City Expands East River & Long Island Sound Cleanup Effort

Hunts Point —

“It’s a major pollution issue and it’s an ongoing problem, particularly for areas like the Harlem River, the East River and some of the side waterways like Newtown Creek and the Gowanus Canal,” Musegaas said. “The CSO (combined sewer overflow) pollution is particularly bad because those waterways don’t have the high flow that the Hudson has. The water’s more stagnant there so the pollution there really tends to build up, so those waterways can’t really support any life.”

Riverkeeper, the Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance and NRDC say the best and most cost-effective way to reduce overflows in the near future is to plant more trees, convert more asphalt to absorbent road surfacing materials, and install more rooftop gardens. These and other elements of "green infrastructure," would better absorb rain, thereby preventing its drainage into city sewer systems. Sustainable Raindrops, the 2008 Riverkeeper study, found that a $1,000 investment in ‘green infrastructure’ could decrease sewer overflows by 12,000 to 14,800 gallons.

DEP is trying to encourage the deployment of green infrastructure projects throughout the city and in July officials there awarded a total of $2.6 million to five projects they believe will work and be replicable city wide, Saucier said. The Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance, NRDC and Riverkeeper all said they would like to see the city adopt green infrastructure policies faster.

“My opinion is that they can be more aggressive with some of the pilot projects that they’ve undergone,” Lewis said.

“What needs to happen now is we need to implement these programs, you know, every time there’s a city transportation project, every time there’s a reconstruction project,” said Eric Goldstein, Senior Attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “We need to find ways of encouraging [for example], parking lot owners to capture storm water runoff before it reaches the storm drains.”