Editors Note: I received this message last week - again sorry for the delay in posting - JK

In a February 19th Blue Room ceremony at City Hall, NYC Mayor Mike Bloomberg signed Intro 630-A into law. The bill requires the City to conduct a thorough study of stormwater best management practices, determine the estimated costs and benefits of each practice, and provide a stormwater management plan for implementation.

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.

Halloween Invite

The Riverdale Press published a good editorial following up on CSO boondoggle issue discussed on the Slog back in August. Here's a snippet of the editorial:

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:

Here's a shocking and infuriating example of how the New York City government speaks out of both sides of its mouth. Our local papers are carrying it as filter plant is soaking taxpayers.

Just two months after NYC sent in their CSO Abatement (LTCP or Watershed Facility Plans), which questioned the validity of low impact infrastructure (green roofs, tree beds, etc), they come up with this uninformed statement.

Photo by Steve SandbergUnfortunately, the storm incidents are starting to add up.

Earlier this week, a powerful category F2 tornado and localized storms hit parts of Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island. It looks like Mother Nature is sending us a message: storm incidents are on the rise, probably due to global warming. And with that comes flooding, often extreme. And, once again, runoff from our streets contributed heavily to that flooding. Even Mayor Bloomberg, in yesterday's press conference about the storm, couldn't avoid speaking about the runoff problems.