Hey, DEP!: Sunset Park Needs More Green Infrastructure

Sunset Park is a waterfront community highly susceptible to coastal and stormwater flooding. We’re living on top of buried streams and creeks. The 45th Street subway station (which celebrates its 111th birthday in September, HBD!) routinely floods, as do parts of Fourth, Third and Second avenues down to Bush Terminal Piers Park. In March, Mayor Zohran Mamdani came to Sunset Park to announce a citywide $108 million plan to replace more than 6,700 catch basins over the next decade. Those upgrades are welcome, but catch basins alone leave out a major piece of the solution.

Why hasn’t the New York City Department of Environmental Protection prioritized more green infrastructure in our neighborhood and managed stormwater closer to its source? Green infrastructure uses or mimics natural systems to manage runoff. It includes rain gardens, infiltration basins, green streets and medians. Sunset Park has several green infrastructure projects, including a green schoolyard at P.S. 503/506, the Sunset Park Recreation Center’s green roof and permeable pavers, and the Brooklyn Grange rooftop farm at Liberty View, which can manage more than 175,000 gallons of stormwater in a single rainfall. They are a start, but they are not nearly enough.

Over half of NYC has a combined sewer system, meaning one pipe carries both stormwater runoff and sewage from buildings. The mixture is normally sent to a wastewater treatment plant—for Sunset Park, that is the nearby Owls Head Wastewater Resource Recovery Facility. But during heavy rain, the system can become overwhelmed, sending stormwater mixed with untreated sewage directly into local waterways, including Upper New York Bay. An estimated 517 million gallons of raw sewage overflows at Bush Terminal Park each year, where Blue Horizon Sailing and the Gowanus Dredgers Canoe Club are working to expand free community boating. I’m all for more equitable access to our waterways, but it shouldn’t have to come with a side of fecal matter.

Green infrastructure reduces the likelihood of sewer overflows by absorbing rainwater before it enters the sewer system. It reduces the risk of our homes, businesses, and streets flooding. It also supports healthy waterways and ecosystems. It means we can take our kids to the beach without fear of them getting sick from playing in the water.

We need more porous pavement, including roadways and sidewalks that collect and manage stormwater where it falls. The situation is particularly dire at 41st Street and Fifth Avenue, where the Delaplaine Spring still flows directly under the sidewalk. We need rain gardens—planted areas that absorb rainwater—on every block west of the park, catching water before it rushes downhill toward the Bay Ridge Channel and Upper New York Bay. We need green streets, planted medians and infiltration basins, particularly west of Third Avenue.

Use DEP’s green infrastructure contact form to tell the agency that Sunset Park needs more green infrastructure. Let DEP know if part of your block routinely floods after heavy rain, if your home or business has been damaged by water, or if you have leapt across puddles at the 45th Street R station while trying to get to work. We have solutions. It is time to start using them.