Jennifer Medina says frequent sewer backups at her Queens home are costing her family money and triggering asthma.
On a rainy day last summer, a Brooklyn mother of four was pregnant with her fifth child when she heard water pouring into her basement.She climbed down the stairs and almost cried.The supplies she had meticulously prepared for her newborn baby were covered in raw sewage.
“It was feces. It was the week before I had my baby and I cleaned everything out – undershirts, pajamas, car seats, carriages, strollers, everything,” said the mother, who was reluctant to Anonymity was released for fear of delays in payment in her damages claim to the city.
“I started making videos for my husband so he could tell me how to stop it, and then I was like ‘oh my gosh kids, run up the stairs’ – because it’s up to my ankles,” Mead said. Wood resident said.
Back-up is also an issue in her community, said Jennifer Medina, 48, a Queens resident a few miles away.She said at least once a year, sewage floods her basement and a thick, sickening stench fills the house.
“It’s always been a problem, more recently than ever,” Medina said, adding that backup has been an issue since her husband’s family bought the house near South Ozone Park more than 38 years ago.
Most New Yorkers dread going out in the rain, but for some city dwellers, staying home isn’t much better.In some communities, untreated sewage gurgled from basement toilets, showers and drains during heavy rains, flooding cellars with the smell of untreated sewage and untreated human waste.For many of these residents, the problem is nothing new.
Medina said she has called 311, the city’s hotline for non-life-threatening assistance, multiple times for help in resolving the disgusting and costly chaos.
“It’s like they don’t care. They act like it’s not their problem,” Medina said of the city’s response.*
While raw sewage discharges into rivers and waterways around New York City have received much attention, residential sewage backup facilities that have plagued some city blocks for decades have received far less attention.The problem was most prevalent in parts of Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island, but also occurred in communities across all five boroughs.
In recent years, the city has tried to address the problem, with mixed results.Now the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is stepping in.Last August, the agency issued an executive compliance order that forced the city to consider longstanding issues.
“The city has a documented history of basement backups and sewage entering residential and commercial basements,” said Douglas McKenna, EPA’s director of water compliance, of the data the city provided to the EPA.
According to the order, the city “did not address violations at the speed and scale necessary to protect residents.” The agency said the backups exposed residents to untreated sewage, a hazard to human health.The backup also violated the Clean Water Act by allowing untreated wastewater to be discharged into nearby waterways.
By issuing the order (which McKenna says is not punitive), EPA requires the city to comply with the Clean Water Act, develop and implement an operations and maintenance plan, better document complaints and increase transparency in addressing these issues.complaint.The order also formalizes work the city is already doing, he said.
According to a letter provided by the EPA, New York City received the order on Sept. 2 and had 120 days to implement the operations and maintenance plan.The plan needs to include an outline of steps the city will take to prevent and better respond to backups, “with the ultimate goal of eliminating sewer backups system-wide.”In a letter dated Jan. 23, EPA approved the city-proposed extension to extend the plan’s submission deadline to May 31, 2017.
McKenna also said the EPA is also seeking greater transparency from the city.As an example, he pointed to the “Status of Sewers” report, which includes data on the number of sewer backups experienced by the borough, as well as information on remedial actions the city has implemented.McKenna said the report, which should remain public, was available for 2012 and 2013, but not in recent years.
The Jan. 23 letter indicates that the City has proposed to replace the EPA-required “Sewer Condition” report (due to the EPA on Feb. 15) with a dashboard hosted on the DEP website.The EPA has not approved the proposal and is asking the City for more information to ensure the information is publicly accessible on DEP’s website and includes clear links, including instructions on how to access the data.
The New York Department of Water and Sewers did not comment on specific issues related to the reported sewer backup or the EPA order, but in an emailed statement, a spokesperson said, “New York City has invested billions of dollars in upgrading our The wastewater system and our data-driven, proactive approach to operations and maintenance have significantly improved performance and reliability, including a 33 percent reduction in sewer backups.”
A DEP spokesperson also said that over the past 15 years, the department has invested nearly $16 billion in upgrading the city’s wastewater system and implemented programs to reduce the amount of household grease entering the system, as well as programs to help homeowners maintain their private lives.sewer.
Houses are usually connected to the city sewer system by lines that run from the house to the city pipes under the street.Since these connections are on private property, the homeowner is responsible for maintaining them.According to city estimates, more than 75 percent of sewer problem reports are caused by problems with private sewer lines.
A DEP spokesperson said that over the past 15 years, the department has invested nearly $16 billion in upgrading New York City’s wastewater systems and implemented programs to reduce the amount of household grease entering the system, as well as programs to help homeowners maintain private sewers.String.
Grease can build up and stick to the inside of drains, restricting or even blocking the flow of wastewater.
But the Medina couple and their neighbors say the grease isn’t their Queens problem, or the clogging of their private sewer.
“We paid the plumber to come and see it,” said Mrs. Medina.”They told us the problem wasn’t with us, it was with the city, but we had to pay for the phone anyway.”
Her husband Roberto grew up in the house they now live in, which he says his mother bought in the early 1970s.
“I just grew up with it,” he said, referring to backups.”I learned to live with it.”
“Our solution to this problem is to tile the basement, which helps with cleanup because we mop and bleach it,” he said.
“We installed a backflow device and it helped, but it was an expensive proposition,” he said.Homeowners install return valves and other flow control valves to prevent sewage from flowing back into their homes, even when city systems fail.
Many residents have to install valves that can cost between $2,500 and $3,000 or more, depending on the construction of each home, said John Good, a customer service technician at Balkan Plumbing.A backflow preventer (sometimes called a backflow valve, butterfly valve, or backup valve) consists of a mechanism that closes when wastewater begins to flow in from city sewers.
After living in her home in the Bronx for more than 26 years, Francis Ferrer said she knew that if her toilet didn’t flush or flushed slowly, something was wrong.
“My neighbors would come over and ask ‘Are you having a problem because we have a problem?’ and you’d know,” she said.
“It’s been like this for 26 years. There’s nothing you can do about it. That’s it,” Ferrer said.”The feces came out and everything smelled because it was actually in the house because the trap was in the house.”
Larry Miniccello has lived in the Sheepshead Bay neighborhood of Brooklyn for 38 years.He said he was tired of dealing with frequent sewer backups and installed a return valve a few years ago.
“If you don’t have that kind of valve to keep the water from backing up, you’re going to get burned in this neighborhood — there’s no question about it,” he said.
“What happened was that when I lifted it up a little, it spewed out, and it was sewage. I had to use my hammer to knock it off and press it down. It was a horrible night,” He said.
New York City Council member Chaim Deutsch represents Minichello and his neighbors in Brooklyn’s 48th Ward.After the heavy rain last summer, Deutsh organized a community meeting to bring attention to the issue.
“People are just getting used to it and expect that whenever it rains heavily, they have to check their basement,” Deutsch said.
He said the meeting gave DEP the opportunity to hear directly from residents.Residents learned about the valves they can install and the insurance available to repair homeowners’ sewers.American Water Resources provides insurance for homeowners through monthly water bills.
But even those who sign up are not covered for damage due to city sewer problems, and property damage due to backups is not covered, no matter what the problem is.
“We perform repairs for blockages on customer-owned sewer lines, but damage to personal property in customers’ homes due to backups is not covered by the program,” said Richard Barnes, a spokesman for American Water Resources. One of the New York City homeowners participated in the program.
“These are not solutions,” Deutsch said.”At the end of the day, people don’t deserve sewer backup. We need to do everything possible so we don’t have to live like this until something more permanent is done.”
“People are so used to it that they don’t call 311 and if you don’t call 311 to report you have a sewer back up, it’s like it never happened,” he said, adding that money to improve infrastructure often goes to The community that records the complaint.
“They’ve made significant progress in reducing backups by more than 50 percent over the past few years. However, we think it’s necessary for them to continue this progress and revisit and come up with other ways to reduce backups even further,” McKenna said.
Minichello points out that the sewer system serves far more people than it was designed to handle.
“I don’t think it’s fair to say the city isn’t doing their job well, because that doesn’t happen very often,” Miniccello said.”For the most part, the sewer system has been working fine for over 30 years.”
“Everyone is yelling about climate change,” Miniccello said.”What if we start raining regularly — what are we to worry about every time it rains? She’ll tell you,” he said, nodding to his wife Marilyn. “Every time it rains, I go downstairs, I’ll check three times – maybe 3am and I hear it’s pouring rain and I go downstairs just to make sure there’s no water coming in because you have to catch up early.”
Even with no increase in rainfall, Queens residents say something needs to be done.Mrs Medina described the city’s response as “slack” and said the city was not responsible for the issue, which only added to her frustration.
“It’s been a problem since we bought [the house], sometimes even when it doesn’t rain,” said Bibi Hussain, 49, who cares for his elderly mother, who bought the house in 1989 .She is one of them.A small percentage of people reporting “dry weather backup,” which has nothing to do with weather.
“We can’t leave anything on the floor. We store things high because we never know when there’s going to be a flood,” Hussain said, adding that no one could explain why her family had to deal with it backup.
Like Medina, she said after every backup, her family would pay for a plumber who told them the problem was with the city’s system.
Post time: Jan-12-2022
