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Stating that the restored waterways function as a kind of “natural infrastructure” in cities, Hoffner said that they provide benefits such as reducing sewer overflows, saving energy and money in wastewater plants that treat clean water unnecessarily, creating more green space and creating more green space. neighborhoods.
“Building for today’s storm isn’t really going to work anymore,” he said. “We need to find more innovative solutions that will enable communities to be resilient in the face of climate change.”
New York’s landscape was once covered by tidal streams and freshwater streams, but as the city grew, especially in the 1800s, many of them became open sewers for waste, garbage and industrial chemicals, says Eric W, a senior conservation ecologist for the Wildlife Conservancy. Sanderson. society that has mapped these hidden waterways. Many were cleared by burial.
But even as the city was built over buried streams and wetlands, all that water didn’t just disappear, Mr. Sanderson said. Instead, it continued to flow and increasingly found its way above ground as heavy rains filled the pipes and sewers where it piled up. “The water will go where it wants to go,” he said.
Amy Chester, managing director of the nonprofit group Rebuild by Design, said daylight projects like rerouting Tibbetts Brook are important in making New York more resilient. “We look back to see what we got from nature,” he said. “And when we give it back to nature, we create an asset to face climate change.”
The plan to bring Tibbetts Brook to light will be one of the city’s most ambitious green infrastructure projects. The creek will be rerouted one mile above ground, including an old railroad line that will be turned into a new greenway, and sent back underground for half a mile through a new special pipe to the Harlem River.
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