Each year, funding rolled over for the project, which was originally estimated to cost about $37 million.ĭEP spokesperson Ted Timbers did not directly clarify why the project has been delayed for so many years. The project was first created in 1999, according to information from the Independent Budget Office. Since as early as 2002, the city has included in its capital budgets a project to improve the streets of The Hole and add sewers. ‘As a historian of coastal land, I am never surprised when water returns to places that it used to go.’īut when the Department of Environmental Protection changed the scope of the project to possibly include more nature-based designs, it stalled.Ī spokesperson for the city Department of Design and Construction confirmed the agency has no projects in design or scheduled for the area. The city’s 2019 request for proposals envisioned reconstructing eight streets in the neighborhood, as well as install storm and sanitary sewers and water mains in nine areas. “It’s disgusting that we should have to live like this.” “It’s not right, here in the richest country in the world, and one of the richest cities in the world, in the country, we still don’t have sewers,” he said. “I’d like to see, in my lifetime, some sewers,” Lopez, 71, told THE CITY. He has lived in one of the apartments for over a decade, after having moved from Ozone Park during the 2008 recession, and rents the other three to tenants. On the other hand, it’s just another stress,” Bailey said.ĭavid Lopez, a retired postal worker, has owned a four-unit home on Dumont Street on the Queens side of The Hole since 1987. “On one hand you’re a young person, trying to do something better for yourself and for your family. He said it’s difficult to walk or drive in the streets when they’re flooded, like when Ida waterlogged the neighborhood for weeks. He’s got a sump pump to keep water out of his basement, but using the pump results in the septic tank filling up faster. ‘We Shouldn’t Have to Live Like This’īailey pays a service $200 at least once a month to empty his septic tank. The deadly aftermath of Hurricane Ida also shined a new spotlight on the inadequacy of the city’s drainage system in general, the importance of managing flooding and the limitations of infrastructure interventions to fight climate change. Now local groups, like one formed at the start of the pandemic, East New York Community Land Trust, are working with residents to renew a push for an adequate sewer system in the area. The most recent “ request for proposals” on the project went out in 2019, but remains on hold, according to the Department of Environmental Protection. The plan’s been included in the city’s capital budget for at least two decades. Plans to address the issues have long been stuck in the muck: Twenty years ago, the Giuliani administration proposed elevating the streets and installing sewers in the area.
There are no stormwater drains, so Bailey and his neighbors often navigate lakes of standing water in the streets. In The Hole, many homes aren’t serviced by the city’s sewers and instead use septic tanks, which tend to overflow when there’s rain.
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But his mother died last year, and so he’s been living there with his sister. It’s not really appealing.”Ī construction worker, he bought the house for his mother and sister to live in. “Everything inside the house is pretty peaceful, but when you step outside the door, you have to deal with all the water issues, the garbage issues. I’m not used to living like this,” said Bailey, 29. “I can’t stand these conditions, honestly. With swampy flooding, septic seepage and illegal dumping, the atmosphere is lackluster. But the area sits below the city’s municipal sewer network. Some call it the “Jewel Streets” neighborhood, for thoroughfares with sparkling names like Sapphire, Emerald, Amber and Ruby. He’d bought a two-family house in The Hole, a low-lying neighborhood wedged between South Conduit Avenue and Linden Boulevard that straddles the border lines of East New York, Brooklyn, and Lindenwood, Queens. Clement Bailey didn’t know what to expect when he moved from Flatbush just as the city shut down in March 2020.
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