Author: Mo Kinberg

Infrastructure Week is almost here! This is a national week of events, from May 13 to May 20, that highlight the need to invest in all kinds of infrastructure.

If you live, work, or run a business in a community with a combined sewer system, you know that one of the must urgent infrastructure investment priorities has to be our sewer systems. Municipalities and utilities must develop plans to reduce the combined sewer overflows (CSOs) that occur during heavy rainfall and discharge raw sewage into our neighborhoods and waterways. Reducing CSOs will be a generation-long effort, that will cost billions of dollars, and result in years of construction disturbances. You as ratepayers will be asked to pay at least part of that cost.

Alternative approaches to address CSOs are being evaluated based on cost and performance, and the Sewage-Free Streets and Rivers campaign is asking that benefits to communities be included as part of the evaluation. Your input in needed now, since the Evaluation of Alternatives report is due to the state Department of Environmental Protection by July 1.

Have you made your voice heard about which alternatives you want to see included in this evaluation? Have you been able to advocate for solutions that provide local jobs, improve the health of people in your community, and address the challenges of a changing climate? Now is your chance! Municipal groups like the Bayonne Supplemental CSO Team and regional groups like Bergen County CSO Group and North Hudson Sewerage Authority are all meeting during or just after Infrastructure Week, and all of these meetings are open to the public. Find a meeting close to you, and have a say in your local stormwater infrastructure investments!  

May 14 – Bayonne Supplemental CSO Team meeting

May 15 – Bergen County CSO Group meeting for the Bergen County Utilities Authority, covering the Borough of Ridgefield Park, the Borough of Fort Lee, and the City of Hackensack

May 20 – North Hudson Sewerage Authority Supplemental CSO Team meeting for the City of Hoboken, the City of Union City, the Township of Weehawken, and the Town of West New York

May 28 – The Clean Waterways, Healthy Neighborhoods Initiative meeting for the City of Bayonne, Borough of East Newark, Town of Guttenberg, Town of Harrison, Jersey City Municipal Utilities Authority, Town of Kearny, City of Newark, City of Paterson, North Bergen Municipal Utilities Authority and Passaic Valley Sewerage Commission.

Please stay tuned for confirmation of the Perth Amboy CSO Supplemental Team meeting, which will either be on May 16 or 23  at 7 pm. For more information please contact Luis Perez Jimenez at Middlesex Water Company.

All of New Jersey’s combined sewer overflow permit holders are required to conduct public outreach. But what does good public outreach look like? The Sewage-Free Streets and Rivers Advisory Committee is making recommendations to the permit holders on how to engage the public in the evaluation of alternatives.

On July 1, 2019, New Jersey combined sewer overflow permit holders will submit what are known as Development and Evaluation of Alternatives Reports, which will review the options they are considering using in their plans to stop combined sewer overflows. (The final plans are due on July 1, 2020.) This is a critical point in the development of these Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO) Long Term Control Plans (LTCPs), and the permit holders should gather input on the alternatives from the Supplemental CSO Teams and the public prior to submitting the evaluation reports to the NJDEP.

Supplemental CSO Teams are groups of stakeholders that permit holders were required to establish as part of the CSO permits. These teams are intended to be a resource to permit holders to enable them “to better develop an outreach program that reaches a broad base of citizens” (Forming and Utilizing Your CSO Supplemental Team). The permits allow team members to provide input on the evaluation of CSO control alternatives, the selection of the CSO controls, and the planning process.

At the March 7 Passaic Valley Sewerage Commission Supplemental CSO Team meeting, Bayonne, East Newark, Guttenberg, Jersey City Municipal Utilities Authority, and Bergen County Municipal Utilities Authority gave presentations options they are considering to reduce sewage overflows. Unfortunately, a number of supplemental team members were not in attendance, and there was insufficient time available for feedback from supplemental team members on how best to communicate this information to the general public.

The Sewage-Free Streets and Rivers Advisory Committee, which includes several members of the regional supplemental team, sent a letter to the permit holders that presented at the March 7 meeting with recommendations on how best to inform and engage a broad range of citizens in the evaluation of alternatives, including:

1. In addition to the March 7 meeting, permittees should hold dynamic public workshops in their municipalities that engage the public in a discussion about the alternatives, rather than being just a one-way presentation of the alternatives being evaluated to reduce combined sewer overflows.
2. Additional workshops should be proposed to local groups, such as green teams and environmental commissions, as should a presentation at City Council meetings. Interactions with the public should be tailored for a lay audience and focus on effectiveness, cost, combinations of solutions, and potential disruptions rather than high-level technical engineering specifics.
3. Permittees and consultants working on the plans should detail what they considered in their evaluation of green infrastructure and community benefits. If using small-scale samples such as the Rutgers University/PVSC’s Green Infrastructure Feasibility Studies, permittees and consultants should communicate clearly that the study is a preliminary analysis of low-hanging-fruit projects and then detail how the permit holder will build upon this first effort for the larger purpose of the LTCP alternatives analysis.
4. Permittees should focus on the information that is most critical to the public, such as flooding, floatables (e.g., litter), public access to waterfronts, affordability, green infrastructure, workforce opportunities and water quality. Presentations should begin with what will affect the public the most and at a very local level. Much of the information that was presented on March 7 was less critical for the public and diluted the purpose of communicating this information to a general audience.
5. Presentations should include general information on the CSO permit that focuses on the process and purpose of the public’s involvement in the alternatives analysis and the implementation of the LTCP.
6. Presentations should include sufficient time for the public to ask questions and time for the permittee to ask the public questions.

The Sewage-Free Streets and Rivers Advisory Committee also supports the the following recommendations on general public outreach that several Municipal Action Teams submitted to permit holders last year to assist with community outreach:  

1. Designate consistent dates and times for public meetings
2. Provide an agenda for each meeting at least one week in advance
3. Develop a publicly accessible online platform for sharing meeting materials, including presentations, meeting schedules, agendas, documents produced under the CSO permit, fact sheets and other educational material
4. Provide multilingual information on the initiative, including fact sheets and points of contact for additional information
5. Presentations by all parties should explain clearly any technical jargon and quantitative data
6. Establish a feedback-loop communication model, where there is a clear route through which the public and the permittees can share information and comments, and indicate how this feedback is being incorporated into the resulting plans
7. Provide not just a timeline of the permit deliverables, but also indication of where there is opportunity for public comment within that timeline, and
8. Release key documents (e.g. Alternatives Analysis, etc.) in draft form, with enough time for meaningful public comment before they are finalized

Download the Sewage-Free Streets and Rivers Advisory Committee letter

The City of Newark and community organizations are working together to ensure all voices are included in their CSO Long Term Control Plans. A total of 15 meetings were held in Newark in March and April on the options being considered to reduce sewage overflows. The Newark People’s Assembly hosted five public meeting, and community-based and environmental justice organizations including Ironbound Community Corporation (ICC), The New Jersey Environmental Justice Alliance (NJEJA), Clean Water Action, Urban League of Essex County,  La Casa de Don Pedro and Unified Vailsburg Services Organization hosted 10 meetings. In addition, a website was launched to gather even more community feedback.

“In the East Ward, ICC hosted five meetings for the community. The consensus emerged that sewer separation and green infrastructure were the preferred solutions, as fixing CSO issues, like flooding, was a priority,” said Drew Curtis, senior equitable development manager for ICC.

“NJEJA hosted a local tenant association at a community charrette in the Central Ward of Newark. The public event was designed to gather and document the tenants’ priority sites for stormwater management and preferred solution methodologies. City representatives were on hand to observe, learn and participate in the meeting,” said Laureen Boles, state direct for NJEJA.

Newark City Council President Mildred Crump said of the East Ward meeting, “I’m glad I came. The sewage authority is now under my jurisdiction. This subject is rather intriguing.”

On March 7, after several years of measuring and modeling, representatives from the Clean Waterways, Healthy Neighborhoods coalition gave a presentation on the solutions being evaluated to reduce the sewage overflows for permit holders in the Passaic Valley Sewerage Commission (PVSC) region. Engineering consultant firms presented the evaluation of alternatives for Bayonne, East Newark, Guttenberg, Kearny, Jersey City, Paterson, and the North Bergen Municipal Utilities Authority. (See below for a list of alternative solutions discussed.)

The Sewage-Free Streets and Rivers campaign is asking for public meetings to be held in every one of these towns to ensure that residents are informed about the impacts of sewage overflows and have input into the plans that are being developed, their costs, and the benefits or impacts the plans will have in the community. Residents who live in live in a municipality where no public meetings have been held on the evaluation of alternatives, should ask their city or sewer utility to share its plans, explain the alternatives and make sure the ideas and concerns of the community are included. Newark and Jersey City have scheduled presentations about the solutions under consideration in those municipalities, and Guttenberg and Kearny indicated that they will schedule additional meetings

“This will possibly be the largest capital expenditure in each municipality’s history,” said Michael Hope, the Greeley and Hansen consultant working on the Passaic Valley Sewerage Long Term Control Plan. “A Long Term Control Plan cost New York City $4.2 billion.”

Town by Town

In his article “Combating Sewage Overflows,” Mike Montemarano reported on the meeting and the presentations that were given for Bayonne (which has 28 outfalls, or pipes from which combined sewage overflows into the Newark Bay, Kill Van Kull and New York Bay, North Bergen (one outfall), Jersey City (21 outfalls) and Guttenberg (one outfall).

Among the remaining towns in the region:

• East Newark (one outfall) is a densely populated and heavily developed town, and is focusing on gray solutions including underground tanks, disinfection and an expansion of its sewer treatment plant.
• Kearny (five outfalls) is planning a partial sewer separation and underground storage. The town is also evaluating potential green infrastructure projects that were identified by Rutgers in its Green Infrastructure Feasibility Study for Kearny and sites identified by the Kearny AWAKE group.
• Paterson (23 outfalls) is looking at gray solutions including sewer modification, tunnels, offline-storage, disinfection, and sewer separation, and green infrastructure solutions that are estimated to reduce overflows by between 3 percent and 6 percent..
• Newark (18 outfalls) and Harrison (seven outfalls) did not have time to present.

The next meeting is planned for May.

Full presentations for each of the towns are posted on the Clean Waterways, Healthy Neighborhoods site.

Public meetings

The City of Newark is working with community partners to host a series of public meetings to gather community input on the evaluation of alternatives. Newark Stormwater Solutions is a dedicated website developed to gather community input on the evaluation of alternatives, and their community presentation is available for download in English, Spanish and Portuguese.  

The Jersey City Municipal Utilities Authority is also hosting public meetings. It has a web page devoted to the Long Term Control Plan, including a survey to gather community input on the proposed alternatives to combined sewer overflows.

What are the options being considered to reduce overflows?

• Green infrastructure: Nature-based solutions, like rain gardens and permeable pavement, that capture stormwater where it falls, allowing it to absorb into the ground or be saved for later use before it enters the combined sewer system. These options reduce total storm flows or peak flows.
• Increased storage capacity in the collection system: Storing sewage and stormwater in the existing pipes or new storage structures (e.g., storage tunnels, underground or above-ground tanks) during a rainstorm allows it to be released to the sewage treatment plant slowly following the storm. Increased storage capacity can also come from cleaning existing combined sewers to reduce blockages and filled areas.
• Sewer treatment plant expansion and/or increased storage at the plant: Identifying opportunities to build more storage at the sewer treatment plant or build more capacity to process sewage and stormwater at the plant.
• Infiltration and inflow reduction: Fixing the combined sewers to reduce the amount of water that infiltrates into the pipes from cracks.
• Sewer separation: Adding a separate pipe system for stormwater that will discharge directly to a stream or river, which will reduce the volume in the sewage pipes that go to the treatment plant.
• End-of-pipe treatment of the CSO discharge: Adding sewage treatment, including disinfection, at the end of the outfall pipes.
• CSO-related bypass of the secondary treatment step at the sewer treatment plant: Creating more capacity at the sewer treatment plant by bypassing the secondary treatment of the mixture of sewage and stormwater. This approach results in partial treatment of the combined sewer flows during storms, rather than complete treatment of part of the flow and no treatment of the overflows.

by Kyrsten Ramkishun

What happens when you flush the toilet? Mary Anna Evans answers  this question in her article, “Flushing the Toilet has Never been Risker.” One of the main issues she discusses is the collision of aging combined sewer systems and a growing population. Combined sewer systems collect human waste, industrial waste, and stormwater runoff into a single pipe for treatment and disposal. When stormwater enters the sewer system, it can cause an overflow, which means that instead of the collected waste going into a treatment plant, the untreated raw sewage enters into bodies of water, including those that are sources of drinking water or used for recreational purposes such as swimming or fishing. Overflows can also back up onto streets and in peoples’ houses and businesses, and can carry phosphorus and nitrogen into waterways, creating serious surface water problems such as algae blooms, fish kills, and dead zones like the one in the Gulf of Mexico.

Not only have there been problems with overcapacity, but these old pipes also leak and are being clogged with debris or even congealed cooking oil which narrows the pipes and reduces the amount of water and sewage they can carry.

The solutions Evans points to can be made on a system level and on an individual level. System-level improvements include creating storage projects and putting more tunnels underground, as well as green technology such as rain gardens and green roofs. Green solutions help because the water is absorbed into the ground where it falls and does not become runoff.  On an individual level, people should be thinking about reducing their water usage, and educating themselves about what to avoid using that can pollute stormwater runoff and clog the sewer system.

By Kyrsten Ramkishun

Newark People’s Assembly, a new initiative launched by the city, is hosting a series of town-hall meetings to discuss alternative ways to solve the stormwater and sewage overflow issues in the City of Newark. There will be 10 community meetings in total, two in each of Newark’s five wards. Drew Curtis, the senior equitable development manager of Ironbound Community Corporation, who is organizing these meetings with the city, said he wants “to ensure real and authentic feedback from residents on the alternative ways to solve stormwater and Combined Sewer Overflow issues.” The main topics to be discussed during these meetings will be flooding, water quality, litter and illegal dumping, bad smells, and affordability of the different alternatives.  

According to the Newark People’s Assembly website, the initiative wants to “bridge the gap between the community and City Hall.” “This will enable Newark’s decision makers to consider the opinion of the stakeholders when considering and/or deciding programs, projects, initiatives, and development that may impact their lives.”

Newark Stormwater Solutions is a dedicated website for Newark residents to get updates on community meetings, provide input on the evaluation of alternatives, and download the community presentations in English, Spanish and Portuguese.  

Communities with combined sewer systems are one step closer to being able to implement stormwater utilities to help pay for upgrades. The New Jersey Legislature gave final approval to a bill that would allow municipalities to set up stormwater utilities, a program utilized in 40 states to reduce flooding and pay for stormwater infrastructure.

Mayor Steven Fulop of Jersey City, one of the largest cities in New Jersey with a combined sewer system, came out in favor of the bill in an op-ed that was published in The Star-Ledger.  Mayor Fulop called a stormwater utility “the most effective – and most equitable – model to address the growing threats from stormwater.”

In his op-ed he describes why a stormwater utility could be a “huge win” for Jersey City: “A stormwater utility assesses a user fee for large buildings based on how much hard surface, such as concrete, rooftops or pavement, is on a property. This makes sense because such impervious surfaces, without stormwater control measures, not only increase flooding, stormwater also collects pollutants by flowing across them. The revenue then funds on-the-ground projects that will help manage flooding and protect clean water.”

Read Mayor Fulop’s full op-ed

Green infrastructure projects are being used to alleviate some of New Jersey’s aging water infrastructure issues. At their fourth annual conference Dec. 9, 2018, members of the Jersey Water Works collaborative renewed their commitment to work together to transform New Jersey’s inadequate water infrastructure. Environmental Justice Organizer Kim Gaddy talked to Jon Hurdle of NJ Spotlight about fulfilling Clean Water Action’s Jersey Water Works 2018 commitment to building rain gardens in two sections of Newark. “Oftentimes, people don’t connect these community gardens with green infrastructure,” said Gaddy. “That’s what people see, and they can identify with that and then they get it on a larger scale which we are asking residents to support.” Continue reading “Collaborative Solutions to Combined-Sewer Overflows” →

Recent flooding has exposed the need to address the City of Camden’s aging sewer system. Mayor Frank Moran recognizes the challenge and is working on a plan to reduce flooding and combined sewer overflows. “We can put together a plan, as we put the right folks in office into position to make the determination as to what it is that we need to do,” Moran said.

In 2015, the New Jersey Department of Environmental protection issued a permit to the City of Camden and 24 other New Jersey municipalities and utilities. Camden and the other permit holders have until July 2020 to develop plans to reduce their sewage overflows. “Our combined sewer system is at a point that is in dire need of separation and repairs wherever we can get it done,” he told KYW Newsradio. “It’s a costly effort and the city doesn’t have the resources to do so.”