Water main break floods the streets around the Queensbridge Houses again

Update

There is an ignorant narrative going around from urbanish jerkoffs that poor people and people who live near Manhattan don't drive cars. This should kill that dumbass noise

How NYC protects the environment

From Brooklyn Daily:

The state has approved a permit for the city to pour up to 7.2 million gallons of 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 permit allows the city to overlook nearly a dozen heavy metals found in the water because only small amounts were discovered in the creek, and state officials say locals have nothing to fear because Coney creek flows into Gravesend Bay, which will dilute the pollutants. But with millions of gallons gushing into the inlet each day for years, experts and locals fear that the contaminates could amass to dangerous levels, and aren’t buying the state’s argument that being connected to a large body of water will mitigate the risks.

The project being run by the Economic Development Corporation will upgrade aging water mains and storm and sanitary sewers in an area bounded by W. 17th and W. 22nd streets from Neptune Avenue to the Boardwalk. Shovels are expected to hit the ground this summer and the project will last for roughly two years — with an embargo on Surf Avenue construction from May 15 to Sept. 15 so as not to clash with the swell of beach-goers, according to city records.

But to keep the construction site dry, the city applied for a State Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit to “dewater” contaminated groundwater from several sites by pumping it into Coney Island Creek — where people swim, students routinely wade for city-run education programs, and some congregations use the waters for religious rites such as baptisms.

Contractors abandon Centreville sewer project

Joanne Cutitto

From the Queens Chronicle:

Workers at the Albert Road sewer project in the Centreville section of Ozone Park have not been spotted on site for close to a month, because they’ve been pulled for another job elsewhere.

While some area residents joked they’re enjoying the peace and quiet, they’re also fuming because the neighborhood has been left a mess by the workers there.

“People now have to live with the mess for a longer term than they should have to,” said Ozone Park Civic Association Howie Kamph. “It’s not fair to the residents.”

A Chronicle reporter on Monday saw streets ripped up and uneven, water mains exposed to the elements, and cones — which looked to be covering a pothole — left in the middle of the street.

“It looks like a third-world country,” said resident Joanne Cutitto. “It’s like there’s no pride in their workmanship.”

The Department of Design and Construction did not respond to multiple requests for comment on this story — including if they’re chasing down the contractor, Maspeth Supply, to finish the taxpayer-funded work in the time laid out in the contract.

A person answering the phones at Maspeth Supply — which, according to city records, has received hundreds of millions of dollars in city contracts for water main and sewer work — said to send an email to the company’s owner, which was not responded to by press time.

Major construction coming to Main Street

From DNA Info:

The city is launching a nearly $8 million project to widen bustling Main Street, one of the busiest pedestrian corridors in the five boroughs, officials said.

The roadway will also be resurfaced and rebuilt, and manholes, fire hydrants, sewers and water mains will be replaced — the first overhaul in two decades, according to officials.

During the construction project — which begins Monday, July 25, and will last approximately a year — the community will experience inconveniences and changes, Councilman Peter Koo warned.

But the major revamp will have more long-term benefits to everyone, including adding as much as 8 feet of space on some sidewalks, he said.

CIP bridge springs a leak

Arthur Pace

From the Times Ledger:

A Whitestone man is calling out the city Department of Environmental Protection for not aggressively handling water leak problems at his home.

Arthur Pace, 53, said that in March, his wife was in the backyard of their home at 146-45 13th Ave. when she heard water spewing out of the abutment that supports the bridge onto the Cross Island Parkway. The backyard is near the bridge.

She called 311 and was referred to the Fire Department, which came and said the DEP would have to fix the problem.

Between March and the middle of August, Pace has called 311 eight times. He said that although the DEP has sent workers to address the problem, they did not do much to fix it except for shutting off the valves on either side of the bridge.

Water was running into Pace’s driveway and the saturated soil caused cracks in the sidewalk. He also noted that cars often use the middle lane instead of the exit lane to miss the water. And people have been walking in the streets to avoid the sidewalks.

Two weeks ago, DEP workers came to the home, but they said the contractor was busy in the Bronx, Pace said.

Water main break causes problem in Hamilton Beach

Joe Thompson

From the Queens Courier:

A continuous stream of water has been flowing onto one Hamilton Beach street for over six days due to a water main break, causing flooding along the thoroughfare that turns into sheets of ice when temperatures dip below freezing.

“It’s been six days,” said Roger Gendron, president of the Hamilton Beach Civic Association. “I don’t understand why it is taking so long to fix. In all honesty I just feel like this is the way the city treats Hamilton Beach.”

On Feb. 23, water from the break, which is located directly in the middle of the First Street in Hamilton Beach, was gushing from cracks in the asphalt down toward 104th Street and into a catch basin. But now with temperatures set to plunge well below freezing again Monday night, Gendron is concerned about potentially hazardous conditions if the city doesn’t fix the problem.

The break was first noticed on Feb. 17 by Joe Thompson of the Howard Beach Civilian Observation Patrol during his nightly tour. He observed the water coming out of the ground and turning into ice due to the cold weather that night. He immediately filed a 311 report but the only response from the city, up to this point, was a sanitation truck dispatched on Feb. 18 to salt the road in order to break up some of the ice.

Who needs infrastructure upgrades?

From the Daily News:

An elderly woman was hospitalized after a busted water main sent thousands of gallons of water pouring into the street and flooding homes in Queens early Saturday, officials and residents said.

The flooding impacted 100 homes, according to fire officials, and cracked off slabs of sidewalk on 23rd St. near 24th Dr. in Astoria.

Emergency responders brought the woman to Elmhurst Hospital as a precaution after her home filled with about three feet of water, neighbors and fire officials said

Zach Borst, 29, was coming up around 4 a.m. when he saw the brown water gushing out of a hole in the sidewalk where Con Edison had been working early this week.

"It was like a geyser. It was literally just rushing out, thousands of gallons of water," he said. "It was chaos. A total deluge."

Residents say the busted main let loose a torrent for about two hours until the water was shut off around 6:30 a.m.

DEP ignores reported water leak

"Hi, I live on 170 street between Union Turnpike and 81st ave in Jamaica. Across the street from St Johns campus. It was first noticed that the new water main was broken. A neighbor put in a service request with 311 they closed it stating they couldn't find the leak. I noticed the leak on Wed 9/17 and put in a service request with 311 which as of tonight is still pending. I feel this is just total incompetence of the DEP to leave a water main broken and leaking for at least 4 days that we know of. Attaching a video of the leak. Maybe you could shame these incompetent people at the DEP into doing their jobs. The indifference of this department is beyond belief.

Thought this might be of interest to you." - anonymous

Water main work to begin in Briarwood

From the Queens Courier:

Officials from the Department of Design Construction recently began construction of a $15 million water main project that will replace nearly century-old pipes in Briarwood, and explained the plan to residents on Thursday in a community meeting.

The project stretches from 84th Road and 164th Street and will end at Hillside Avenue and Queens Blvd. The city’s water pipes, which have been in place since the 1920s according to a DDC representative, will be replaced with larger new ones, accommodating for the population growth in the last century.

The current pipes, some which are six inches in diameter and others that are eight inches, will be expanded to eight and 12-inch pipes respectively. The expanded diameter will also allow the opportunity to increase water pressure, DDC officials said.

Work on the pipes started a few weeks ago and will continue until November 2015. Workers will remove and replace pipes one block at a time during the year.

City wants owner to pay for sewer line it broke

From the NY Post:

First Sandy wrecked his house. Then the city broke his water line.

And now he has to pay for both.

A Rockaway landlord with $20,000 in damage from Hurricane Sandy has to shell out thousands more to fix a busted underground water pipe — even though he says the city broke it.

Heavy machinery used to clean up Sandy wreckage crushed a patch of sidewalk near his house, slashing a two-inch pipe running from the water main to his Beach 92nd Street property, said Charles Zurheide, 59.

He said it will cost as much as $6,500 to make the repairs, which are necessary to restore water to the two-family rental home.

Zurheide has to pay out of his own pocket because the line is on his property, a city official said.

The city’s Department of Environmental Protection on Nov. 30 told Zurheide that if he didn’t fix it in 10 days, they would do it for him and send him the bill.

He filed a claim with the Comptroller’s Office — and vowed not to pay.

“It happened because of the heavy machinery they were using to pick up the debris thrown out on the curb,” he fumed.

“I want it fixed and I don’t want to have to pay for it, because it’s not something I did,” he said.

Massive Sink Holes Found in Rockaway

Background: I am a construction management expert witness on projects up to $100M and have held the title of and/or worked in the capacity of engineer for over 8 years as well. I went to the 1999 Turkey and the 2010 Haiti earthquakes by myself to help out and had great success. About 6 months ago, I joined the Team Rubicon volunteer group. I flew in to NY from Phoenix on the 8th to join the team at Rockaway.

On 11/11/12 working with Team Rubicon (TR) I found water seeping through the basement wall of a house near Beach 68th St & Bayfield in Rockaway, NY. I then went outside and found an in-line series of obvious sink holes in his back yard. Alarmed, I continued looking into the issue going door to door in that same line in search of identifying the source and/or scale of the danger. I found another sink hole, then another, etc. all of which were in a nearly perfect straight line. I then tracked these holes to the intersection of Beach 67th St & Almeda, 750 feet away. Looking at the pavement I could see that the street’s asphalt was nice and smooth and rather new going up the hill to the west but was very badly deformed throughout the intersection (not buckled, but sunken in spots). I spoke to a neighbor child who told me that the intersection that he rode his bike on every day was NOT like that prior to Sandy. It appears to me that the asphalt on this entire intersection may very possibly be deformed due to soil erosion beneath and could lead to vehicles crashing into a sink hole.

As I was finding more and more evidence and sending photos and my findings in to Headquarters (HQ), I was pulled off of this task that I had gotten myself emotionally involved in by my team as they wanted me to continue the original mission.

I told everyone in TR that I could get my hands on from noon on 11/11 to noon on 11/12 that this could be a huge clear and present danger to the people of this neighborhood (especially the kids playing in their back yards) and to vehicles driving through that intersection and nearly begging my team to put a crew or at the least ME on the issue to get the city working on it and to warn the neighbors of the immediate dangers. I explained that I believed that a city water main might be causing the erosion which seemed to be the most logical cause due to the perfectly in-line nature of the sink holes.

Around 1:00 on 11/12 I arrived back on site after being sent out by my team on a solo mission. I traced the sink holes back to the bay to the north and then took photos and documented each hole location, etc. I interviewed more neighbors, told them what I had found and to keep their kids from playing in the back yards. As I was searching for the end of the sink holes towards the south, I spotted a city water crew working in a pit just before the Beach 67th St and Thursby intersection on the east side of the street. I asked a worker what the problem was and he told me that they were fixing a city water main break! I told him about the sink holes that were perfectly in line with their line break. He told me not to worry and that it couldn’t possibly be related. I asked him “so if you draw a straight line from your water main break to the bay and see that it passes directly under the 10+ sink holes and the house with the water pouring into his basement (and I later found, water squirting from the ground near a fire hydrant and also under 3 homes that reported spraying sewage from their toilets and drains which sounds like a liquefaction scenario to me), that it is not possibly related?” He said no and walked away…

I flagged down a car full of NYPD who thankfully were willing to look at the issue that I was passionately describing. I walked the 6 or 7 officers through the entire series of sink holes, showed them the water leaching into that basement and explained how the only reasonable conclusion as to the probable cause of this was a city water main break. Walking this with the officers, they found an additional hole and this one was the biggest and scariest yet! It had about a 3’ diameter opening, a 3’ cave ceiling inside, then about 18” air pocket (cave) and then a 2’ deep pool of water and this huge sink hole is very close to the foundation of a home with children! Officer Patrick Wang put on rubber gloves and dipped his finger into the water coming into the basement and explained that he believed it to be fresh water and how that further points toward a water main break and an escalating danger even to the homes on this block collapsing into these holes!


They called city engineers and requested an immediate investigation. They told one neighbor that asked what was going on that this appears to be a water main break and resulting sink holes and not to let her kids play in the back yards. Feeling like a CSI investigator working with the NYPD (a childhood fantasy), I asked the officers for a photo. The 8 year old boy that lives in the home with one of the 10’ deep sink holes, Alfonso, took a photo with me and 5 officers. It seemed like a complete success and that I could now relax.

Then without notifying each resident on the block or closing the Almeda intersection, they left at around 4:30pm. Frustrated, I went door to door for the next few hours notifying residents and looking for further evidence as to the origin of the problems.

I stayed there into the night (an absolute TR no, no due to safety concerns) expecting someone to come to at least put up caution tape around each opening (even though the sink holes could be much larger under the surface and at least one I found was a hole not visible as it had the grass and roots covering the hole much like a bear trap) but no one came. I stayed in the neighborhood until 1:30am the next day and then started walking to get myself back to the TR Brooklyn base.


On 11/14 my TR friend Jose was able to convince the TR leadership to let the 2 of us go out to put up caution tape as well as for him to take good photos of each hole. At Jose’s suggestion, we found a 10’6” long pole and probed each hole to somewhat accurately measure and illustrate in photos the depth / extent of each hole. To our amazement, some holes were just over 10’ deep!


Frustrated that NO ONE but me and now Jose are doing Anything about the danger, another TR member, Louis suggested that he might have contacts that could get this story in front of the mayor and that if I call 311 and establish a service request claim, they could run with it. I called. The claim number is C1-1-801591567 submitted at 3:38pm on 11/14 to the DOT.


Please help me to get this story out BEFORE someone gets hurt or dies! Ironically the photo that Alfonso took illustrates how no one seems to care that this 4’6” boy clearly fits into the 10’ deep holes!

Update: 11/19, 9am - I just got off the phone with a couple of the residents on this block and they tell me that NO ONE has been there yet and that the water is still flowing (theoretically worsening the subsurface erosion issue which caused the 12 visible sinkholes).

Thank you!

Steve Major
787-637-9950

City needs to upgrade underground pipes

From the NY Post:

There’s a crisis beneath the streets: New York’s underground network of iron pipes has been decaying for decades. Leaky pipes and water-main breaks mean that untold thousands of gallons of water every year never reach New Yorkers’ homes, schools or businesses. This ghastly waste is reflected in soaring water bills.

The city must modernize its procurement policies. It now excludes polyvinyl-chloride pipe manufacturers from bidding on city contracts, virtually guaranteeing that corroded iron pipes will be replaced by newer, corrosion-prone pipes.

Unlike traditional iron pipes, PVC pipes don’t corrode, last longer and cost about 70 percent less. Rather than soaking ratepayers, New York should open its bidding process and let the best technology at the best price determine the outcome.

Broken water mains not city's responsibility

From Little Neck Patch:

If Arthur Collazo has a problem with the plumbing in his Bellerose home, he’s more than happy to pay to have it repaired. But a severed waterline under the city street, dozens of feet away from his property line? That’s another issue.

Collazo lost water to his home on Aug. 23, the same day a 5.8 magnitude earthquake rattled New York City. He promptly called the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), thinking they would fix the problem.

He was wrong.

Not only was Collazo left without water for more than a week (a generous neighbor allowed him to use his backyard hose), he also found himself saddled with a $3,000 repair bill – a bill that, as both a retired senior and a veteran – Collazo didn't think he should have to foot.


From CBS 2:

“The city has to accept responsibility for any break on city property. It’s a simple policy change,” Avella said.

Avella said the Department of Environmental Protection should change the policy, because he believes most of the breaks are due to traffic on city streets.

The DEP said rather than change the policy it is exploring a water service line protection plan, a sort of insurance policy. You pay a nominal monthly fee and if anything breaks, it’s fixed for free.

Avella said he will encourage the City Council to change the policy and may introduce legislation in Albany.

City's water system old and decrepit

From the Daily News:

New York's 7,000 miles of water mains, tunnels and aqueducts - some dating back to the 1870s - deliver 1 billion gallons of drinking water every day.

They also break down a lot. There were 444 water main breaks in the last fiscal year and 360 breaks the year before.

"The good news is it's a very redundant system so even when there's a break of this size, you can keep supplying water to customers," Department of Environmental Protection spokesman Farrell Sklerov said.

The city spends millions of dollars a year maintaining the underground system.


Why the massive building when the infrastructure is so fragile? Shouldn't we invest in upgrades first?