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NYC Is Committing to GREEN Solutions.

As we all know, New York City has a lot of concrete located all around commonly referred to as “gray” infrastructure.

NYC has developed multiple techniques to help with the excess water shed. Sewage overflows is one of the biggest sources of pollution in New York. Whenever there is rain, especially heavy rainfall, the combined sewer system of NYC automatically discharges storm runoff from all of the city’s paved surfaces. This discharge mixed raw sewage, directly into the nearest water body including the Hudson River to neglected places like the Bronx River and Newtown Creek. The city as a whole, it is a 30-billion-gallon-a-year problem.

In order to adapt to this problem, NYC using a suite of techniques like strategically located street plantings, porous pavements, and green roofs, collectively known as green infrastructure.

NYC has also a project where they have dedicated volunteers that are planting trees all over the city so these newly planted trees may soak up the excess water!

sources: New York City Commits to Green Solution for Sewage Overflows, Harnessing Water as a Resource to Improve Communities. (2012, March 15). Retrieved May 20, 2015, from http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/plehner/new_york_city_commits_to_green.html

Mistreatment in Harlem’s Air

When the population in NYC doubled between 1900 to 1950, the drain from Manhattan’s West Side drain began to leak into NYC’s waterways leaking gallons of raw sewage and waterways. Dozens of small sewage treatment plants were to be installed into Manhattan that would be located along the Hudson River to help the West Side residents starting in 1914.

By 1955, the New York City Planning commission concluded that one treatment would be placed at West 137th- 145th Street without the residents being informed.

When New York State’s “Sunshine Laws” demanded that all municipal and state agencies make their meetings more open to the public, the public became angry and upset and concerned with safety issues. They soon began to organize and protest against it.

Court decisions pertaining to the plant’s environmental impact on the aquatic life in the Hudson River ultimately forced the sewer plant to lower its capacity, making it six stories high, and a half mile long that sits on 28 acres of land.

It is supposed to treat 180 million gallons of waste-water and sewage on a daily basis. Due to the construction of this plant taking a long time, NYC began to regularly dump raw sewage in the Hudson River forcing the EPA to sue NYC in 1979 for a violation of the Clean Water act (1972)

In the first four years of the North River plant’s operations, residents in West Harlem leave their neighborhood to breathe relatively clean air but unfortunately they return to their homes to very foul air. The increasing number in deaths caused by respiratory diseases force some families to make arrangements for their children to live somewhere else.

A small group formed West Harlem Environmental Act (WE ACT), in 1988. After four years of continuous organizing about the plants on going order problem, in 1992 WE ACT partnered with the Natural Defense Council and sued the city’s EPA and NYC. The lawsuit demanded improvements in the plants design as well as more odor control and compensation for property losses ad injuries.

In December of 1993 Mayor Dinkins’ administration agrees to pay million dollars to WE ACT in settlement funds for the lawsuit..

During the Memorial Day weekend in 1993, a -acre Riverbank State Park was opened on the “North River Water Pollution Control Plant. The North River plant is still open and has tremendously improved the water conditions of the lower portion of the Hudson River.

#nyc #sunshinelaws

More than 27 billion gallons of raw sewage and polluted stormwater discharge out of 460 combined sewage overflows (“CSOs”) into New York Harbor alone each year. Although water quality in New York Harbor and throughout the Hudson River Estuary has improved significantly over the last few decades, many parts of the waterfront and its beaches are still unsafe for recreation after it rains.

http://www.riverkeeper.org/campaigns/stop-polluters/sewage-contamination/cso/#sthash.LAwh2DNU.dpuf

Jamaica Bay is often referred to as New York City’s “ecological crown jewel”, and it is indeed a spectacular location to view migrating birds or catch large sport fish like striped bass, among othe...

Another problem with Jamaica Bay and surrounding communities is that raw sewage spills occur several dozen times per year when it rains over the bay’s watershed. These occur when rainfall rates are fast enough to overflow the sewage treatment plant reservoirs, and force “combined sewage overflows” – releases of the mixed rainwater and sewage to Jamaica Bay through sewer pipes.

Adding a recreational area right on top of the treatment plant will surely keep the residents quiet!

This commute is killing me... - Said every fish ever

A must-see intergenerational documentary that explores environmental justice and recycling in NYC's urban communities

The video is a documentary that explores environmental justice and recycling in New York City’s urban communities, especially the South Bronx. Through interviews with experts, South Bronx residents, and youth groups, we can see the personal effects the evil of environmental racism has on the people who live in the community.

Since 5:15 p.m. yesterday, the North River Wastewater Treatment Plant, at 135th Street in New York City, began discharging untreated sewage into the Hudson

Funny right? Not when it is happening in your back yard.

Lets Fix Our Hudson !

“ General Electric Co. is scheduled to begin its sixth and expected final season of PCB dredging in May, as part of a $2 billion federal Superfund project. Long-running calls for GE to dredge PCB "hot spots" outside the project's boundaries are taking on urgency because the company will dismantle the sprawling facility that treats the contaminated river sediments after dredging ends.”

The environmentalists assert that an enormous amount of cleaning up will be incomplete if additional areas are dredged. However, the GE officials claim that no further dredging is guaranteed due to the fact that the Environmental Protection Agency has asserted that this current project satisfies all of the goals for a cleanup.

In an email, company spokesman Mark Behan said "GE is meeting all of its responsibilities on the Hudson, addressing 100 percent of the PCBs that EPA targeted in the comprehensive dredging project that will be completed this year."

Until 1977. a Connecticut-based company called “Fairfield”, discharged approximately 1.3 million pounds of polychlorinated biphenls from its upriver capacitor plants. PCBs that were used for electrical equipment as coolants, could be potentially cancer-causing chemicals that may build up in fish over time. This poses a serious healthy risk to those who may consume these fish.

Over five years, crews have removed approximately 2.5 million cubic yards of sediment contaminated with polychlorinated biphenyls. Remaining areas north of Albany are expected to be cleaned up before winter.

Keywords:

Dredge- A machine or boat that removes mud, sand, etc., from the bottom of a lake, river, etc.

Biphenyl- A white crystalline hydrocarbon C6H5*C6H5 used especially as a heat transfer medium and in organic synthesis.

Source: Source: Hill, M. (2015, April 14). Advocates renew call for Hudson River dredging. Retrieved May 20, 2015, from http://www.sltrib.com/home/2401271-155/advocates-renew-call-for-hudson-river

#pcb2k15 #MoreDredging #ItsAGoodStart

This is a warning sign placed on a gate at River Park in Green Island, New York. “Environmentalists and elected officials are renewing their call for a broader PCB cleanup of the upper-Hudson in what could be the final year of dredging. General Electric is expected to begin its sixth and possibly final season of dredging next month as part of a $2 billion federal Superfund project.”

(AP Photo/Mike Groll)

Source: Hill, M. (2015, April 14). Advocates renew call for Hudson River dredging. Retrieved May 20, 2015, from http://www.sltrib.com/home/2401271-155/advocates-renew-call-for-hudson-river

Leakage of millions of Gallons filled with RAW SEWAGE into The Hudson River :(

In 2012, Tarrytown, New York spilled raw sewage into the Hudson River where dumping in the Hudson River had already been occurring!

This time the dumping put a stop to the swimming contest that was suppose to transpire the next morning.Environmentalists tested the waters and received news that this raw sewage was flowing into the river in Yonkers and even farther up north such as Sleepy Hollow.

With summer in town, rainwater is likely to whisk away untreated waters into the rivers. Many gallons of untreated sewage water is already discharged into the water, but if heavy rain if is apart of the forecast, it could mean flooding and discharge into other nearby rivers that are used for other resources.

Tarrytown mostly consists of middle income white people who make up almost 65% of the population with Hispanics running second for about 18% of the population.

The dumping of sewage into our rivers is an environmental injustice because it does not just degrade our water resource but also affects those who live in poor urban areas. Companies and treatment plant facilities believe that dumping untreated waters into poor urban areas is environmentally justifiable because they are unable to defend themselves politically, while rich high income families are given waterfront apartments and recreational areas.

#hudsonriver #newyorkcity enviornmentaloinjustice WhereistheLOVE?

Fuller Sewers means More Waste Poisons in Waterways

Even though Congress gave more than sixty billion dollars to ensure that cities would not allow things that go into industrial drains, street grates and toilets would not endanger human health, sewer systems are still constantly leaking into waterways.

The data from the Environmental Protection Agency and state environmental agencies illustrate that between 2007 and 2009, more than 9,400 of the 25,000 sewer systems were reported to have broken the law due to dumping partly treated or untreated human waste, chemicals and other dangerous materials into lake-land rivers and elsewhere.

The agencies that were reported to have broken the law, almost none of them were dealt with by federal regulators or even fined. In today’s current society, sewage systems are the most frequent violators of the Clean Water Act, and very few violators are ever prosecuted.

Around New York City, the samples that have been collected at dozens of beaches or piers have been found to have types of bacteria and other pollutants tied to sewage overflows. Environmentalists claim that the untreated excrement and other waste in the city’s waterways does pose serious health risk.

With construction in 1849, New York was one of the first major cities to build a very large sewer system. A majority of the pipes laid were constructed of hand-laid ceramic tiles and bricks and is still used today with 7,400 miles of the city’s sewer pipes operating nearly entirely by gravity. The 14 waste-water treatment plants that handle 1.4 billion gallons of waste-water daily in NYC, have been flooded with vast amounts of discarded chicken heads, pickles, and large pieces of lumber.

Whenever a toilet is flushed in West Village in Manhattan, this waste is transported six miles to a plant at 137th street and mixed with so-called ‘biological digestives” that consume dangerous pathogens, and is then mixed with chlorine and finally sent to the Hudson River.

#CleanWATERACT HudsonRiver DoTheCrimeAndNoFine Newyorkcity #JusticeWhat?

Another demonstration of how heavy rain causes the some of the sewage to go directly to the waterways

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