AP Photo/Mark Lennihan
DCL
The New York City Department of Environmental Projection is throwing $2.6 million worth of its weight behind five promising green infrastructure projects around the city. The Flushing and Gowanus Green Infrastructure Grant Initiative, which called for innovative projects to capture and manage stormwater runoff to help improve water quality in the city's harbor, chose the winning applicants based on what seemed most promising for success and replicable on a large scale.
The projects include a green roof for New York Hospital, various stormwater capture systems in Queens, and efforts to capture runoff at Brooklyn's Superfund-listed Gowanus Canal.
A bit more about the projects, from DEP:
Manhattan College: $660,440 for the installation of a modular green roof project on New York Hospital. It will be designed to control runoff from a 1 to 1.5-inch rainfall on a half acre roof.
Columbia University: $389,187 for a Greenstreets stormwater capture system in Rego Park that will remove nearly 2,500 square feet of impervious surface and replace it with permeable pavement and vegetation to capture runoff from a three acre-watershed.
Regional Plan Association: $600,000 for Sponge Park< bioretention basins under the Long Island Expressway near the Van Wyck Expressway. One is 1,963 square feet and has the capacity to store approximately 34,000 gallons from a 2 inch rainstorm, and the second is approximately 9,900 square feet and has the capacity to store approximately 170,000 gallons.
Gowanus Canal Conservancy: $583,470 for the 6th Street Green Corridor Project that will build seven curbside swales ranging from 400 square feet to 1,200 square feet along 6th Street and 2nd Avenue in Brooklyn. The project will capture approximately 40% of the runoff generated within the seven-swale area, which is over 45,000 square feet of street and sidewalk surfaces.
Unisphere, Inc.: $386,551 for treatment wetlands and rain gardens for treating stormwater entering Meadow Lake. This project will construct two 5,000-square-foot treatment wetlands that will receive runoff from two one-acre portions of a parking area at the southwestern edge of Meadow Lake in Flushing Meadows Corona Park. Each treatment system is designed to capture over 36,000 gallons for each 1 to 1.5-inch rainstorm or a total of over 72,000 gallons for each storm.
