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.
Maly, I think you’re still confusing two separate issues. Yes, the Gowanus area is low-lying and would probably be prone to flooding in extreme weather circumstances (like a freak high tide or a hurricane), but this flooding is just rainwater backed up at this one particular intersection – it’s not a general overflow of the Gowanus canal watershed over the whole area – in fact it’s not flooded closer to the canal. It’s just a failure of the drains to take water in fast enough- could happen at any flat intersection with insufficient drainage. Nothing to do with the geographic location really, except that there’s a small dip at this particular intersection. With better drainage, the location could and should be fine for development. Unless you’re really saying that homes shouldn’t be built anywhere except on the tops of hills?
My first comment was too dense and conflated the Gowanus canal, the flood zone and storm runoff issues. I should have unpacked the facts from the opinion. The current overflow is clearly due to the heavy rains, but there is a reason this area floods whenever it rains, the topography makes it a natural watershed. I think it’s a mistake to favor residential developments in such a zone.
Cellars in that area are taking a pounding.
I don’t agree that the city is still letting raw sewage drain into the river. While new construction has two sewer lines coming out (1-sanitary 1-storm) they both still dump into one main sewer line outside. They city has not replaced the countless miles sewer lines into two seperate ones. So if the city is dumping into the river it would be dumping combined sewage. I don’t beleive that’s the case. Retention basins for this do have limited capacity and are funnelled right back into the sewer system to run through the treatment plants. While this particular corner of 4th ave may have had consistent flooding over the last 20 years per your recollection, sewers backing up direclty into into homes up on 5th and 6th ave’s are a recent phenomenom per the last 40 years of my recollection. I live on the hill and the city sewers started backing up into my house. It has forced me to put in check valves to solve a problem I never had before.
Note that the MTA finally got sick of it, and built curbs at the R train entrances at the Union Street station.
Maly;
You may be correct that there is a flood risk around the Gowanus, but I repeat: that has nothing to do with the topic of this thread. This is a storm sewer backup issue.
The city has built several underground Combined Sewer Overflow storage tanks around the city. When the storm surge overwhelms the sewage treatment plants’ capacity, the water is supposed to be diverted to these holding tanks, and then pumped back to be treated after the storm passes.
Parts of Staten Island, which had septic until recently, are the only area of the city with separate storm and sanitary sewers.
It’s the weather, DIBS – didn’t want to think you were THAT nutso 🙂
“The problem is very recent.”
Sorry, no. benson is correct, and this particular corner has been flooding regularly for the twenty years I have lived here. Only now that there are some chi-chi businesses and condos here is it getting more attention.