into the sewers and Jamaica Bay. But that option is costly and requires state and federal approvals.

Strickland also pointed out that some of the blockages across the system are due to residential dumping of grease.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

This is so typical, how they ignore the consequences of their grand schemes. Like when they buried the Flushing River, only to stink up the bay through stangnancy.