Andrew Falzon: Extreme rainfall events are
becoming more frequent and disruptive in New York City.
Without continued investment and strategies to mitigate
extreme rainfall New York City residents will
experience increasing damage to private property,
disruptions to above and below ground transportation, and
impacts to bodies of water.
Craig Thompson takes us to Astoria and Staten Island
for that story.
Craig Thompson: A few months ago, Hurricane Ida
hit our region hard.
Not so much with damaging wind,
but with a deluge of water.
Costa Constantinides: The rain was about,
probably around here.
Give or take about a half a foot down from the, you know,
from the top of the green.
Our boiler and our basement flooded,
completely flooded here.
I know my own home, my mother-in-law, we had about
a foot and a half of water.
We had people here in Queens lose their lives.
Craig Thomson: Costa Constantinides is a former
city council member for this district and former chair
of the city’s Environmental Protection Committee.
Costa Constantinides: When the water’s flowing and
we’re getting the amount of rain that we had with Ida,
where’s all the water going? It’s coming downhill.
There’s nothing to absorb it.
There are a little, there are few tree pits, as you can
see here and there, but there aren’t any large investments
to soak up that water.
Craig Thompson: And while some say the amount of
rainfall from Ida was atypical, these events are
becoming more frequent.
Costa Constantinides: The phrase, oh, a hundred
year storm, 50 year storm.
Well, I’ve heard that phrase in my lifetime, at least in
the last 10 years, more than I ever thought I ever would.
Craig Thompson: It’s getting hotter and wetter.
These small tree pits are not nearly enough
to capture all the water from heavy rain events.
So what’s the solution?
It starts with the infrastructure
underground and then the infrastructure above ground.
Costa Constantinides: What we really need is
a long term commitment to green infrastructure
and grey infrastructure.
What does that mean?
We need more large sewer tanks to collect sewage.
And then also what we need is green infrastructure, right?
Having our bioswales in our communities.
You know, creating permeable surface.
Craig Thompson: A great example of this green
infrastructure is found on Staten Island where over
90 new man made wetlands called bluebelts have been
constructed, with 20 more on the way, according to
Dana Gumb, the project lead for the last 30 years.
Dana Gumb: We’ve planted these wetland plants here that you
see to create this system that will store the water
during a storm, that’s coming out of the storm sewers over
there in Hyland Boulevard, and also will treat the water.
This’ll be here basically forever.
I mean, this is a permanent part of the drainage system
for this neighborhood.
Craig Thompson: During Ida, this wetland held its own.
Dana Gumb: I’ve heard from the staff on site here,
the construction staff, and also from the borough president.
The borough president wrote a very good letter explaining
that this space stored a lot of stormwater that otherwise
would have been in streets or basements or wherever.
When we have a rainstorm, a major rainstorm the storm
sewers will be collecting the water off the streets
and it’ll be discharged into these bluebelts and the water
will back up at our weir.
Craig Thompson: And that’s just one element of the
green infrastructure.
According to Constantinides, it also includes rain gardens,
green and blue roofs, bioswales, and creating
more permeable surfaces.
And then there’s the grey infrastructure, sewers,
pipes, tanks, and dams.
Costa Constantinides: One of our structural failures
is that our infrastructure, our sewer system was built
over a hundred years ago.
It was built when we had millions less New Yorkers
here in New York City.
There needs to be a five borough resiliency plan.
We have to look at the entirety of the city because
we’re all interconnected.
How we would design our city for resilience in
the 21st century knowing what we’re knowing.
Knowing it’s going to get hotter.
Knowing it’s going to get wetter.
Craig Thompson: More heat, more water, words of warning
for a city with an aging infrastructure like New York.
For CUNY TV, I‘m Craig Thompson.