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.
No doubt Canada geese will move in soon adding to the problems.
I don’t believe this area is in a as-yet recognized “flood zone.” The stipulation depends on weather patterns and flooding from bodies of water, not from sewer issues. Parts of bay ridge are, for example.
The pipes are fine. The mandated treatment of storm water is the issue. The treatment facilites cannot handle this type of volume. The problem is very recent.
“Not a bad thing, but the city is not prepared to handle the capacity yet and the sewers are backing up.” because of the Clean Water Act.
Another ridiculously implemented federal law is that you can now no longer repave city streets without making the curbs handicap accessible which, at this stage, is prohibitively costly. So the streets will remain unpaved.
Maly;
This has nothing to do with the overflow of the Gowanus. It is a back-up of the storm sewer piping. Simply put, the pipes are undersized to handle such a sudden surge of rain water.
This is not a freak occurence relative to 5 year cycles, but a direct result of no longer allowing storm water to drain diretcly into the river and require treatment first. Not a bad thing, but the city is not prepared to handle the capacity yet and the sewers are backing up.
“DEP is legally bound by the mandates of the federal Clean Water Act to eliminate 85 percent of sewer overflows before they become water quality issues. To date, the DEP has approached this primarily through end-of-pipe solutions: building massive sewage/stormwater storage facilities to contain the untreated water during storms, and slowly drain that water back into the sewer system as treatment capacity becomes available.”
Sewers are backing up directly into homes as a result when capacity has been reached and you don’t need to live on 4th ave to realize this. This may not reach the top of the hill, but homes going up the hill are affected too.
There’s a reason the Feds develop flood maps. It’s hard to believe people would buy real estate in the Gowanus canal overflow, but they do.
it pays to live on top of a hill. no such flooding risk.
BoD, think most of those cars were parked on the street – ie owner had no freaking idea this crap would happen. driving thru it is bad but the water evaporates from the hot engine to minimize the damage. cold engine sitting in that water, toast