Fun for Kids, Good for the Waterways - Wall Street Journal

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Fun for Kids, Good for the Waterways - Wall Street Journal Mar 13th 2012, 01:30 By JENNIFER MALONEY New York City has enlisted trees, "green" roofs and massive tanks in its effort to reduce the billions of gallons of untreated wastewater that overflow into city waterways during rain storms each year. Now, it's turning to schoolyards. The city's Department of Environmental Protection is developing a plan with the Trust for Public Land, a national not-for-profit group, to build as many as 10 "green" playgrounds, designed to capture the first inch of rain in every storm—keeping the water from pouring into the city's sewer system and inundating wastewater treatment plants. Five proposed schoolyards in Brooklyn and Queens are undergoing soil tests, and if selected they will be transformed into public playgrounds with storm water-capture features such as rain barrels, raised gardens, porous pavers and an under-layer of gravel that holds water during a storm, before allowing it to seep gradually into the ground below, city DEP Commissioner Carter Strickland said. Much of New York is served by a combined-sewer system, in which rainwater mixes with sewage from homes and businesses. When it rains even a fraction of an inch, the city's wastewater treatment plants can't handle the flow. So the wastewater—about 88% rainwater mixed with about 12% sewage—flows straight into creeks and rivers. Each year, between 27 billion and 30 billion gallons of this untreated wastewater pours into city waterways, according to the DEP. "That's really the No. 1 water-quality challenge we have in the city," Mr. Strickland said. The five proposed schoolyards are situated in some of the city's priority watersheds, including Newtown Creek, the Gowanus Canal, Jamaica Bay and Flushing Bay. In 2010, the city laid out a 20-year, $1.5 billion plan to capture the first inch of rainfall on 10% of impervious surfaces—roads, sidewalks, roofs and asphalt schoolyards—in combined-sewer runoff areas. Last year, the city opened a $404 million retention facility in Brooklyn that can hold up to 50 million gallons of wastewater during heavy rains. But a more cost-effective solution, Mr. Strickland said, is to catch the rain before it enters the sewer system. He said his department had not yet signed an agreement with the Trust for Public Land on the playground project, but is expected to finalize a deal soon. Since 2007, the Trust for Public Land has designed or built 151 playgrounds in New York City schoolyards, under the city's PlaNYC initiative. A recent project, at P.S. 164 in Borough Park, Brooklyn, served as a pilot of sorts for the new initiative, because it includes some of the same rainwater-retention features, said Mary Alice Lee, director of the Trust for Public Land's New York City playground program. This new playground won't be completed until May, but it is already open to the public. The project is transforming what was a slab of asphalt into a play space and outdoor classroom, with trees, a garden, a running track, a turf field, a gazebo with a rain barrel and a garden shed with a "green" roof. "To be honest, it wasn't very inviting," said fifth-grade teacher Taura McMeekin, who wrote the school's grant application to the Trust for Public Land. "It was just a concrete slab with a dilapidated play structure." The design for the new playground—which includes a climbing structure, a zip line, a basketball hoop and chess tables—was developed in large part by the school's students. Staff from the Trust for Public Land visited the school once a week for 16 weeks to work with the children on the plans, and it took students on a field trip to see a completed playground, Ms. McMeekin said. Parents and other community members were invited to vote on a final design. A similar collaborative design process is under way for four of the proposed schoolyards, Ms. Lee said. The goal will be to capture one inch of rain water—a standard the P.S. 164 playground was not designed to meet, she said. To achieve that, the playgrounds will include even more "green" elements, such as a deeper gravel layer, more porous pavers or more trees. The first five new playgrounds should be open to the public by the end of next year, Ms. Lee said. Write to Jennifer Maloney at jennifer.maloney@wsj.com This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read the FAQ at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php#publishers. Five Filters recommends: Donate to Wikileaks.

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