Author Topic: Combined Sewer Project  (Read 24849 times)

Offline just watching

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Re: Combined Sewer Project
« Reply #15 on: October 01, 2011, 07:20:34 PM »
Thanks for the research.  Sounds like more needs to be investigated to see if each community's sewage volume should be about the same.  It could be argued that Hackensack has more commercial and other non-residential development than Teaneck (Teaneck's non-residential development is mostly FDU and Glenpointe Marriott. These are big places, but collectively much less than Hackensack's). 

It sounds like Hackensack's total BCUA bill is about 2.5 million more than Teaneck's.  How much of this is due to treating stormwater, and how much is due to more non-residential development ?

Let's take a low-ball guestimation.  Even if Hackensack is only paying $1 million a year to treat stormwater that could otherwise discharge into the Hackensack River, that comes to $20 million over 20 years. And even more considering inflation.  That's a significant financial incentive to build a new stormwater system for the city.  I suppose it would be best to include a screen to filter out floatables like bottles and pieces of plastic.  Even though every other town has creeks that discharge into the river, and none of the creeks screen out floatables.

Offline Editor

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Re: Combined Sewer Project
« Reply #16 on: January 06, 2013, 01:01:09 AM »
Staggering cost of repairs allows sewage to foul N.J. waterways
Saturday, January 5, 2013    Last updated: Sunday January 6, 2013, 12:29 AM
BY  JAMES M. O’NEILL
STAFF WRITER
The Record

When superstorm Sandy knocked out North Jersey’s largest sewage treatment plant, billions of gallons of raw or partially treated sewage poured into rivers and bays, setting off alarms from health and environmental officials. But while the event was dramatic, it was not unique.


CARMINE GALASSO/STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER
Ridgefield Park DPW foreman Jim Van Der Tulip, left, and co-worker Dave Henderson inspecting Outfall 4, a netting system off Christie Street that helps stop drain debris from flowing into the Hackensack River, behind them.

More than 23 billion gallons of raw sewage and other pollutants pour into New Jersey’s rivers and bays each year because aging sewer systems are overwhelmed during heavy rains. The raw sewage and toxic waste — enough to fill the Oradell Reservoir nearly seven times over — spill from 217 outfall pipes into the Passaic, Hackensack, Hudson and other rivers and bays, according to the federal Environmental Protection Agency.

The overflows occur dozens of times each year, whenever there’s a significant rainfall.

The sewage puts human health and the environment at risk — particularly at a time when more people are discovering North Jersey’s rivers for recreation and the state’s beaches remain a vital economic engine.

Federal law had called for such spills to be eliminated by 1985, but the sewage continues to flow because local governments say they can’t afford to repair the systems. In Ridgefield Park, such a project could cost as much as $100 million. The price is estimated at $1 billion in Paterson. Federal and state money to address the problem has been made available over the years, but environmentalists and politicians alike said it has not been nearly enough. Even less costly stopgap measures, such as adequately identifying the outfall pipes with signs, have not been properly addressed, environmentalists argue.

For the increasing numbers of people who use the rivers, the sewage can cause illnesses such as gastroenteritis — a stomach inflammation that causes vomiting and diarrhea — as well as hepatitis and skin, respiratory and ear infections. The sewage also can inflict economic pain, such as lost revenue from beach closures, fish kills and closed shellfish beds.

“The release of large quantities of raw sewage into New Jersey waters is a serious problem that needs to be solved sooner rather than later,” said Judith Enck, regional administrator of the EPA. “It has dragged on for too long.”

The outfall pipes are part of older systems in Ridgefield Park, Hackensack, Paterson and other communities that rely on sewage lines to handle both sewage and storm-water runoff from roadways and parking lots. Normally, the lines carry the sewage and storm water to wastewater treatment plants. But when heavy rains hit, these systems can’t handle the deluge. The excess is dumped out of the system through outfall pipes, called combined sewer overflows, which empty into local waterways.

North Jersey’s annual sewage overflow runs into the billions of gallons, but varies year to year based on the number of storms and amount of rainfall.

Along with the untreated sewage, the overflow pipes dump other pollutants into the rivers. The runoff from a rainstorm carries everything that has dripped onto roadways — grease, oil and benzene from cars and paint and chemicals people may have poured down storm drains. It also carries fertilizer runoff, including phosphorous and nitrates that cause algae blooms, spawning fish kills.

Monthly water sampling along the Hudson, including several locations where the river borders Bergen County, often shows dramatic increases of enterococcus — a bacterial component of sewage — in the days following a heavy rainfall, with rates often in violation of federal standards.

When superstorm Sandy crippled the state’s largest sewage treatment plant, the Passaic Valley Sewerage Commission’s facility could no longer accept the 250 million gallons of sewage it normally handles each day. Raw sewage backed up in the lines, and for several days 840 million gallons of it poured — untreated — into local waters, much of it into the Passaic River.

Coliform is a bacteria associated with human waste. Even a week after the storm, federal officials measured coliform levels at the mouth of the Passaic as high as 1,500 units — the acceptable level is considered 14 units. During the three weeks after Sandy, as the facility was brought back into service, an estimated 4.4 billion gallons of partially treated sewage was released into New York Harbor, said Mike DeFrancisci, the commission’s executive director.

“The discharge of raw sewage and other contaminants into water bodies is one of the most serious threats to water quality facing the state of New Jersey,” Enck said in a letter last year to New Jersey environmental officials.

The concern comes as North Jersey’s rivers are generally getting cleaner as industry leaves the region and sewage treatment facilities — though not sewer systems — have improved. That improving water quality has drawn more people to the rivers to canoe, kayak, boat or participate on crew teams. But while much of the remaining industrial pollution is trapped in the sediment of the rivers, it is the bacteria in the water from the sewage that can cause the most immediate harm to residents.

Bill Sheehan, the Hackensack Riverkeeper, said people don’t seem to know about the dangers posed by the sewer outfall pipes. “I’ve got dozens of pictures of people in canoes who jumped out, people using Jet Skis who fell off or waded into the river to cool off,” Sheehan said. At Laurel Hill Park in Secaucus, he saw a family set out blankets on the riverbank. “The kids had water toys and they’d dive off the dock and swim, unaware of the potential health danger,” he said.

“I bring up the issue and people always look at me with a blank stare or say, ‘I thought they fixed that problem years ago,’Ÿ” he said.

Many people who suffer cases of swimmer’s ear or gastrointestinal illness after swimming in polluted water at beaches or in rivers may never make the connection, so numerous cases go unreported, environmental groups said. The EPA has said the likely range of illness attributable to sewage contamination at the nation’s beaches is between 1.8 million and 3.5 million cases. And a growing number of academic studies have linked human illness to storm runoff.

For instance, a University of California, Irvine study that looked at rates of gastrointestinal illness among surfers at Southern California beaches between 2008 and 2010 found higher occurrences shortly after storms than during dry conditions. And a look at cases of gastroenteritis and diarrhea at a children’s hospital in Wisconsin from 2002 to 2007 found an 11 percent increase after rainstorms.

Officials at the state Department of Environmental Protection agree the overflows need to stop. “It’s not acceptable to have untreated sewage going into our water bodies,” said Michelle Siekerka, the DEP’s assistant commissioner for water management.

But the state hasn’t ordered communities to remove the outfalls and install separate lines to handle sewage and storm water because of the cost, she said. “Many community governments are cash-strapped right now and local sewer authorities have not set aside money for capital improvements,” Siekerka said.

Environmental advocacy groups have grown impatient — and have taken the state to court to force the state into action. The DEP “has developed a catalog of excuses instead of water protection measures,” the environmental groups said in court documents. The groups say the DEP does not require public notice about overflows and that in some cases there aren’t even any signs to let the public know that raw sewage was coming out of the pipes.

Siekerka said the DEP requires signs at outfall pipes, but acknowledged they are often small and the print is hard to read. The state is considering new rules about the minimum size of the print for signs, she said. The DEP is also assessing how to provide timely public notification when overflows occur, through a reverse-911 system or posting notices on the Web, she said.

While they haven’t been able to remove the pipes, Siekerka said the DEP has made progress on the overflow problem by requiring the installation of netting or other devices at outfall pipes to prevent solids and floatables — cans, bottles and other debris — from flowing into the rivers.

“We’ve been successful in getting nets installed on 91 percent of combined sewer overflows. That’s huge,” Siekerka said.

Ridgefield Park has six combined sewer outfalls and averages 48 overflows each year — which dump 2.2 million gallons of sewage and storm water into the Hackensack. In 1999, the town spent $1.5 million to install nets at each outfall pipe, along with giant concrete chambers that hold the nets in place and the winch mechanisms needed to lift them for cleaning.

The nets have captured everything from plastic bottles to dead rats — 21 tons of debris a year, said Alan O’Grady, the village public works superintendent. Ridgefield goes through about 100 nets — at $140 each — annually because they get torn by the flow of water and trapped debris, he said.

But the nets don’t keep raw sewage out of the waterways,” said Debbie Mans, the NY/NJ Baykeeper. “The DEP has required the towns to install netting to catch floatables, but they haven’t dealt with the bacteria side of things,” she said.

To end the overflows from Ridgefield Park’s six combined sewer pipes would cost between $31 million and $100 million, depending on the chosen remedy, O’Grady said. Options include building small facilities at each outfall to treat the water before it enters the river, which would cost up to $50 million. A tunnel running 4,900 feet along the river’s edge to temporarily hold the storm runoff would cost $74 million. The most complete option would be adding a separate storm-water line so there would be one dedicated solely to sewage and one for storm water. That would cost up to $100 million.

“Either way it’s going to be a lot of money,” O’Grady said. “It’s not like we’re trying to duck the problem. We’d love to have the use of the river again. But we need guidance — and some financial help.”

Hackensack is in the midst of rehabilitating a section of Main Street and plans include separating sewer lines there. “It won’t eliminate our combined sewer overflow discharges but will significantly reduce what’s going into the river,” said City Manager Stephen Lo Iocono.

The cost of other work has proved to be overwhelming. The city studied separating a 10-square-block section of line in 2006 and found that it would cost $30 million, he said. “The numbers are so overwhelming,” Lo Iocono said. “The financial burden is just too great.”

Paterson, which has 26 sewer outfall pipes along the Passaic River, budgets $1.2 million in capital projects each year for sewer work. Over the past few years, the city has turned several thousand feet of combined lines into separate lines, said Christopher Coke, Paterson’s director of public works.

But to separate all the lines would cost in excess of $1 billion, he said. “It will be a long process.”

In 2000, the EPA estimated that nationally, it would cost more than $50 billion to fix the combined sewer problem. Some federal money has been made available over the years — through 2006, states funneled about $5.3 billion in federal money as loans to combined sewer projects, but a 2009 congressional report conceded that “federal assistance has been small relative to the overall needs.”

The 2009 economic stimulus bill included $30 million for eight New Jersey combined sewer projects.

To spur local governments to tackle the issue, the Christie administration plans to make partial loan forgiveness available. “We are looking to incentivize right conduct rather than mandate it,” Siekerka said.

State Sen. Bob Smith, D-Piscataway, has introduced a bill that would create a $5 million fund to help pay for the work. Another bill would create a more permanent source of money by letting communities create storm-water utilities, which could charge fees to facilities that generate the most storm-water runoff — office parks and shopping malls, for instance.

The Legislature passed a similar measure last term to help reduce pollution in Barnegat Bay, but Governor Christie vetoed it, arguing that it was another tax.

“He’s not wrong,” Smith said. “But there’s no free lunch.”

Email: oneillj@northjersey.com

Offline just watching

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Re: Combined Sewer Project
« Reply #17 on: January 08, 2013, 07:16:36 PM »
The federal government owes NJ, let them pay for it.

I believe that NJ still ranks dead last among all 50 states in terms of federal dollars spent here versus tax revenue generated by income tax, etc.  If someone can research this and post, that would be great.  Last I heard, NJ gets back 52 cents in federal spending for every $1 in tax revenue generated by the State.  Yep, they owe us.  Gov. Christie and our federal elected officials (senators, congressman) need to make a big stink about this.

We need to solve this CSO problem.  It can't be solved by local tax dollars, county tax dollars, or even state tax dollars.

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Re: Combined Sewer Project
« Reply #18 on: March 27, 2013, 11:59:49 AM »

Many rivers in poor health, including some in North Jersey

Wednesday, March 27, 2013, Last updated: Wednesday March 27, 2013, 9:10 AM
BY  JAMES M. O'NEILL
STAFF WRITER
The Record

More than half of the stream and river miles throughout the United States are in such poor health that they can't properly sustain aquatic life, according to a sweeping two-year study released Tuesday by the federal Environmental Protection Agency.

A key problem is excessive amounts of nitrogen and phosphorus, which can cause algae blooms, harming habitats and reducing oxygen supplies for fish and other aquatic life. Many rivers also lack significant vegetation, exacerbating erosion and flooding; others have fish with mercury levels that could harm humans if consumed.

Similar conditions have been documented in New Jersey, where many rivers, including the Hackensack, Passaic, Ramapo and Saddle, are laden with high levels of phosphorus and nitrogen, and fishing advisories abound because of mercury.

"This should be a wake-up call," said Bill Sheehan, the Hackensack Riverkeeper. "Whenever I talk to people about needing to improve the health of the river, they don't get it – they think it looks fine. In the old days they'd see everything from coffee cups to animal carcasses floating in the river, but they don't see that now and they grow complacent. They think things are OK, but they're not OK."

The federal study involved 85 field crews that gathered samples from nearly 2,000 river and stream sites across the country in 2008 and 2009, from the mighty Mississippi to tiny mountain headwaters.

The samples indicated that 55 percent of stream and river miles were in poor condition, including 40 percent with high phosphorus levels. "This new science shows that America's streams and rivers are under significant pressure," Nancy Stoner, the EPA's acting assistant administrator for water, said in a statement.

Phosphorus and nitrogen often come from the effluent of sewage treatment plants. In addition, rainwater runoff carries the nutrients off of suburban lawns that have been treated with fertilizers.

And there are nearly 220 outfall pipes in New Jersey, part of aging sewer systems that dump 23 billion gallons of raw sewage and nutrients into rivers and bays each year. Such aging systems, including those in Ridgefield Park, Paterson and Hackensack, have not been upgraded because of the cost.

While the EPA did not break out data by state, a 2012 report by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection measured each river's ability to support a variety of uses. The study, based on data from 2006 to 2010, found that 64 percent of rivers statewide could not support aquatic life, at least 38 percent did not support fish consumption, and 47 percent did not support recreational use.

In North Jersey, the study found that the Ramapo, Pompton, Passaic, Saddle and Hackensack rivers, as well as the Ho-Ho-Kus and Pascack brooks, had excessive phosphorus that harmed aquatic life and excessive bacteria that would limit recreational activity. It found that fish in the Ramapo, Pompton, Passaic and Hackensack had mercury and PCB in their tissue at levels that could affect human health.

Efforts to cut down on nutrients in the rivers have been under way in New Jersey. In 2011, Governor Christie signed a bill that puts strict limits on fertilizer ingredients and when fertilizers could be applied.

Ella Filippone of the Greenwood Lake Commission said West Milford has invested more than $1 million to retrofit stormwater drains and grates so that the sediment, which contains phosphorus, can't flow into the already nutrient-laden lake. Greenwood Lake feeds the Wanaque Reservoir, a major source of drinking water.

Filippone is also executive director of the Passaic River Coalition, which will soon knock down several homes it purchased in a flood-prone section of Little Falls. She said the coalition will use the reclaimed flood plain to construct rain gardens, which can collect water to reduce flooding and also filter out excess nutrients before they enter the river.

The coalition is also trying to add trees and other vegetation as stream buffers, since they can absorb rainwater and nutrients as well.

Email: oneillj@northjersey.com

Offline just watching

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Re: Combined Sewer Project
« Reply #19 on: March 27, 2013, 07:41:14 PM »
The day will come that sewage water is a COMMODITY.  It will be bought, sold, and piped to special algae farms.  The algae will grow off the sewage water, and the algae will be harvested about once a week to create biofuels.  This will create a huge financial incentive to eliminate the combined sewage and stormwater systems, so that the Bergen County Utility Authority can sell its sewage water.  They probably don't have enough acreage for the algae farms.

Offline Homer Jones

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Re: Combined Sewer Project
« Reply #20 on: March 27, 2013, 07:44:26 PM »
In who's lifetime?

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Re: Combined Sewer Project
« Reply #21 on: March 27, 2013, 08:02:29 PM »
Interesting: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algaculture

Commercial and industrial algae cultivation has numerous uses, including production of food ingredients such as omega-3 fatty acids or natural food colorants and dyes, food, fertilizer, bioplastics, chemical feedstock, pharmaceuticals, and algal fuel, and can also be used as a means of pollution control.

Pollution control
With concern over global warming, new methods for the thorough and efficient capture of CO2 are being sought out. The carbon dioxide that a carbon-fuel burning plant produces can feed into open or closed algae systems, fixing the CO2 and accelerating algae growth. Untreated sewage can supply additional nutrients, thus turning two pollutants into valuable commodities.

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Re: Combined Sewer Project
« Reply #22 on: March 27, 2013, 08:13:09 PM »
Then I guess that septic systems are the wave of the future?

Offline just watching

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Re: Combined Sewer Project
« Reply #23 on: March 29, 2013, 06:21:47 AM »
Don't know if I will live to see it either, 'Ol homer could be right about that.

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Re: Combined Sewer Project
« Reply #24 on: May 27, 2013, 09:16:17 PM »
Combined Sewer Outfall Hackensack River Hackensack, NJ:


(Hackensack Riverkeeper)

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Re: Combined Sewer Project
« Reply #25 on: November 29, 2013, 12:22:18 AM »

Offline just watching

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Re: Combined Sewer Project
« Reply #26 on: November 29, 2013, 09:20:53 AM »
Sounds great, but what the Riverkeeper was afraid to say in the video is that they want each municipality, including the City of Hackensack, to pay the cost of fixing this. Like everyone else, they would prefer State, Federal, or County funding, but they are adamant to the point of litigation against the municipalities that it be cleaned up. That's a non-starter for Hackensack.

Also a non-starter is the misperception created in the video is that THE ONLY MAJOR PROBLEM affecting water quality is the CSO's. There's still the discharge of treated water from the Bergen County Utilities Authority in Little Ferry, which represents over 90% of the original flow of the river that once came down from Oradell and above. That water, even treated, is still far from pristine. And that change in hydrology, meaning that redirection of 90% of the flow of the river from reservoirs into pipes and back to the river via the Utilities Authority has fundamentally altered the entire ecology of the tidal portion of the river (up to Oradell). The BCUA is literally the biggest tributary to the river, and their ongoing daily outflow is about 90% of all water reaching the river.  Also, there's still runoff from all the streets containing oil drippings and tiny brake particles. There's still runoff from lawns containing fertilizers and pesticides. And there's still a legacy of pollution in the underwater sediments in some areas containing Mercury compounds and things from Agent Orange.  Most of these problems are in Newark and East Rutherford, but once it gets stirred up into the water, it drifts up and down with the tide. In the case of the Hacky, it mostly drifts up.  Go to Oradell where the old lower dam is, and you'll see everything that drifts up.  It drifts up because 90% of the flow of the river is gone to push things out, but the same force of high tide coming in exists unchanged.

I'd don't want to be totally negative, because I really do believe that the river should be cleaned up and all of these issues somehow addressed. I love the river, and I love the idea of public access walkway/bikeway along the entire river.  Let's just not be fooled into thinking that one particular issue, the CSO's, is the solution. I don't want cleaning up the Hackensack River to become the next Obamacare, meaning to spend so much money and get so little done and bankrupt everyone in the process.

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Re: Combined Sewer Project
« Reply #27 on: March 13, 2014, 03:46:28 PM »
The Truth About CSOs

Join the Dumont Environmental Commission for their next meeting where the special guest speaker will be Captain Bill Sheehan to discuss "The Truth about CSOs (Combined Sewer Overflows)"

Monday March 24, 2014 at 7 PM
Dumont Senior Center
39 Dumont Avenue
Dumont, NJ 07628

Captain Bill Sheehan, the Hackensack Riverkeeper, is a lifelong resident of the Hackensack River area, having lived most of his life in Union City and Secaucus, New Jersey. He is a dedicated, active conservationist who founded Hackensack Riverkeeper in 1997 and serves as the organization's Executive Director. Captain Bill, as he is known to most people, holds a Master of Inland Waterways license from the US Coast Guard.

For more information, please contact Councilwoman Barbara Correa, Town Council Liaison to the Dumont Environmental Commission.


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Re: Combined Sewer Project
« Reply #29 on: January 09, 2015, 01:27:28 PM »
NJ toughens raw sewage rules
January 8, 2015    Last updated: Thursday, January 8, 2015, 8:33 AM
By JAMES M. O'NEILL
STAFF WRITER |
The Record

The state will force towns to dramatically reduce the billions of gallons of raw sewage and toxic waste their old sewerage systems routinely dump into local rivers and bays.

State environmental officials on Wednesday unveiled a program that will require infrastructure and other improvements to reduce the sewage overflows. The effort will affect 25 communities that have combined sewer overflow outfall pipes, including Ridgefield Park, Fort Lee, Hackensack and Paterson.

New Jersey is providing loans to the towns to develop plans, but the actual improvements will pose financial burdens – an estimated $1 billion in the case of Paterson alone.

http://www.northjersey.com/mobile/news/nj-state-news/nj-toughens-raw-sewage-rules-1.1188242?page=all
« Last Edit: January 10, 2015, 04:45:34 PM by Editor »

 

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