DEP Tries A "European Shower" For Bay Ridge Smell

Ah, Bay Ridge, the city on the hill that overlooks the Verranzano. It is also a town that is incredibly far from Manhattan. The train time down there is ridiculous, but also worth it to go to Paneantico's at the end of the N line. Unfortunately for some residents down there, a smell has been wafting out of the sewage pipes for over a year. The city's response....a little less than acceptable.

From The Daily News:

For more than a year, residents of one Brooklyn neighborhood have been complaining about a stomach-churning smell wafting from the site of a former sewer pipe project.

The city's response? Tossing nylon socks filled with pine deodorizer into the catch basins.

That hasn't stanched the stench. In fact, locals say the scent of raw sewage is even more noticeable now.

"I think that adding the pine made the existing smell even more potent," said Aaron Green, 27, one of the Bay Ridge residents who is sick of the stink.

I think a five year old could come up with a better response than the Department of Environmental Protection's. Don't these people have degrees in, well, environmental science or something like that? Common sense would tell me to fix the sewage pipes that were being worked on from last year, but I don't have the expertise, so don't bother with my idea.

Millions Of Gallons Wasted Everyday In NYC, Infrastructure To Blame

Public service announcements are bought and paid for to remind us to conserve water, but what is the point when the city itself wastes up to 35 million gallons a day. It would be like having almost every single New Yorker filling up a typical 5 gallon drum and pouring it out onto the street, every goddamn day. Due to our crumbling infrastructure, a pipe that delivers part of our water supply is quite a prolific leaker.

From AM New York:

The city Department of Environmental Protection, which oversees the water supply, has been aware of the leaks since 1988, but hasn't yet made repairs and has not developed an emergency response plan to deal with a potential collapse of the tunnel, according to the audit released Wednesday by state Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli.

The leaking tunnel supplies more than half of the 1.3 billion gallons of drinking water consumed each day in the city.

The report found that the city has spent more than $28 million on engineering consulting services since 1998, but failed to consistently follow the consultant's recommendations. In that time, water loss due to the leaks has increased from about 20 million gallons per day in 1992 to 35 million per day, the report said.

Seriously, WTF is going on here. They have known about this for nearly twenty years and haven't done anything but 'study' it. Our steam pipes are antiquated, our electrical grid is shot to hell and now we find that the pipes that carry fresh water to New York has a mile and a half long 'leak'. A dripping faucet with a bad washer constitutes a leak. An old roof over your head that requires a few pots and pans during a storm....that would be called a leak. Thirty-five million gallons a day? That would be the daily flow of a small river. The city and the state needs to get their act together.