4th Avenue Floods Again
The recent rains were too much for the drainage systems of 4th Avenue, it seems. According to these photos from the Facebook page of the Root Hill Cafe, which is at the corner of Carroll Street, the flooding took out the entire intersection and much of Carroll Street going down towards the canal. Based upon…
The recent rains were too much for the drainage systems of 4th Avenue, it seems. According to these photos from the Facebook page of the Root Hill Cafe, which is at the corner of Carroll Street, the flooding took out the entire intersection and much of Carroll Street going down towards the canal. Based upon the comments, it sounds like this isn’t the first time this spot has been hit either. You can click on any of the photos above to expand or go to the jump to see a video of the same scene.
“But the neighborhood has gotten much more impervious over time, as people build extensions, pave over their backyard, etc, and probably didn’t increase detention to accommodate.”
Good point about runoff. The fewer houses with grassy yards and the more big condos and concrete patios the more runoff an area gets. By a huge amount. I saw a statistic once about how many gallons of water run off a flat surface per square foot in a heavy rain and it was insane. We ourselves designed our backyard specifically to capture and absorb rainwater into the ground and reduce runoff.
Gowanus was/is a swamp.
and it will be one again when the apes take over.
Yes, to clarify (a few people seem confused), these pictures were taken yesterday, as you can see on Root Hill’s FB page, and the ‘event’ only lasted a short time. This did not/is not happening today.
flooding ended after an hour or so.
firemen were poking the catch basin in front of root hill with big sticks.
um is this unflooded yet? i have to walk thru this exact area to get home today
*rob*
“If only we were living in a time of a massive recession, when unprecedentedly low interest rates made it possible for the government to borrow money to finance vital capital projects practically for free. And if only we were living in a time of mass unemployment and a huge percentage of private sector capacity sitting idle, where these projects not only would fail to compete with private investment dollars, but would also actually stimulate the private sector by putting idle capacity to work and putting money in workers’ pockets.
Oh, to live in such a time and have leaders wise enough to take advantage of it!”
Bkrules;
You get my “Poster of the Year” award for this statement.
I just got back from a visit to a customer in central New Jersey, and was shocked to see how the roas there have crumbled.
Everyday that goes by, I get more and more angry at the opportunity that has just been squandered. We have just put ourselves $800B deeper in the hole for this “stimulus” package and WHAT THE HELL do we have to show for it??
Where is today’s Hoover Dam or Triborough Bridge?!?!?! A few months ago Brownstoner reported that some of the stimulus money went to buy “vintage” lamposts in Brooklyn Heights. Isn’t that sweet? Yes, let’s complete the transition of Brownstone Brooklyn into an adult Disneyland, courtesy of our children and grandchildren.
Correct, and just to add some more nauseaiting statistics, before the Clean Water Act, the rate of pollutants being removed by NYC was 65%. What sewage would you suspect that NYC had to treat to achieve the other mandated 20%? It would have been nice it we had the capacity to retain that required volume somewhere first or had the capacity to seperate and treat it differently at higher flow rates instead of letting it reach capacity and backup.
I was privy to a flood zone map when I purchase co-op insurance a few years ago. the floodzone goes right along 4th ave at that point – and the insurance is different down there because of it.
85% means that during an extreme storm event, they most certainly CAN dump directly into the waterways! But in such a storm event, the concentration *actual* sewage is very low. (Not that “dilution is the solution”)
And just like you said — it’s not the stormwater the Clean Water Act is concerned with. The problem is that the NYC sewer system doesn’t separate those two sources of water — storm vs. sanitary. Unfortunately, this means that rain water has to find its way into the treatment facilities. A VERY wasteful process. This does not mean stormwater is unregulated, just untreated. Commercial, industrial (and residential) properties need to be monitored. For example, iron girders and other metal stock must be covered so the rain doesn’t wash huge amounts of metals into the rivers and ocean.