SWIM coalition members with Councilman James F. Gennaro (D-Queens), Chairman of the Environmental Protection Committee

Intro 630, which passed this week by the New York City Council, puts the full force of public reporting and target dates into the City's plan for using storm water as an environmental resource to "green" our streets and reduce water pollution. Much of that plan was driven by constituent groups and citizen activists.

Intro 630, once signed by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, will push NYC to capture rainwater as it falls with "green infrastructure" solutions, including green roofs, permeable pavement, wetland restoration, and storage systems for buildings that can use the water before it enters the sewer system.

I can't wait to see what our NYC readers think of the new Newton Creek Nature Walk. I guess this must be Brooklyn's Newton Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant, the city's biggest sewage processing facility, way of giving something other than monstrous sewage floods or disgusting combined sewer overflows back to the community. This plan was met with healthy skepticism from the Newsday newspaper, Largely due to two aspects of the project: 1) It cost $3 million! Couldn't that money have been better spent by the sewer operator to improve the treatment facility's ability to prevent sewage spills and overflows? 2) The nature walk's new "fishing piers" and kayak and canoe launches. The section of Newton Creek, an industrialized waterway between Brooklyn and Queens, where this nature walk has been installed has a history of pollution and impairment for fishing and primary contact of which the treatment works is a contributes to. I'm sure this bit of greenwashing has the brass at the treatment works feeling nice and clean because Newton Creek isn't.

Now for the Spills of the Week: