Overdevelopment hath wrought horrible flooding

@NY1 this flooding in Queens is no joke 😭😭😭😭 #thunderstorm #flooding #63rddrive pic.twitter.com/oGPngAztmT

— Nicole Bermeo (@nicksb24b) August 8, 2018

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".

Brooklyn CB is fighting back against illegal curb cuts

From Brooklyn Daily:

The mayor must step in to force city agencies to crack down on selfish Bensonhurst homeowners who take away already-scarce street parking spots by illegally cutting their curbs and paving their front lawns into driveways, according to the neighborhood’s district manager.

“The [Buildings] violations are all bark, no bite,” said Marnee Elias-Pavia.

Pavia sent Hizzoner Community Board 11’s recommendations for how agencies should punish offending homeowners in an April 18 letter after board members unanimously adopted the resolution to do so at its April 12 general meeting. In the letter, Pavia outlined the decades-old problem and its environmental impact — made worse by the fact that the Federal Emergency Management Agency classified some affected areas as particularly susceptible to flooding, which the proliferation of concrete and lack of grass promotes, she wrote.

“Our topography creates a bowl effect and prevents tidal and storm water absorption,” she wrote. “We must address the lack of absorption created by the removal of front yards in the northern portion of the district to increase absorption and resiliency.”

CB11 demands that the buildings agency make inspecting and even re-inspecting properties with alleged illegal curb cuts and driveways a higher priority — especially for flood zones — and to notify the community board when properties receive violations for illegal curb cuts or driveways. The letter also wants the city to improve inter-agency communication by having the Department of Buildings coordinate with agencies in charge of roads, parks and environmental concerns.

“There needs to be a sharing of information [among the agencies] — there’s an environmental impact, so the Department of Buildings should be sharing with the Parks Department,

Pavia also wrote that the city should increase and enforce fines for violations, push homeowners to use permeable pavements on legitimate driveways to help drain stormwater, and require homeowners to fix curb-cut violations before selling their properties — among other suggestions.

When it rains, it floods in Bayside

From NBC:

Residents in Bayside, Queens, says paving crews did such a poor job resurfacing roads that it now regularly floods when it rains. Roseanne Colletti reports.

Since everything is covered with cement...

From DNA Info:

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?

DEP, where are you?

This wonderful site is located at Onderdonk Ave and Suydam Street. It appears that metal thieves stole the original curb protector and it was replaced with concrete, which has been destroyed by something. This is just a mess.

DEP looking to recycle toilets

From the Queens Courier:

The Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) is looking for contractors to crush 200,000 toilets so the city can put the porcelain bits to other uses.

The DEP announced in May of this year that it is launching a $23 million program to replace 200,000 inefficient toilets in up to 10,000 buildings across the five boroughs. An inefficient toilet can use up to five gallons of water per flush, compared to a high-efficiency toilet, which uses only 1.28 gallons or less per flush.

But what to do with all the old fixtures?

The city intends to use the crushed porcelain in the reconstruction of sidewalks and bioswales, landscaped areas built to absorb storm water.

The porcelain from the toilets will create a flat, compact layer on which the city can lay the concrete for the sidewalk, according to Christopher Gilbride, a DEP spokesman. It will also replace the crushed stone in bioswales.

Just leave mine be, please.

Pipes aplenty

Lots of homeowners have pipes running from their basements to the outside of their houses.
Excessive paving means the water has nowhere to go but the basement, and then when it's pumped out, it has nowhere to go but the street.
This contributes to the overburdening of the sewer system.

"Storm proof" home proposed for Breezy Point

From the Daily News:

A pair of Australian architects believe they have designed a storm-resistant home of the future in Breezy Point.

The so-called “Bayside Bunker,” a prefab, solar-powered home with debris-proof windows by designers Rayne Fouche and Larissa Searle, bested 19 other submissions to win The Urban Green Council’s R3Build competition Wednesday night.

“We could, in many ways, relate to the geographic character of Breezy Point and the extreme weather conditions,” said Fouche, who with Searle graduated from the University of Queensland. “Living on the east coast of Australia, we have seen extreme floods and coastal erosions, which have destroyed homes and swallowed front yards.”

Designers were asked to envision homes that would fit in the Hurricane Sandy-battered Rockaway neighborhood, where hundreds of structures were destroyed by fire and flood waters.

Tall fences sometimes make bad neighbors

FYI.
Homeowners continue to flaunt the local laws on fence height as well as paving of landscape within properties.

On the paving matter, an established local law on allowable % open space and landscape was intended to decrease storm water run-off into catch basins during high rain events. If you recall the numerous street flooding of past years in large part contributed to by large-scale conversion of pervious surfaces to impervious surfaces where storm water run-off overburdened catch basins.

Little has changed other than repeat annual increases in our sewer and water fees to fund new costly NYC DEP flood control projects, and little enforcement of these violators.

NYC DOB 311 Complaint Service Request obtained on-line
for 140-20 Poplar Ave. Attached a few photos of the violations, pre and post construction

1. Violation of the paving law. Removal of all lawn area / greenspace by full paving of front, side and possibly rear yard.

Service Request #: C1-1-922270731
Date Submitted: 12/29/13 10:53:00 AM
Request Type:
Details: Residential Space

2. Violation of the 4-ft fence height law.

Service Request #: C1-1-922270621
Date Submitted: 12/29/13 10:42:38 AM
Request Type:
Details: Residential Space

Foundations not actually stronger than the storm

From the Brooklyn Paper:

Retreating floodwaters from the superstorm created underground air pockets just waiting to become sinkholes beneath streets, buildings and backyards across Southern Brooklyn, and most people aren’t aware of the danger under their feet, say local architects and companies specializing in subterranean scans.

“From Seagate to Manhattan Beach, a lot of these building’s foundations have been scoured,” said architect Walter Maffei, “and no one knows about it.”

According to Maffei, any structure that suffered severe flooding as a result of October’s hurricane is liable to have lost some of the sediment beneath its foundation as the water rapidly withdrew into the ocean, taking tons of soil with it.

“When you build a sand castle, everybody knows the water comes in relatively slowly, but when it goes out, it moves quickly and takes everything with it,” the architect explained. “A lot of scouring occurs at the foundation level, or below.”

Underground voids, or air pockets, can undermine the foundations of buildings and city infrastructure such as roadways. This means sink holes and structural stability is a big concern and potential hazard for people living in Red Hook and southern Brooklyn, according to Lou Neos, a technician at Ameriscan, which specializes in ground penetrating radar.

“It’s all over, wherever there was severe damage from Sandy,” said Neos, who has found voids underneath buildings in Sheepshead Bay and Brighton Beach. “If there’s another storm, people might lose their whole house because of a void.”

Yes, let's recall the previous Rockaway sinkhole debacle.

Bring on the bioswales!

From the Queens Chronicle:

If you have driven around Rego Park, Forest Hills or even College Point this week, you may have noticed large blue trucks drilling into the roads.

These trucks are not repairing street damage or straightening sidewalks, they are being used for geotechnical investigative work in preparation for citywide bioswale installations.
Bioswales are landscape elements designed to remove pollution and minor flooding from storm water runoff.

They consist of a drainage course with sloped sides. Vegetation and compost fill in the space.

“Essentially they are a measure of keeping storm water out of waterways,” Department of Environmental Protection spokesman Edward Timbers said. “They won’t solve the problem entirely but are more of an added measure.”

While these installations will improve street drainage, they are not designed to prevent street flooding, a problem many residents of Forest Hills, Maspeth, Glendale face.

With the new system, storm water is absorbed by the sandy soil that sits on the swale surface and seeps into the ground underneath in a process called infiltration until it reaches a stone layer underneath.

The water is then absorbed by the trees and vegetation in the swale where it is then released into the air as water vapor in a process called evapotranspiration.

Over the next few years, at least 100 of these swales will be placed throughout the borough. Together, they are expected to reduce the amount of runoff that filters into Flushing Bay.

New Bloomberg strategy: propose things that will never happen

From the Politicker:

Mayor Michael Bloomberg outlined a nearly $20 billion master plan Tuesday to shield the city from future Hurricane Sandys, complete with levees, sand dunes, bulkheads, flood walls and a proposed “Seaport City.”

The plan calls for the installation of removable “adaptable floodwalls” in riverfront locations across the city, including Hunts Point in the Bronx, along the East Harlem waterfront, the Lower East Side and the Financial District, as well as a new levee and floodwall system along the East Shore of Staten Island, with barriers that could rise as high as 15 to 20 feet.

The proposal, which the mayor is set to outline in a major speech at Brooklyn Navy’s Yard’s Sandy-damaged Duggal Greenhouse, also calls for the construction of a new dune systems in Staten Island and the Rockaway Peninsula, with a “double dune” planned for Breezy Point.

While the mayor has less than seven months left in office, he also proposed building a new “Seaport City” on the east side of Manhattan, similar to the existing Battery Park City near the Financial District. The new development, which could stretch all the way to Brooklyn, would be built on “a multi-purpose levee with raised edge elevations,” designed to protect the East River shoreline south of the Brooklyn Bridge, while creating a new mini-neighborhood.

Mr. Bloomberg, who has previously said that a sea wall plan was “not practical,” also wants to build a storm surge barrier at Newtown Creek and along Coney Island Creek, and announced plans to work with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to study the feasibility adding “surge barriers” across the mouth of Jamaica Bay to protect communities in Queens.

Meanwhile, people are getting creamed with insurance premiums and building costs.

Just when you thought all of Greenpoint had been developed...

From Crains:

A slumbering giant of a project is about to reawaken on the banks of Newtown Creek in north Brooklyn. Park Tower Group is set to unveil its latest plans for a huge 22-acre development at the northern tip of Greenpoint at a public meeting Monday.

The plan calls for 5,500 apartments spread among as many as two dozen buildings, including 10 luxury towers of 30 to 40 stories. Planning for the development began more than a decade ago and pre-dates the contentious Williamsburg-Greenpoint rezoning that spawned a building boom and thousands of new apartments. After the 2005 rezoning, Park Tower spent a number of years honing its plan along more than a half-mile of waterfront. But just as the developer was preparing to build, the recession hit.

"It's been challenging for anything to occur, but now the market is very strong," said Park Tower Vice President Al Bradshaw.

The developer hopes to break ground on the first tower sometime in December or January. Beginning in June, the plan will have to go through the six-month public-review process. Financing has yet to be secured, although Mr. Bradshaw said he is "in advanced discussions with a number of lenders."

The public review has little to do with the towers, which could be built as of right, thanks to the rezoning, and has more to do with modifications to the original plan. Park Tower will incorporate a city-owned parcel and build as many as 431 affordable-housing units the Bloomberg administration promised to add as part of the rezoning. This is in addition to nearly 1,000 units of affordable housing already planned for the site.

The site must also be re-rezoned because Park Tower has agreed to provide space for a school, which the city would build. The open space also is being reconfigured to better deal with potential storm surges, including raising the public promenade.

Must...keep...building!

From the Huffington Post:

In a neighborhood of Staten Island where Hurricane Sandy flooded homes, swept boats into the streets, and caused at least two deaths, builders have already resumed construction on a series of new houses, raising concerns among residents who have long tried to halt development in the area.

Many residents fear that the ongoing development of the shorefront might make the area even more vulnerable to storms, in part by directing water away from the new properties and toward older, weaker buildings. "We used to have that land to absorb water," Carol Zirngibl, a longtime community advocate, said in Crescent Beach on Tuesday, looking at a construction area where workers were hammering together the wooden frames of at least five homes. "We don't have that anymore."

Eileen Monreale, a member of the coalition's steering committee, called for the city to incorporate the property into its plans for a nearby waterfront park, and asked for a temporary moratorium on building in Staten Island until the city came up with a "comprehensive plan" for developing the borough.

In her testimony, Monreale specifically noted that the proposed building site was located in what the Federal Emergency Management Agency had designated as a dangerous flood zone and warned that the planned development "could endanger life and property." (She also discussed Staten Island's notoriously congested roads and argued that overdevelopment would harm the borough's "beautiful waterfront and wildlife.")

But the City Planning Department ruled that the developers could go ahead with a scaled-down version of their original plan, and although the city adopted a new set of zoning rules for Staten Island in 2004, it didn't specifically prohibit builders from putting up homes in the borough's most vulnerable waterfront areas.

A decade after that hearing, workers are now erecting the last of the scores of houses that have gone up as part of Sailor's Key.

For Zirngibl and her neighbors, fresh memories of Sandy has also revived concerns about a development that has yet to be built -- a three-story, 87-unit residence for people over the age of 55, poised to go up on an undeveloped plot of land overlooking the sea.

In June 2011, the local community board voted against the plan, and the Department of City Planning denied the builders' application for a permit. But in February 2012, another city department -- the Board of Standards and Appeals -- ruled that the development wouldn't hurt the neighborhood, and Rampulla Associates Architects, the architecture firm representing the developers, was allowed to proceed.

Bloomberg and Quinn think waterfront development a great idea

From the NY Observer:

We know many people are not leaving the evacuation zone, and that many of them got there in the first place thanks to developments fostered by the Bloomberg administration. At his morning's briefing, The Observer asked the mayor if it was wise to continue encouraging development in these low-lying areas, like the Williamsburg and Queens waterfront, even along the fetid Gowanus Canal, which the mayor pushed to rezone. The mayor saw no reason to change course.

"People like to live in low-lying areas on the beach, it's attractive," Mayor Bloomberg said. "People pay more, generally, to be closer to the water even though you could argue they should pay less because it's more dangerous. But people are willing to run the risk."

Even as his administration encourages development in these areas, he did not believe it was necessary to undertake major infrastructure investments that could mitigate these storm surges.

Council Speaker Christine Quinn stepped in to argue that the city has already done a considerable amount to strengthen its built environment in the face of climate change and rising sea levels.

Hoped-for greenstreets put on hold

From the Queens Courier:

A state senator scolded the city for making changes to a green program that has left some turf in his district deserted.

Unused road areas have been turned into leafy green spaces since 1996, under the city Department of Parks and Recreation’s Greenstreets program, but now only pieces of land in flood-prone areas are being considered by the agency.

State Senator Tony Avella said the “abrupt” modifications to the program’s initiative has led the Parks Department to reject many requests made from northeast Queens residents who had hoped to have blights near their homes beautified.

“Unfortunately, with this new, restrictive criteria that [the Parks Department] has instituted, additional locations will be rejected,” Avella said, adding that he had secured several Greenstreets throughout his district, including ones along Francis Lewis Boulevard. “As a result, these locations continue to deteriorate and become blights in the neighborhood.”

But the program’s priorities now lie beyond surface-level aesthetics, according to the Parks Department, which in 2010 changed Greenstreets’ focus to capturing storm water, reducing the burden on the city’s sewer system. They are only now constructed where they are “absolutely necessary,” a spokesperson said.

Alley Creek to be less crappy

From the Times Ledger:

A newly completed sewer facility in Bayside will keep the water in northeast Queens cleaner and its streets dryer.

Last week, the commissioner of the city Department of Environmental Protection announced the completion of the Alley Creek Combined Sewer Overflow Facility, which will reduce the amount of pollutants discharged into Alley Creek and Little Neck Bay.

“The completion of the Alley Creek CSO Facility is a major step forward in our efforts to improve harbor water quality, especially in northeast Queens,” DEP Commissioner Cas Holloway wrote in a statement.

The city’s waste and stormwater systems are integrated with one another, and when heavy rains push the system beyond capacity, it has to discharge the mix, which can be detrimental to the flora and fauna that populate the waterways.

When the two concrete barrels of the new retention facility overflow during large storm events, the adjacent storage tanks have the capacity to store up to 5 million gallons. According to the DEP, this decreases the overall volume of combined overflows discharged into Alley Creek by about 54 percent each year.

The DEP also rehabilitated the Old Douglaston Pump Station, which now has the capacity to pump more than 80 million gallons of wastewater a day from the Alley Creek CSO to the Tallman Island Wastewater Treatment Plant for treatment and disinfection.

New stormwater filter in Ozone Park

From the Daily News:

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.

That's kind of funny considering that the City is developing wetlands in Brooklyn and Staten Island and wants to pave over the Ridgewood Reservoir.

Why green yards are important

From the Wall Street Journal:

New York City, in the public imagination, is a land without yards. The relative scarcity of private residential green spaces is one of the many ways home life in the densely-packed city is thought to differ from the spacious suburbs.

So it’s something of a shock to learn that residential yards make up 27% percent of the city’s total area — and that’s not counting parks or the greenery found adjacent to sidewalks or on street medians. That finding comes from the work of a group called Sustainable Yards, whose founder, Evan Mason, used satellite images to tally the yard space in all five boroughs.

Mason describes her research, conducted with help from the City University of New York, in an interview with science blogger Emily Anthes. The discussion hits on the importance of these yard spaces, including ways they can help the city save money. Green yards, which absorb rain and moisture, are better than concrete from an economic view, Mason explains:

Very simply said: Soil is good. It costs $127 a gallon to treat water in our water treatment system. So what we’ve done is actually gone into as many backyards as we can in one particular block. With CUNY, we’re actually measuring the square footage, how much is permeable, how much is impermeable. So if a whole set of backyards, is, say, 90 percent permeable, then you can start making a calculation of how many gallons are diverted from the water treatment system and how much money that saves the city.

This is technically not true. Homeowners must, by law, maintain storm water runoff on their own property. By obeying the law, they aren't "saving" the City a dime. People who pave over their yards are in effect breaking the law, are the ones who are overburdening the sewer system, costing the City money and should be fined accordingly.