12 Days of DEP 2018
Day 1: DEP Water Quality Scientists on Thin Ice
If there’s one fundamental rule that comes out of our water supply staff’s ice safety training, it’s this: No ice is safe ice. That’s the central principle passed on to our water quality scientists who participated in the training sessions atop frozen sections of Ashokan and New Croton reservoirs. Led by our Environmental Police Officers, the scientists learned what types of ice to avoid and how to get yourself out if you happen to fall through the ice. The instruction is given to staff who might have to venture onto the ice to collect water samples for analysis. More than 600,000 water quality analyses are performed by our scientists each year as they examine NYC’s water in streams, reservoirs, aqueducts, and at nearly 1,000 locations throughout the five boroughs.
Day 2: Digester Eggs Light Up for Love
We lit up the Newtown Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant red for the annual Valentine’s Day public tours, which were once again offered to a sold-out crowd of 350 people. Our staff gave a behind-the-scenes look to hundreds of lovebirds at the largest of our 14 wastewater treatment plants. Following a presentation on how the plant operates, guests were then ushered to the top of the digester eggs — lit red for the first time ever — to take in the panoramic views of the city skyline from the 120-foot high observation deck. Located in Brooklyn’s Greenpoint neighborhood, the plant serves more than 1 million people and treats more than 300 million gallons of wastewater each day.
Day 3: Tree Teams at Ashokan Reservoir
A LOT goes into maintaining more than 185,000 acres of watershed land that NYC preserves as forever wild to protect our drinking water. We have multiple tree teams charged with trimming and removing trees that are growing near our water supply infrastructure, alongside dams, and near property boundaries and roadways. Our teams are highly trained in techniques involving climbing trees using spurs, ropes, and harnesses to trim canopies, skills especially important for densely forested areas that cannot be reached by machines or bucket trucks.
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Day 4: The “Holing Through”
We reached a landmark this year when a micro-tunneling machine broke through a wall of rock and completed the first leg of a new release tunnel at Schoharie Reservoir. The “holing through” marked the end of tunneling for the 1,188-foot land leg of the tunnel, part of a $142 million project to build release works at the reservoir. This will give us the ability to release water downstream of the reservoir into Schoharie Creek to perform dam maintenance, respond to potential emergencies, reduce flood risk for downstream communities, and enhance downstream habitat for fish and wildlife.
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Day 5: Banding Together
Every year, our wildlife biologist Chris Nadareski assists the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation with banding baby falcons high atop many of NYC’s bridges. Falcons are making a comeback in NYC, as our tall buildings and bridges remind them of their natural habitat of high cliffs with ideal views of potential prey. Banding is a way to track the birds and their offspring and also serves as a long-term record for the US Fish and Wildlife Services. Luckily for us, Chris does not have a fear of heights, nor do the babies’ mothers, who often circle their nest — and occasionally swoop down on him — while he works.
Day 6: Trout in the Classroom
Since 2002, we’ve partnered with Trout Unlimited, a national grassroots non-profit organization whose mission is to conserve, protect, and restore North America’s cold-water fisheries and their watersheds, to educate students in NYC and watershed communities about the importance of protecting our water. The Trout in the Classroom program teaches young New Yorkers, ranging from pre-K to grade 12, about the connections between trout, the NYC water supply system, water quality, and students from both sides of the water tunnel. This year, thousands of students from schools in the city and the upstate watersheds incubated trout eggs in their classrooms and raised them into juvenile trout, which are also called fingerlings. The 8-month long program culminates with students taking part in a field day, where they release the fingerlings into NYC watershed streams from April through June.
Day 7: Saving Water While Learning to Save Lives at FDNY’s Fire Academy
Did you know that we respond to every 2-alarm fire and above to assist the FDNY? We play a critical role in assisting the brave firefighters, ensuring they have an adequate amount of water and pressure needed to fight fires. Not only have our agencies teamed up to help save lives, but we have also partnered to save another precious resource — water. We installed upgrades at FDNY’s Training Academy and a dozen firehouses across the City which have resulted in a savings of more than 35,000 gallons of water per day. With funding from us, the FDNY constructed a water recovery facility at their Academy on Randall’s Island, which includes a 40,000-gallon underground tank used for calibrating their equipment pumper apparatus. As part of the intitiative, they also upgraded 12 of the City’s largest firehouses. We are funding water demand reduction projects across the City in preparation for the shutdown of the Delaware Aqueduct in 2022.
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Day 8: Record Rainfall
Persistent rainstorms throughout the summer and fall made 2018 one of the wettest years on record in our watershed. In fact, this year included the wettest August in recorded history for almost our entire water supply system. The extra rainfall caused many of our reservoirs to fill and pass water through their spillways. That included the 297-foot-tall New Croton Dam, which was the tallest dam in the world when it was completed in 1905. The dam impounds water from the Croton River to form New Croton Reservoir, which can store 19 billion gallons of water at full capacity. The spillway at New Croton Dam is particularly beautiful, and many local residents and visitors enjoy stopping at Westchester County’s Croton Gorge Park to take photos as water comes through the spillway and into the Croton River.
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Day 9: Summer Interns Visit DEP Police Academy
More than 155 dedicated young people spent this summer working alongside us as part of our annual summer internship program. These internships give college students an inside peek at the critical work we perform every day, while also affording them the opportunity to make meaningful contributions to many of our programs and projects. The competition was fierce, with over 1,500 applications received in total. Clearly, the word was out that our internships can provide invaluable insight into a future career. In fact, what better example of how a summer internship at DEP can shape one’s life than Commissioner Vincent Sapienza, who was a summer intern in 1981, and began working full-time for the Agency two years later! He’s certainly come a long way, hasn’t he?
Day 10: Bridging the Gap: Bringing Back Our Wetlands
You know we’re improving harbor water quality through investments in more advanced wastewater treatment and stormwater management. But did you know about our commitment to protecting and restoring marine ecosystems? Wetlands function as key transitional lands between water and land ecosystems and have huge benefits for both. They attenuate flooding, help maintain stream flow, improve water quality, absorb nutrients and carbon, and provide plant and wildlife habitat — nearly half the nation’s threatened and endangered species rely on wetlands to survive. NYC has lost roughly 85% of its natural wetlands and we are working to restore them in Newtown Creek, Alley Creek, and Flushing Bay. In the larger Jamaica Bay area, we have worked with partners to restore 142 acres of marsh islands and over 400 acres of maritime grassland and forests.
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Day 11: Historic Investment in Queens
We linked up with the city’s Department of Design and Construction as part of a historic $1.9 billion commitment to build a comprehensive drainage system in Southeast Queens to help stem chronic flooding in the area. Ten projects have already been completed, with another 10 currently in construction. An additional 25 projects are in the planning and design phase and will break ground in the coming years in neighborhoods including St. Alban’s, Rosedale, Jamaica, Laurelton and Springfield Gardens, among others. Shovels in the ground in Southeast Queens mean we are one step closer to a true drainage system and some peace of mind for residents and businesses. As we complete each of these projects we will see better drainage, safer roadways, a healthier Jamaica Bay and higher property values across these long underserved neighborhoods.
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Day 12: Work Hard, Play Hard
Thanks to our partnership with The Trust for Public Land, The Winthrop Campus in Brooklyn’s East Flatbush neighborhood is one of the many locations to receive a completely reconstructed, reimagined playground this year that not only looks great, but is working hard for us right under our feet. We’ve allocated millions of dollars to The Trust for Public Land’s Playground Program, completing more than a dozen green schoolyards citywide that are helping to soak up stormwater in order to reduce flooding and improve the health of our surrounding waterbodies. We have also partnered with NYC Parks, allocating more than $50 million to install new green infrastructure in reconstructed neighborhood parks across the five boroughs through the Community Parks Initiative. The kids of P.S. 33 Chelsea Prep certainly know how to celebrate a new playground:
