Engineers Week Q&A with Commissioner Sapienza
In celebration of National Engineers Week, our Commissioner sat down with us to talk about his experience as an engineer and why our mission is so important to both him and New York City.
What drew you to make an engineering career at the New York City Department of Environmental Protection (DEP)?
Within weeks of joining the department, I recognized that DEP offered its engineers a broad opportunity to work on extraordinary infrastructure that provided a critical public service. And given DEP’s immense portfolio, I could potentially get assigned a wide variety of different work, including planning, operations, design, regulatory compliance, and construction management. I also found the engineers at DEP to be very collegial and willing to share their lessons learned. So I’ve truly enjoyed almost 36 years here.
How has the industry changed since you joined DEP in 1983?
When I started, there were no desktop computers. Paper spreadsheets were tabulated on adding machines, drafting tables were used for hand design, and we had large rooms full of file cabinets to store and retrieve documents. Today’s technology certainly makes us much more efficient. But we also have to contend with many, many more regulations, and our customers are much more engaged and have higher expectations for service. Designing for safety and serviceability is now standard practice. In 1983, few people had heard of global warming, but obviously today we make a significant effort to minimize carbon emissions.
What are some of the challenges you still face in the industry?
A New York State Department of Environmental Conservation Deputy Commissioner once told me to always remember that “the Clean Water Act is an unyielding task master, whose aspiration is to eliminate the discharge of all pollutants”. That means it will take a lot of effort over decades before our engineers can declare success. DEP’s Long Term Control Plans to reduce Combined Sewer Overflows are an immense challenge that require a coordinated multi-bureau effort. On the drinking water side, we have major capital work that’s needed to ensure the continuing reliability of the system, like the Ashokan Century Program, Hillview Modifications, and Kensico-Eastview Connection. And maintaining our vast assets while keeping water rates affordable is always daunting.
How has New York City shaped the engineering of wastewater treatment facilities?
New York City engineers have always been leaders in wastewater treatment technology — even dating back to the 1930s. Many of the biological treatment innovations used today were invented by city engineers. In recent years, because of our high density and limited physical space, we’ve had to get creative about solutions, like with the nitrogen reduction initiatives.
How did the Clean Water Act of 1972 impact New York Harbor and the work of our engineers here at DEP?
No one alive has previously seen our harbor waters as clean as they are today. And that’s thanks to many infrastructure improvements, particularly those made following the passage of the Clean Water Act. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, the harbor was so polluted that people avoided going near the shoreline. While there was some progress made in the 1930s and 40s in terms of treating wastewater, it really wasn’t until the Clean Water Act that major improvements were kick-started. The Act required all wastewater treatment plants throughout the country to treat to much higher standards, called secondary treatment. And so our engineers had to devise the necessary changes to meet those limits. Their innovation and hard work resulted in nine of the City’s 12 plants at the time being upgraded to achieve secondary treatment by 1979.
Water quality has improved drastically since the 1980s. Can you tell us a little bit more about DEP’s role in making a healthy, clean harbor a reality?
In the mid-1980s, we completed two new modern wastewater treatment plants at Red Hook and North River, eliminating more than 200 million gallons of raw sewage that was being released into the harbor each day. Then in 1988, Congress passed the Ocean Dumping Ban Act. Up to that time, New York City had disposed of sewage sludge at sea. DEP engineers had to quickly determine the best methods to deal with this material, and they determined that centrifuging the sludge at high speed could separate solids and liquids. The ‘biosolids’ could then be applied to land to improve soil quality. By 1992, eight new dewatering facilities were completed. Since the 1980s, CSOs have been reduced by 80%. Our engineers have also in recent years successfully tackled nitrogen and residual chlorine to even further improve harbor water quality.
As our strategic plan says, we’re always trying to enrich DEP’s amazing legacy, and we’re really starting to see the fruits of that labor — like whales, dolphins, crabs in numbers we haven’t seen in more than a century.
