[PDF]NYCGreenInfrastructurePlan-Stategy for Clean Waterways-ExecutiveSummary

NYC GREEN INFRASTRUCTURE PLAN



A SUSTAINABLE STRATEGY FOR CLEAN WATERWAYS



Michael R. Bloomberg, Mayor
Cas Holloway, Commissioner



BYC



Environmental
Protection




This page is left blank intentionally. Please print this plan using the double-sided printer setting.

Green infrastructure photographs (clockwise, starting from the top-left): rain barrel, enhanced
tree pit, Staten Island Bluebelt, porous concrete sidewalk, porous pavers, restored wetland,
green roof, blue roof

Credit: Topmost cover photograph taken by Nancy Hey: all others taken by DEP employees.



The City of New York
Office of the Mayor
New York, NY 1 0007



Dear Friends:

Cleaning up New York City's rivers, creeks, and coastal waters has been a top priority for our
Administration, and the pace of progress has increased dramatically over the past several
years. Since 2002, the City has invested more than $6 billion in water quality, and key indicators
show that New York Harbor is the cleanest and healthiest it's been in more than a century. But
to open as much of our waterfront as possible to recreation and development, we need a
long-term plan to manage the stormwater that can overwhelm our combined sewer system
when it rains, impairing water quality in the harbor and its tributaries.

To succeed, any plan must be effective and affordable, and the 8.4 million New Yorkers who
will pay for it must see and feel its benefits. The NYC Green Infrastructure Plan will achieve that
goal. Based on years of study and our experience with new technologies, we know that green
infrastructure — advanced street-tree pits, porous pavements and streets, green and blue roofs,
and many other stormwater controls — can improve water and air quality, help to cool the City,
reduce energy bills and greenhouse gas emissions, increase property values, and beautify our
communities. And we can achieve all of these benefits for billions of dollars less than the cost of
the traditional tanks and tunnels that are useful only when it rains.

The NYC Green Infrastructure Plan continues the implementation of PlaNYC, not only by
improving water quality, but by helping the City achieve cleaner air and greener streets, and
we look forward to working with the New York State Department of Environmental
Conservation and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to make our plan a reality. The
unprecedented scale of this plan and our commitment to implement it will put the City at the
forefront of stormwater management, and ensure our progress toward a greener, greater New
York.



Sincerely,




ACRONYMS



AMR


Automated Meter Reading


ARRA


American Recovery and Reinvestment Act


BID


Business Improvement District


BMP


Best Management Practice


CAC


Citizens Advisory Committee


CAPA


City Administrative Procedure Act


CSO


combined sewer overflow


DCP


New York City Department of City Planning


DEC


New York State Department of Environmental Conservation


DEP


New York City Department of Environmental Protection


DDC


New York City Department of Design & Construction


DOB


New York City Department of Buildings


DOE


New York City Department of Education


DOT


New York City Department of Transportation


DPR


New York City Department of Parks & Recreation


EPA


United States Environmental Protection Agency


FOG


fat, oil, and grease


HPD


New York City Department of Housing Preservation & Department


LTCP


Long Term Control Plan


MTA


New York City Metropolitan Transit Authority


NYCHA


New York City Housing Authority


OMB


New York City Office of Management and Budget


SCADA


Supervisor Control and Data Acquisition


RCNY


Rules of the City of New York


ROW


Right-of-Way


WWFP


Waterbody Watershed Facility Plan


WWTP


Wastewater Treatment Plant



ii



EXECUTIVE SUMMARY



New York City's efforts to improve water quality are a critical part of PlaNYC, Mayor
Bloomberg's blueprint for a greener, greater city. Already the Harbor is cleaner than it has
been in over 100 years, and millions of people enjoy the City's waterfront and waterways every
year, thanks in part to the New York City Department of Environmental Protection's (DEP's)
investment of billions of dollars in sewer and wastewater treatment plant upgrades. But in those
waterbodies that do not yet meet water quality standards for pathogens, the biggest
remaining challenge is to further reduce combined sewer overflows (CSOs) that discharge a
mixture of untreated sewage and stormwater runoff when it rains. Traditional approaches to
reduce CSOs further would include the construction of additional, large infrastructure, but the
remaining opportunities for such construction are very expensive, and do not provide the
sustainability benefits that New Yorkers rightly expect from multi-billion dollar investments of
public funds.

This Green Infrastructure Plan presents an alternative approach to improving water quality that
integrates "green infrastructure," such as swales and green roofs, with investments to optimize
the existing system and to build targeted, smaller-scale "grey" or traditional infrastructure. This is
a multi-pronged, modular, and adaptive approach to a complicated problem that will provide
widespread, immediate benefits at a lower cost. The green infrastructure component of this
strategy builds upon and reinforces the strong public and government support that will be nec-
essary to make additional water quality investments. A critical goal of the green infrastructure
component is to manage runoff from 10% of the impervious surfaces in combined sewer water-
sheds through detention and infiltration source controls.

New York City's "Green Strategy" is nimble enough to incorporate new technologies and ap-
proaches as they emerge during the implementation of our plan. DEP will preserve its ability to
pursue larger grey infrastructure if necessary and appropriate in the event that the Green
Strategy cannot achieve water quality objectives in a particular drainage area. Promoting
green infrastructure has been endorsed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
and the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC). Under Administrator
Lisa Jackson, EPA has testified that green infrastructure is an "effective response to a variety of
environmental challenges that is cost-effective, sustainable, and provides multiple desirable
environmental outcomes." (Testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on
Transportation and Infrastructure, Subcommittee on Water Resources and Environment, March
19, 2009)

In fact, this approach is not so new — the City and its partners have a long track record of suc-
cessfully meeting water quality standards with natural solutions that have substantial, quantifia-
ble co-benefits. For example, in our Catskill and Delaware watersheds, the City, EPA, New York
State, and community and environmental groups came together and agreed that preserving
forested areas and natural buffers was a better way to keep our drinking water clean than rely-
ing upon end-of-the-pipe, energy-intensive filtration systems. Since the City first applied for a
waiver from filtration requirements for the Catskill and Delaware system in 1991, DEP has com-
mitted more than $1 .5 billion and dedicated staff to sustain the pristine quality of source waters,
and so far has eliminated the need for a filtration plant that would cost $10 billion or more.
These commitments are included in the Filtration Avoidance Determinations issued by EPA and



EXECUTIVE SUMMARY



implemented by DEP and its watershed partners, including New York State, watershed towns,
and civic organizations. Similarly, since the early 1990s DEP has relied upon wetlands and natu-
ral areas in our Bluebelt system in Staten Island to absorb stormwater runoff from streets, thereby
eliminating the need for costly sewer systems.

In 2007, PlaNYC committed the City to build more Bluebelts and Greenstreets, to require green
parking lots, to incentivize green roofs, and to form an Inter-agency Best Management
Practices Task Force. The Sustainable Sformwaier Management Plan issued by that Task Force
in 2008 concluded that green infrastructure was feasible in many areas in the city and could be
more cost-effective than certain large infrastructure projects such as CSO storage tunnels. This
Green Infrastructure Plan builds on the Sustainable Stormwater Management Plan and propos-
es to continue coordination among City agencies to build green infrastructure projects. This ef-
fort will be led by the Mayor's Office and DEP, and will include collaboration with many City
agencies, including the Department of Transportation (DOT), the Department of Parks and
Recreation (DPR), the Department of Design and Construction (DDC), the Department of City
Planning (DCP), the Department of Education (DOE), the Department of Sanitation (DSNY), the
Department of Citywide Administrative Services (DCAS), the Department of Housing and
Preservation and Development (HPD), the New York City Economic Development Corporation
(EDC), and the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA).

This Green Infrastructure Plan builds upon and extends the commitments made in PlaNYC and
the Sustainable Stormwater Management Plan. This plan provides a detailed framework and
implementation plan to meet the twin goals of better water quality in New York Harbor and a
livable and sustainable New York City. The analysis in this Green Infrastructure Plan is based up-
on the predicted impacts of the strategy on CSO volumes in individual watersheds and upon
the City's estimates of capital and operating costs. Further analysis, which is substantially under
way, will refine the modeling and projections in this report by using more updated geospatial
impervious data, incorporating detention technologies, and assessing the impact of CSO re-
ductions on water quality. It will also present data about the operating costs, maintenance,
and performance of the green infrastructure projects currently underway. This Green
Infrastructure Plan forms a framework for CSO reduction strategies and investments over the
next 20 years and will lead to both clean waterways and a greener, more sustainable city.

The importance of the choice we face as a city and the urgent need for collaborative partner-
ships with our state and federal regulators cannot be overemphasized. The City is facing
tremendous economic challenges and tightly constrained resources while the cost of grey
investments such as 50-million gallon underground storage tanks is significantly increasing and
the marginal contribution of such investments to the achievement of overall water quality
objectives is diminishing. At the same time, PlaNYC and the many studies that guided it made
clear that New Yorkers need and want sustainability benefits such as more open space,
improved air quality, more shade, and increased property values. In this new reality, the City
must strive to get the most water quality and sustainability benefits out of every dollar it invests.



EXECUTIVE SUMMARY



The Green Infrastructure Plan



The Green Infrastructure Plan will achieve better water quality and sustainability benefits than
the all-Grey Strategy that is mandated or is currently under consideration by:

• Reducing CSO volume by an additional 3.8 billion gallons per year (bgy), or approxi-
mately 2 bgy more than the all-Grey Strategy;

• Capturing rainfall from 10% of impervious surfaces in CSO areas through green infra-
structure and other source controls; and

• Providing substantial, quantifiable sustainability benefits - cooling the city, reducing en-
ergy use, increasing property values, and cleaning the air - that the current all Grey
Strategy does not provide.

Ultimately the success of this program will be measured by water quality objectives, not by CSO
reductions alone.

The Green Infrastructure Plan has five key components:

1 . Build cost-effective grey infrastructure

DEP has already built or is planning to build over $2.9 billion in targeted grey infrastructure to re-
duce CSO volumes (the Cost-Effective Grey Infrastructure Investments). These projects were set
out in Waterbody Watershed Facility Plans (Facility Plans) submitted to the New York State
Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) pursuant to a consent order. 1 For the most
part, these projects are the most cost-effective among a number of alternatives considered.
The cost-effective projects will reduce CSOs by approximately 8.3 bgy compared to the pro-
jected baseline for the year 2045 that was used in the 2007 Facility Plans. The grey investments
planned or underway reduce CSOs at a cost of $0.36 per gallon. These investments are five
times more cost-effective than certain other alternatives that DEP seeks to avoid or defer. 2 The
Cost-Effective Grey Infrastructure Investments are presented in greater detail in the chapter on
The Green Infrastructure Plan, especially Tables 6 and 8.

2. Optimize the existing wastewater system

DEP will optimize the existing wastewater system through both targeted and system-wide ca-
pacity enhancements to ensure that it can store as much combined flow as is possible. DEP has
already started a comprehensive assessment of the existing system and its hydraulic capacity
to assess further cost-effective improvements. In the meantime, we are already improving exist-
ing programs by inspecting tide gates, surveying and rehabilitating interceptor sewers, prevent-
ing obstructions and cleaning lateral collection sewers, and identifying inflow and infiltration.
These initiatives include the purchase of two new Vactor trucks and a commitment to rehabili-
tate 136 miles of interceptor sewers within two years. By these additional measures, DEP can re-
duce CSOs by approximately 586 million gallons per year (mgy), and will achieve greater re-

1 Under a 2005 Administrative Consent Order, DEC file no. CO2-200001 07-8, as modified by a 2008 Order on Consent, DEC file no. C02
-2007-0 101-1 (the CSO Order or the Consent Order) .

2 These are the CSO detention tunnels in the Newtown Creek and Flushing Bay drainage areas, the CSO detention tanks in the
Hutchinson River and Westchester Creek drainage areas, and the wet weather expansions at the 26th Ward and Jamaica WWTPs
(Potential Tanks, Tunnels, and Expansions).



EXECUTIVE SUMMARY



ductions from the additional system improvements that will occur as additional areas are sur-
veyed. The Green Infrastructure Plan is DEP's first attempt to integrate those particular elements
into a comprehensive CSO reduction program.

A critical element of wet weather overflows is the base flow of sanitary waste from household
and other uses, which can take up sewer system storage and wastewater treatment plant
(WWTP) capacity that could otherwise be used to convey and treat stormwater. Lower sanitary
flows maximize plant capacity during wet weather. Sanitary flows vary with the overall con-
sumption of water, which has constantly and significantly declined in recent years and will con-
tinue to decline. DEP estimates that continued declines will reduce CSO volumes by approxi-
mately 1 .7 bgy, or 8% of overall city CSOs, by 2030. This is nearly equivalent to the CSO reduc-
tions estimated for large grey infrastructure investments that are currently contemplated under
the CSO Order or in future Long Term Control Plans (LTCPs).

Encouraging prudent water use also benefits DEP's water supply and wastewater treatment
system by reducing wear on infrastructure, chemical costs, energy costs for pumping and treat-
ing flow, and greenhouse gas emissions. These are important considerations because in just a
few years DEP's energy demand will be 30% greater than today as the ultraviolet disinfection
plant for the Catskill and Delaware systems, and the Croton filtration plant come on line. DEP
will undertake or continue conservation initiatives to ensure reduced flow in future years, includ-
ing completing installation of the Automated Meter Reading (AMR) network and, if feasible,
low flow fixture rebates and other initiatives.

3. Control runoff from 10% of impervious surfaces through green
infrastructure

Green infrastructure is at the core of this plan. The City's goal is to capture the first inch of rain-
fall on 10% of the impervious areas in combined sewer watersheds through detention or infiltra-
tion techniques over 20 years. By preventing one inch of precipitation from becoming runoff
that surges into the sewers over 10% of each combined sewer watershed's impervious area,
DEP estimates that CSOs will be reduced by approximately 1.5 bgy. DEP proposes to meet this
goal by achieving 1 .5% impervious area capture by 2015, an additional 2.5% by 2020, an addi-
tional 3% by 2025, and the remaining 3% by 2030.

The strategies to achieve the 10% goal vary depending on the type of land use (see Table 1,
>>>