New York, NY —
There are 578 miles of waterfront in New York City. That means New Yorkers will be especially vulnerable to climate change because we’re already surrounded by water. Scientists are predicting that as the temperatures go up, the city will be hit by stronger storms that could deluge many neighborhoods. So where will all that extra water go? Throughout this spring we’re taking a look at how our region is preparing for climate change – beginning with flooding. WNYC’s Beth Fertig has more.
Part of Feeling The Heat, a climate change series
REPORTER: The water New Yorkers use for their sinks and toilets doesn’t just disappear when it goes down the drain. It’s carried through miles of sewer pipes to one of 14 wastewater treatment plants that remove all of the “gunk,” so the water can be safely disposed in the harbor.
SAPIENZA: We normally say that it’s a musty smell
REPORTER: That’s Vincent Sapienza, an Assistant Commissioner in the city’s Wastewater Treatment bureau. We’re standing outside a water treatment plant on the edge of the old Brooklyn Navy Yard.
About 35 million gallons of water flow into this plant each day from 300 thousand residents and businesses in Red Hook. It’s stored in four deep tanks that, on the surface, resemble swimming pools filled with a brown, murky substance.
SAPIENZA: The material that’s rising to the top is, is cooking grease, any kind of lighter floatable materials that may come in - plastic sticks, rags that may rise to the top. Things that settle to the bottom are things like coffee grinds, peach pits, sand.
REPORTER: Incredibly, up to 90 percent of that garbage – including what’s politely called “organic matter” – will be filtered out over the course of treatment. The solids get turned into fertilizer. The plant also produces a little methane fuel from the waste, which helps it cut back on power consumption. Whatever waste remains in the water is considered safe enough to be discharged into the harbor.
SAPIENZA: The water goes under the concrete wall into a pipe and out into the East River.
REPORTER: The city’s 14 sewage treatment plants also take in lots of rainwater, so they’re designed to handle big storms. But with heavier storms expected more frequently as temperatures rise, Sapienza acknowledges the obvious.
SAPIENZA: Well it’s a challenge. If we start getting a lot more days where we have to treat up to 120 million gallons a day rather than 35-40 it just makes it more of a challenge for the operators and the process to make sure everything is running up to full capacity and continuing to meet the standards.
REPORTER: Treating the city’s waste will be one of the major challenges if climate change scenarios are accurate. By the year 2050, various studies have predicted temperatures in the metropolitan region could climb from 2 to 5 and a half degrees Farenheit. And as the ice caps melt, sea levels could rise by six to 12 inches.
ROSENZWEIG: the greatest vulnerability of our NY metropolitan region is to sea level rise AND the enhanced flooding area due to the enhanced sea level rise.
REPORTER: Cynthia Rosenzweig is the scientist who compiled much of the research on how New York will be affected by global warming. She heads the Climate Impacts Group at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies at Columbia University – where she’s been studying the different scenarios predicted by her institute and others. The studies may arrive at different numbers, but she says they all agree on the risks.
ROSENZWEIG: It’s not just the sea level rise itself. It’s that when a storm comes along, that the flooding that that storm causes is greater because the sea is higher. And because NY is a coastal city, and has hundreds of miles of coast line, very low-lying areas, that this is our number one vulnerability.
REPORTER: Just how vulnerable? If most of our infrastructure is based on the 100 year storm model, Rosenzweig says we can expect those strongest storms anywhere from once in every 40 years to once in every 4 years. The storms themselves may be hurricanes, Noreasters or flash floods. New York could also see more extreme droughts in between all that flooding.
Rosenzweig has been advising the city’s Department of Environmental Protection ever since the first regional climate models were generated in 2001. Emily Lloyd, the current DEP Commissioner, says the city is considering a variety of actions to prepare for any deluge.
LLOYD: Some of them are things you can do fairly quickly, like let’s make sure we clean out all the sewers more frequently to make sure they’re at their full capacity. And some things like, well let’s build high level storm sewers not way down in the street but let’s just try to capture some of that run-off near the top and get it straight out without putting it through a sewage treatment plant.
REPORTER: Her agency is also looking at raising the electrical systems for sewage treatment plants, because they’re so dangerously close to the harbor, and shoring-up the sea walls. Lloyd acknowledges these costly investments would increase the city’s debt burden. But because climate change is gradual, she says the financing can be spread out over several decades.
But some critics the city should be moving faster because its aging sewer system is already stressed. Modern pipes separate sewage from rainwater, but the city has lots of older ones that combine the two. Those combined pipes can overflow so easily that in some neighborhoods, even one twentieth of an inch of rain can cause them to spill. And each year about 27 billion gallons of overflow are dumped into the harbor, including raw sewage, which violates state and federal standards. The city is building massive storage tanks that can hold the water until it can be safely treated. But Basil Seggos, an attorney with the environmental group Riverkeeper, says there are more creative ways to help keep rain water from even entering the sewers.
SEGGOS: Putting storm water to use in our city streets, with street trees, street parks, increased plantings, green roofs, directing storm water to those sources as opposed to sending it into the sewer system for expensive and energy demanding treatment, is a more preferable alternative.
REPORTER: A few environmental groups are already supporting efforts like these at community gardens. On 115th Street in East Harlem, Hannah Riseley White of Green Guerillas, shows how a big, white tank collects rain water for the plants and vegetables. It’s connected to a neighboring apartment building.
RISELEY WHITE: The rainwater falls on the roof of the building, it collects into the gutter and goes down the downspout.
REPORTER: The tank is used during spring and summer. White says the gardeners here at Pleasant Park Community Garden originally started collecting the water during a drought. But –
RISELEY WHITE: Then we realized wow by holding this water that’s landing on rooftops and keeping it out of the sewage system that’s potentially that much less raw sewage overflowing into the Hudson.
REPORTER: If the 11-hundred gallon tank fills up 10 times a year, she says that’s 11 thousand gallons this one little garden is diverting from the sewage system.
Environmental Protection Commissioner Emily Lloyd says she wants to encourage systems like these. The city is currently looking at new ways of diverting storm water to a park in Queens - and she says marshes can also be used to soak up more water. But in all fairness, Lloyd says New Yorkers have only just begun dealing with climate change.
LLOYD: It’s gone from ‘Gee we may have a problem’ to ‘My goodness we do have a problem.’
REPORTER: With that in mind, DEP is now looking at how to handle more flooding and droughts upstate, where the city’s water supply is controlled by a network of reservoirs. A full report will be released by year’s end. Meanwhile, the mayor’s new Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability is coordinating a citywide response to climate change. Environmentalists and planners are anxious to see if the city will push developers to make buildings that adapt to more flooding while also emitting less pollution. With expensive construction projects going up along the water fronts, they say the private sector needs to team up with local government if New York is going to weather the coming storms. For WNYC I’m Beth Fertig.
Links
nyc.gov plan 2030
riverkeeper.org
greenguerillas.org
waterresourcesgroup.org
Columbia Climate Change Resources