Photo Courtesy of Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office
Councilwoman Ariola (far r.) said that with this suite of measures, “we can better ensure that our residents in both coastal and pluvial flood areas are much better prepared when another storm inevitably rolls around.”
By Forum Staff
Mayor Eric Adams and the City Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) on Thursday marked the one-year anniversary of Hurricane Ida by announcing a suite of stormwater infrastructure initiatives aimed at making the city more resilient to extreme rainfall in the future.
Thursday’s announcement took place in South Ozone Park, where the City recently completed the construction of 2,300 new curbside rain gardens. For more than a century, the City’s network of catch basins and sewers have served as the primary drainage tool across the five boroughs.
As New Yorkers continue to experience the increasing impacts of climate change, the City is accelerating plans for a multi-layered system of adaptive infrastructure that will make NYC more resilient to Ida-level rainstorms, and an implementation plan to guide this long-term effort is underway.
Initiatives include:
Sewer Infrastructure
DEP is working with the DDC to upgrade and build out the sewer system to modern standards. In Southeast Queens, the city is investing $2.5 billion to install upgraded sewers. DDC is working in Gowanus, Brooklyn to complete a $39 million storm sewer project that will lead to cleaner water in the canal and reduce flooding in that area. Completion is scheduled for November 2022.
In the neighborhoods of Woodside, Maspeth, Middle Village, and Glendale in central Queens, the city has completed several projects to eliminate chronic flooding. The city is currently using advanced micro-tunneling technology to double the size of sewers and reduce or eliminate flooding. This $119 million project is expected to be completed in 2023.
The city also completed a $47 million project to raise streets and add almost half a mile of new storm sewers to reduce flooding in Broad Channel, Queens — an area frequently inundated by Jamaica Bay during high tides and storms. Phase Two — an $83 million project that will add an additional 3,200 linear feet of new storm sewer on previously unsewered blocks — is anticipated to be completed in 2024.
To ensure the city’s sewers perform optimally, the city will continue existing data-driven approaches to system maintenance and monitoring. For example, DEP’s field crews are strategically inspecting catch basins before they fill with debris — reducing flooding for New Yorkers and increasing efficiencies for staff.
DEP is also currently evaluating other technologies to gain more analyzable insights into the city’s sewer system —– allowing it to target inspection and maintenance efforts to reduce flooding and sewer backups. For example, new technology could help the city develop programs to identify emerging issues in the city’s sewers before they become more severe.
While catch basins and sewers will continue to serve as the backbone of the drainage system, in many places, sewers cannot be built any larger than they are. To manage increasing volumes of stormwater, new drainage and absorption tools must be added to increase protection and resilience.
Curbside Rain Gardens
New York City is investing heavily in curbside rain gardens. Today’s addition of 2,300 new curbside rain gardens is a milestone in the city’s effort to build out the country’s largest and most aggressive green infrastructure program. More than 11,000 installations have already been constructed, and construction is set to begin on 1,000 more rain gardens by the end of this year.
The 2,300 newly constructed rain gardens are located across Queens and the Bronx. Each rain garden has the capacity to collect and absorb up to 2,500 gallons of water during each storm. It is estimated that newly installed green infrastructure will capture more than 369 million gallons of stormwater annually.
In Queens, a total of 1,811 rain gardens and infiltration basins now exist in Kew Gardens Hills, Hillcrest, Fresh Meadows, Utopia, Flushing, Murray Hill, and Auburndale. It is estimated the newly added rain gardens will capture more than 264 million gallons of stormwater annually, helping to reduce the risk of flooding for residents and businesses in the area, while also improving the health of Flushing Creek and Flushing Bay.
FloodNet Sensors
NYC FloodNet is a new, innovative flood data collection program that will provide real-time street-level flood information to city agencies, residents, emergency response teams, and researchers. The information provided by the sensors can give critical information on the need for road closures or travel bans, inform residents of the need to deploy sandbags and flood barriers, validate existing flood models, and provide data for future drainage investments.
The city has already installed 29 sensors this year alone and will install 50 this year and 500 FloodNet sensors in priority areas citywide over the next five years. These areas are and will continue to be determined by an analysis of stormwater risk, tidal flooding risk, storm damage, environmental justice history, social vulnerability, critical infrastructure, and proximity to wireless network connections.
Cloudburst Management
New York City has been partnering with the city of Copenhagen to share best practices for stormwater management. An outgrowth of that work in New York City are pilot cloudburst projects to help manage extremely intense cells of rainfall that can impact portions of the city during a storm. These intense rain events can drop a large amount of water over a short period and can overwhelm the city’s sewer system capacity.
A “cloudburst” is a sudden, heavy downpour where heavy rains fall in a short amount of time. Cloudbursts can cause flooding, damage property, disrupt critical infrastructure, and pollute New York’s rivers and harbor. Cloudburst management implements a combination of methods that absorb, store, and transfer stormwater to minimize flooding. The city’s new cloudburst projects will seek to utilize open spaces to store stormwater until the rainfall event passes, and there is capacity in the drainage system to manage it.
The city’s first cloudburst pilot project will take place at NYCHA’s South Jamaica Houses. Project design is now complete, and construction is expected to begin in 2023. The city is expected to invest $4-5 million on this project and will focus on channeling stormwater to three areas on the NYCHA grounds: Two open grassy areas that will be designed to hold a large amount of stormwater and a basketball court that will be rebuilt at a lower elevation so water will naturally flow there.
When completed, this cloudburst installation will capture and hold approximately 300,000 gallons of stormwater. In addition, upgrades will be made to complement this work, including new lighting and seating.
“Dealing with a storm like Hurricane Ida, which dumped more than three inches of rain on our city in less than an hour, is always going to be difficult,” said City Councilwoman Joann Ariola (R-Ozone Park). “With these measures, however, we can better ensure that our residents in both coastal and pluvial flood areas are much better prepared when another storm inevitably rolls around. There is still plenty of work to be done going forward, but with these things in place, we are more ready than ever before to confront whatever weather conditions we may be faced with in the future.”
