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Brigid: It's the Brian Lehrer show on WNYC. I'm Brigid Bergin from the WNYC and Gothamist newsroom, filling in for Brian. People all over the country took note of the drenching rains last week that flooded streets in subway stops. I'm sure you've seen those videos of people waiting through waist-deep water or cars stranded. That was before the remains of Tropical Storm Elsa got here and parts of New Jersey get hit with storms last night. Given that we seem to be expecting more of these heavy rains as a result of climate change, how prepared is the city to handle this new weather pattern?

What about the fact that raw sewage that gets dumped into area waterways every time there's a heavy rain? Did you see that high bacteria counts in the Hudson after Thursday storms led to the cancellation of the swimming portion of Sunday's New York City Triathlon? Well, the answer some of these questions were joined by Anne Barnard, New York Times reporter covering climate and environment for the Metro desk. Welcome back to the show, Anne.

Anne: Thank you so much.

Brigid: Now, to what extent do we expect climate change to bring us more storms like last week and some of what we've been seeing this week?

Anne: Well, studies have already shown that the New York City area is already feeling the effects of climate change. The combination of rising seas and increasing temperatures globally leads to more volatile storms. Not only do we have a higher baseline of the sea level, but we also have more intense rainstorms that happen more frequently. That means a larger volume of rain falling more quickly, more often throughout the year, so that, of course, affects a lot of different parts of our infrastructure.

Brigid: When you talk about the volume of rain, what have we seen so far this year in terms of that volume?

Anne: Well, like you were mentioning, just last week, we saw these dramatic images of flooding in the subway, water, coursing down stairways, subway riders up to their waist in water, trying to get out of the station, you had people in Washington Heights out in the street trying to perform like a citizen's intervention to pull debris out from the catch basins that were clogged exacerbating a flood there. As you mentioned, the triathlon cancellation is just one small part of the effects of the sewage overflow. What happens is that we have like many older cities, especially in the East Coast.

We have a combined sewage system, which means that stormwater that runs off from the streets when there's rain ends up in some, in many areas of the city going through the same channels as sewage. When there's an overflow from the stormwater, sometimes sewage is released untreated into waterways and that affects not only things like the triathlon but just our general environment. Of course, that kind of overflow has been reduced over the years by upgrades. That's part of why we see our rivers and waterways being more clean than they were, let's say, back in the '70s and '80s, but there's still a long way to go in fixing that.

Brigid: You and your colleague, Winnie Hu, just wrote about the subway system and its problems with water following these storms, I have to say those images of people, waist-deep in water are actually my nightmare. The MTA has done work to mitigate those problems, right?

Anne: Yes. Since Hurricane Sandy in 2012, which of course, devastated the city and the region, and maybe no agency was hit as hard as the MTA. That prompted massive overhauls, many different upgrades in flood barriers that are very local, that are in train yards and individual stations, different systems to help the system be more resilient. That does make a difference, but what the scientists who have studied the system say is that if there's a breach in just one area of this system, there aren't enough fail-safe.

If you picture any kind of container with 100 holes in it that are all blocked by some barrier, but if one hole is open, it can flood a lot more than 100 of the container. They think that there needs to be more fail-safe and also just that this has to be combined with upgrades, not just to the subway system itself, but to the drainage systems and adding more green infrastructure, green groups, rain gardens that absorb more of this water when it comes down so suddenly,

Brigid: Is this why the subway system has to pump? I think you reported 14 million gallons of water out of the system on any given day.

Anne: Well, the system has always needed to pump water out. Again, with sea-level rise over decades and centuries, there is going to be shifting in groundwater and more water coming up from underground than in the past. In other words, it's not only because of rain, it's an endemic challenge for the subway system, but all of these systems because there are so many factors that lead to the flooding. When you increase any one factor, including the sudden downpours, it puts more pressure on the system.

Brigid: I think I showed that the MTA said it wasn't just some of the stations uptown that flooded, but that the crews who needed to get there to fix the problem were actually stuck on flooded roads trying to get there. Is that what they told you as well?

Anne: Yes, and that makes sense. We've heard this from people in many different situations around the city that the city isn't just one agency or one neighborhood or one roadway or one transportation line. These things all have a cascading effect on each other. Even you have the problem of high tide flooding, a sunny day flooding as it's called in some neighborhoods, this is another thing that's going to increase as the climate changes and sea rises.

There are people in a few neighborhoods in New York City who several times a month can't leave their homes on time because of flooding on their streets, in Rockaway and Howard Beach areas, around Jamaica Bay. That's just another example, but yes, it's not just the subway that's flooding, it was also on roadways as well. It's a holistic problem.

Brigid: Listeners, help us report this story. We know that you are seeing these impacts where you live. We can take a call for Anne Barnard. If you have a question about stormwater and where it goes or are you finding flooding or water damage in places that didn't use to have that problem, call us at 646-435-7280 or Tweet @BrianLehrer. Again, that number is 646-435-7280 and we're talking about the impacts of these strong storms in terms of flooding, stormwater, and infrastructure damage. How much has the MTA been focused on preventing the flooding they saw after Superstorm Sandy, the coastal flooding?

Anne: Focused on that because that was extremely dramatic, the flooding of the Coney Island train yard, for instance, and of course, the A train line that's just barely above Jamaica Bay. The flooding on the F train-- the whole F train was redone where it goes underneath the East River. That was very high priority, but the reconstruction has also involved a lot of other areas too, hundreds of individual fixes.

Brigid: A lot of attention has been paid to resilience planning at the city's waterfront since the flooding from Superstorm Sandy in 2012, but how much work has been done way uptown, the places that flooded on Thursday?

Anne: Again, this is like I was talking about these overlapping and cascading systems. These problems don't only come from the waterfront and they don't only affect the waterfront. Stormwater is a different issue. When we have water coming from the sky, the issue is, is it being drained or absorbed by-- the main way that we handle that water is through the gutters and along the curves and the catch basins. There have been, there is a whole other plan, the stormwater resiliency plan for the city that there was a new study done to show which areas of the city-- there is a really interesting map.

If you want to look at your own neighborhood, you can go to nyc.gov/resiliency. There are public maps of this new mapping that was done to look at stormwater flooding vulnerabilities in all the neighborhoods of the city. That means not from storm surges, not from flooding that comes from [unintelligible 00:10:23], it's talking about flooding from the rainfall. For that, there needs to be-- I call it the low-hanging fruit of preparation for climate change. We need to make sure that the catch basins are clean.

I don't know if you remember in 2019 on the BQE, there was a woman who was driving and she got out of her car and waited over to the grate that was under two feet of water and was like pulling debris out of it. She went viral for that and was thanked by the mayor. People were doing this in Washington Heights, I forgot what street it was, but just on Friday. The thing is, these responsibilities are divided between different agencies, the DOT, Department of Transportation is supposed to clear the grates on major highways and roadways.

The Department of Sanitation is responsible for street-level grates that you see along the sidewalk, and then the DEP, which handles the sewer systems is supposed to clean and maintain the catch basin that are underneath the gutters that are supposed to contain and hold the stormwater for long enough that it can drain out. It comes in really quickly and it takes time for it to drain out, but if any of these things are not done, then you're going to end up with flooding in very unpredictable places.

Also, our sewers were designed for speed and volume of rainfall that was based on historical data, I think going from something like 1900 to 1951, which is not what we have today. It's not as much as we have today and the storms that used to be considered, the type of storm that would happen once in 1,000 years, now it's considered a storm that would happen once in 100 years, and so on.

Brigid: Anne, I mentioned the cancellation of the Hudson River Swim. That's the first leg of the New York City Triathlon on Sunday. That was due to bacteria levels nine times higher than what's considered safe. That's as you just described because when it rains hard, our sewer systems combined with street runoff and sewage, and it flows right into the river. What is being done to address that and to your knowledge, does that sewage flow into just waterways, or is that also what people are waiting into when they're just walking down the street?

Anne: Yes. First of all, from a public health standpoint, it is important for people to know that if they don't absolutely have to, they should not wade into floodwaters because that often will contain sewage or other contaminants, chemicals, anything that was on the asphalt that then gets washed into the water by the rain. You also have to remember that there could be obstacles, or God forbid, sinkholes, or electrical wires, or anything in those waters. You have to be very careful about that. That's what all the officials would like us to remind people about.

Number one, yes, that can be in any floodwaters that you see in the city. In terms of what's being done about the sewage overflows into the waterways, the city has committed billions of dollars to upgrading the sewers over the coming years. It takes time to do all of it. It's work that has been underway for a long time but needs to continue. Some are arguing that it would need to be continued even more quickly because we're seeing how often these events happen.

You remember two years ago, Carroll Street and Fourth Avenue in Brooklyn was the area that was completely flooded. It happens in low-lying areas and it happens in even areas up on a hill like Washington Heights.

Brigid: Let's bring some of our listeners into this conversation. Mila in Harlem, welcome to WNYC.

Mila: Hi, how are you?

Brigid: Good. What's your experience with floodwaters, stormwater, et cetera?

Mila: Besides the [inaudible 00:14:54].

Brigid: Mila, can you hear us?

Mila: Yes, I can hear you. Besides the climate change and everything else what happens, I find that a lot of problems that uptown. I walk 50 to 70 blocks a day. I look how is the city looks like. The uptown, including Harlem looks like third world. The streets hadn't been cleaned at all. All this schmutz and all the dirty bags, old clothes, the homeless living on the streets, especially 120 people were on 24th street, finally ends up on top of the sewage. Water has no way to escape, including the snow. Sometimes you cannot even cross the streets in Harlem at all.

I went to park yesterday and there was a flood in the park. You have to go around two blocks to get from one side to another side. All the oldest sources for water to run through, it doesn't. When water finds escape like 157th Street, it gashes through whatever opening it is, and this is the biggest problem.

Brigid: Mila, thank you for helping us report the story from your perspective in Harlem. I think Anne pointing to probably some of what you've raised, the issue of street cleaning. Is that part of the solution to addressing some of these issues with stormwater runoff? If there was more support from the Department of Sanitation to ensure that street cleaning was done effectively, would that help mitigate some of what we're seeing with some of this flooding?

Anne: Yes, but we have to remember that, like I keep saying, it's not just one agency. This has to be a concerted effort that takes all the climate, resiliency, and environmental implications into account every time agencies make any decision which, by the way, is something that is required under the New York State's Climate law, and which City Hall has also asked agencies to do, although under the de Blasio administration, that coordination has not been as strong as it was under the Bloomberg administration.

What I mean about the Department of Sanitation is, yes, of course. Like I said, the responsibility of cleaning the gutters is the Department of Sanitations. However, when people don't move their cars for alternate side, they can't fully sweep the sidewalks. Maybe some people say, "Oh, they should send out people with brooms or something." We laugh, but actually, this is why the issue of cars in our city is so relevant, not just to the emissions that drive climate change, but to the way we survive its effects.

The more that cars are off the streets, the more that we can actually put our garbage into enclosed bins like they do in Europe and a lot of the developed world so that garbage debris, garbage bags don't bust open, and the debris and the schmutz as Mila said, which I really appreciated. In New York, we have schmutz. I think when we deal in a holistic way with our streetscapes, so that we would have more green spaces, more unpaved spaces, I don't know if listeners know what rain gardens or bioswales are, a lot of those have been put in and the city has plans to do more.

A lot of the mayoral candidates talked about continuing and intensifying these programs, including Eric Adams. I think a lot of the ideas are there, it's just the implementation. The rain gardens or bioswales are when in an area that normally collects water, instead of having a gutter, where this just sluices down and overflows our sewer, we should have a grassy area or a depression that the water can go into and there's grass, and maybe even flowers and plants that like a lot of water around their feet. That's a very not nature-based way to mitigate the runoff. There's also something called bluebelts, which the city has created in Staten Island and they're expanding this to Queens, and eventually, hopefully to other Boroughs, where again, there's like a network of nature-based drainage systems that cooperate with the natural way that the water would flow in waterways and try to reduce the amount of paved areas around there and allow there to be more absorbent natural areas that can soak up some of that water and green roofs, I mean to mention.

There's increased tax incentives for green roofs in some neighborhoods and a law passed in 2019 that requires new construction of a certain size to have either solar panels or green roofs that will also help with that absorbency.

Brigid: I want to take one more caller. Victoria in Harlem Heights. Victoria, make sure your radio's off.

Victoria: Sure.

Brigid: Welcome to WNYC. I understand that you had a very direct impact from some of these storms last week.

Victoria: Yes. Can you hear me?

Brigid: I can.

Victoria: Hello?

Brigid: Yes, go for--

Victoria: Hi. Yes, I did. For the second time this summer, the first time was on June 4th, but I was home to contain it. Last Thursday with that incredible flash flood, the stormwater came like a volcano busting through my kitchen sink for the second time.

Brigid: What floor are you on?

Victoria: I am on the first floor but I am on the first floor not on the street level. I am one elevated level above the street. There is definitely something going on. It was my apartment and the apartment next door to me. We share a kitchen and so our kitchens both exploded. It happened twice, June 4th and last Thursday. Last Thursday was particularly bad for me because I wasn't home. It flooded my kitchen and my living room. Luckily, friends were able to get in here and clean it up, I was out of town.

I came back the next day but what you're saying about the congruence between sanitation, the sewage system, possible tree roots, and stuff. That makes sense. People have lived in this building through Hurricane Sandy and they've never seen this. My neighbor who experienced the same thing on Thursday and last in June 4th, never had this before so there's something different happening.

Brigid: Victoria, hold on one moment because I have a follow-up question for you but I need to do a quick station ID. This is WNYC-FM HD and AM New York, WNJT-FM 88.1 Trenton, WNJP 88.5 Sussex, WNJY 89.3 Netcom, and WNJO 90.3 Toms River. This is New York and New Jersey Public Radio. Victoria, what I wanted to know is what did you do? Your friends came and they help us clean it up but did you call a plumber? Have you tried to figure out what was the cause of that?

Victoria: I've taken a three-pronged approach, the management because I own the apartment, I just bought it last year. Hurrah. The management got their plumber in to put a check valve in my kitchen sink. I also called 311 and had the Department of Environmental Protection come, they came this morning to check the sewers outside the building right at the corner down the road, down the street on Riverside. They were very nice. They were really great but they told me that there was nothing that we can do. The drains are simply too narrow with that amount of rain. It just backs up.

Now, it is unusual, but it backs up to a first floor, on an elevated first floor. That is ridiculous. That's what they told me. I'm also getting my personal plumber to come into the apartment. The building management says they're going to work with me and the board on how to address this because this is no way to live.

Brigid: Well, Victoria, thank you for calling and sharing your story, good perspective for others who are finding this frustrating. The Mayor's Office of Resiliency just put out a report on stormwater in May. You mentioned some of the solutions that were included in that report. Earlier resiliency plans put out by the city were criticized for not paying enough attention to this specific issue of storm runoff and sewers. Do you think this is an effort to address that?

Anne: Yes, I mean, that new report is mainly about stormwater. Exactly, there have been other efforts that have been criticized from the other end, plans to make sea walls that don't take into account runoff and sea-level rise. The idea is that all these things always have to work together. Another thing that that report is trying to address is to create a priority list for neighborhoods that need the most help. I have to read it again, I don't know if the word environmental justice or environmental racism was said in that report, but I noticed that the report is talking about making a priority designation for neighborhoods based on need.

As listeners may know, historically, neighborhoods that are less white, less wealthy, have tended over decades and more to be neglected in a number of ways that intersect to make these problems worse. I noticed that both of our callers were from Harlem. For instance, areas that have less greenery on the streets, less well maintained, maybe less parks, maybe have less responsive city services, maybe have larger amounts of public housing where there have been delayed maintenance. Those areas that are called environmental justice areas have historically been where we place infrastructure that includes a lot of paved surfaces, for instance, and not to mention that that creates more pollution.

Transfer stations, for garbage, all kinds of things. One of the things that the report mentions is that there's a big focus on Southeast Queens, the center of black homeownership in the city that is also close to Jamaica Bay and needs a lot of help in regards to stormwater. I think that it's a start but most of the experts say, we need more coordination, we need more of a sense of urgency, and we need more of a sense of addressing inequities in solving all these problems.

Brigid: Anne, my last question, how much can a city or really any city do to address these issues on their own? Is this part of President Biden's infrastructure plan or the version that's being hashed out now in the senate?

Anne: Well, as we've heard, the big debate is about whether climate issues are considered part of infrastructure. I think what happened in the city the past few weeks, really shows you that it absolutely is. Our roadways, our subways, our sewage pipes, our trees, all of that is infrastructure that is-- the green spaces are no less infrastructure than the roads are. All these things have to be addressed at once. I think that's exactly what the big chunk of what the political fight is about in Washington right now. I think the New York electeds are pushing for New York to be able to get a chunk of money to use for all of these kinds of projects.

It's not just one bill. Again, it's such a big volume of need and such a wide range of need that all have to be smartly coordinated together. It's almost overwhelming, but then again, every agency has something that they can work on and every neighborhood has something that I can work on and can ask its representatives for, so there's always something to do.

Brigid: Well, we're going to have to leave it there with Anne Barnard, New York Times reporter covering climate and environment for the Metro desk. Anne, I hope your summer is not too busy because that's a bad sign for all of us. Thank you so much for joining us.

Anne: Thanks so much for focusing on this issue.

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