General Category => Hackensack Discussion => Topic started by: DirtybreezeEP on October 22, 2005, 12:44:42 PM
Title: Combined Sewer Project
Post by: DirtybreezeEP on October 22, 2005, 12:44:42 PM
Hi, I ran across this public notice about a NJDEP meeting for the public on combinding sewers for Rigefield Park, Littel Ferry, Ft Lee.
I was at the court house Monday and dried sewage, panty liners, toilet paper was all over the parking lot YUCK! and it stinks too!
Maybe you guys ought to muscle your way in with the NJDEP to get better sewers and flood control!
The Bergen County CSO Group invites all individuals and groups to participate in a Citizen Advisory Committee (CAC) to explore issues and options related to Combined Sewer Systems. The first meeting of the CAC will be November 10, 2005 at 7:30 PM at the Bergen County Utilities Authority, Administration Building, Public Meeting Room, at the Foot of Mehrhof Road, Little Ferry, New Jersey....
Title: Re: Combined Sewer Project
Post by: Editor on October 17, 2006, 09:48:01 AM
Latest story: Hackensack to hold meeting on sewers (http://www.northjersey.com/page.php?qstr=eXJpcnk3ZjcxN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXkzJmZnYmVsN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXk3MDA2MzQ0)
Title: Re: Combined Sewer Project
Post by: Editor on October 19, 2006, 09:44:36 AM
Latest story: Hackensack gets upgrading advice for sewer system (http://www.northjersey.com/page.php?qstr=eXJpcnk3ZjcxN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXkzJmZnYmVsN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXk3MDA3MTcx)
Title: Combined Sewer Project
Post by: Editor on March 08, 2007, 09:01:14 AM
Latest story: House approves sewer upgrades for older cities (http://www.northjersey.com/page.php?qstr=eXJpcnk3ZjcxN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXkyJmZnYmVsN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXk3MDg5NjI2) In Hackensack, the city's combined storm water and sanitary sewer system is overwhelmed by heavy rains 30 to 40 times a year, flooding streets and sending untreated waste into the Hackensack River.
City Manager Stephen Lo Iacono said Hackensack had been eligible for a $665,000 state grant in the past, but it would have had to put up $5 million to match it, a price tag that was too high.
Title: Combined Sewer Project
Post by: Editor on March 09, 2007, 09:59:36 AM
Latest story: North Jersey needs federal help for sewers (http://www.northjersey.com/page.php?qstr=eXJpcnk3ZjcxN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXkxNCZmZ2JlbDdmN3ZxZWVFRXl5NzA4OTk0Ng==) (Record Editorial)
Title: Re: Combined Sewer Project
Post by: Editor on March 20, 2007, 08:26:12 AM
Latest story: Hackensack hearing set on sewer project (http://www.northjersey.com/page.php?qstr=eXJpcnk3ZjcxN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXkzJmZnYmVsN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXk3MDk2NjI2)
Title: Combined Sewer Project
Post by: Editor on April 17, 2007, 10:02:07 AM
Latest story: Some raw sewage ends up in North Jersey rivers (http://www.northjersey.com/page.php?qstr=eXJpcnk3ZjcxN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXkzJmZnYmVsN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXk3MTEzOTY0)
Title: Re: Combined Sewer Project
Post by: Editor on July 02, 2007, 08:43:21 AM
Latest story: Little Falls poised to repair sewers (http://www.northjersey.com/page.php?qstr=eXJpcnk3ZjcxN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXkyJmZnYmVsN2Y3dnFlZUVFeXk3MTYyMjk4) According to a 2002 report by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, 772 communities in 32 states had combined sewer systems, accounting for about 400,000 backups annually. In New Jersey, 23 municipalities have combined sewer systems, including Paterson, Newark, Hackensack and Camden.
Title: Re: Combined Sewer Project
Post by: Editor on March 29, 2009, 03:20:18 PM
Water projects vying for stimulus (http://www.northjersey.com/bergen/Water_projects_vying_for_stimulus.html)
Title: Re: Combined Sewer Project
Post by: just watching on March 30, 2009, 06:30:37 PM
$500 million, I can't believe my eyes. Let's not let these engineers and contractors soak the taxpayers.
Isn't it cheaper to create a new stormwater system than to upgrade thousands upon thousands of sanitary connections.
A new system with a couple dozen storm grates can cover the center of Hackensack. And let it dump right into the Hackensack River, since it won't have any sewage connections whatsoever. Leave the existing system for Sanitary only. My god, the pipes are so gigantic, it'll never be at capacity once all the stormwater is removed. They could build another Manhattan and it still wouldn't reach capacity.
I bet a new stormwater system can be done for $25 million, just for the area between Essex and Anderson
Title: Re: Combined Sewer Project
Post by: Editor on September 25, 2011, 08:47:05 PM
EPA: N.J. needs $8B fix to antiquated sewer systems (http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2011/09/epa_jersey_needs_8b_fix_to_ant.html) Updated: Sunday, September 25, 2011, 4:10 PM By Christopher Baxter/Statehouse Bureau
(http://media.nj.com/ledgerupdates_impact/photo/10077703-large.jpg) Mitsu Yasukawa/For The Star-Ledger Sandbags are piled in an attempt to block sewage pipes in Jersey City along the Hackensack River. A sign warning people about the sewage flowing into the water is also in place.
JERSEY CITY — His eyes fixed on the Jersey City shoreline of the Hackensack River, Bill Sheehan nosed his pontoon boat toward the end of a metal pipe where it juts out into the choppy brown water.
"Most people wouldn’t have any idea what this is," said Sheehan, the head of a nonprofit group that watches over the river, "but come out here enough and you’ll figure it out. You’ll smell it."
At more than 200 spots like this in New Jersey, outdated sewer systems pour more than 23 billion gallons of raw sewage into the water each year, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
And residents — including those who boat, kayak and fish these waterways — are usually never told when the sewage is flowing, officials say.
It doesn’t take a hurricane for the sewers to surge. Even small rainfalls can cause a dirty cocktail of bacteria to spew from 224 nondescript pipes that are mostly in northern New Jersey, EPA says, posing a serious health risk to anyone who touches the water.
Frustrated by the state’s lack of progress, the federal agency is pressuring the Christie administration to fix the long-standing problem, which EPA estimates could cost more than $8 billion.
And environmentalists say they will soon take the state to court, arguing the permit it issues that allows municipalities to dump the sewage violates the federal Clean Water Act.
"New Jersey has the worst program in the country to deal with this problem," said Christopher Len, staff attorney for the nonprofit NY/NJ Baykeeper, which is challenging the permit with Sheehan and others. "It’s laughable."
The state Department of Environmental Protection has rejected NY/NJ Baykeeper’s claims and said it plans to unveil revised rules in six months that would require better public notification and other basic and less expensive improvements. The state says nine of the 224 spill points have been eliminated since EPA’s last count.
But the DEP said it will not yet require cities to implement long-term plans to fix the problem. Instead, it intends to hold another round of meetings and ask cities and towns to again study what changes they can afford.
Federal officials said in a recent letter to DEP that the state "has all the data it needs to tackle this long-term challenge."
Jeffrey Gratz, chief of EPA’s clean water regulatory branch overseeing New Jersey, said in an interview that unless the state’s next set of rules puts municipalities on a schedule to address the problem, EPA will have a "serious issue with it."
"I think in general we’ve got a longer way to go with New Jersey than other states," Gratz said.
COMPLEX PROBLEM Sewage is allowed to spew into the environment because of antiquated sewer systems across the stateCombined sewage systems are designed to transport sewage, industrial wastewater and rainwater runoff in the same pipes to water treatment plants. But when they overflow during heavy rains, raw sewage is being directly discharged into our water systems. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, more than 23 billion gallons of raw sewage enters the New Jersey environment annually.
In most cities and towns, separate pipes carry sewage to the treatment plant and stormwater to rivers, streams and the ocean. But in older municipalities, the same pipe carries both stormwater and sewage to the treatment plant.
When it rains, those combined pipes quickly fill past capacity, threatening to back up into homes and basements. So they were designed with pipes that allow the sewage to overflow directly into the water.
Over the past three years, the problem has gained more attention from EPA, which has cracked down on cities and towns that fail to act.
Contact with the bacteria-laden water most often causes diarrhea and nausea, but it can also cause more serious infections such as hepatitis. No one knows exactly how many people get sick from the spills each year.
"There’s a pipe on the Passaic River where I’ve actually seen people washing their clothes in the sewage," Sheehan said.
A lot of the sewage flows through the rivers and streams first and then spills into the New York-New Jersey Harbor.
LITTLE NOTIFICATION
As Sheehan motored his pontoon boat along the shore of the river Wednesday, small, yellow warning signs could be seen where pipes emerge from the ground. The U.S. Department of Justice recently forced Jersey City to install them as part of an agreement settling charges that officials allowed sewage to spill during dry weather, which is not allowed.
WHERE RAW SEWAGE FLOWS
The federal Environmental Protection Agency says there are 224 places* in New Jersey where partially treated or raw sewage pours directly into streams, rivers or the ocean during heavy rain, polluting the water with bacteria and posing a public health risk. It estimates it would cost $8.2 billion to upgrade or eliminate these outfalls. Here are towns, and how many places in each where the sewage flows.
Elizabeth: 34 Camden: 31 Bayonne: 28 Paterson: 24 Jersey City Municipal Utilities Authority: 21 Newark: 17 Perth Amboy: 16 North Bergen Municipal Utilities Authority: 10 North Hudson Sewerage Authority, Hoboken: 8 Ridgefield Park Village: 6 Gloucester: 7 Harrison: 7 Kearny: 5 North Hudson Sewerage Authority, West New York: 2 Fort Lee: 2 Hackensack: 2 Guttenberg: 1 East Newark: 1 Trenton Sewer Utilities Authority: 1 Camden County Municipal Utilities Authority: 1 * The state Department of Environmental Protection said nine places where spills occur have been eliminated since EPA’s last count, but could not identify which nine. Source: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
But DEP does not require labeling where sewage overflows so that people know they might be approaching raw waste spilling into the water. The department also does not require residents be notified of when or where the spills occur, making it difficult for anyone to know if the water is safe on any given day.
The state regularly monitors only the water at beaches it has designated for swimming. But there are many other beaches where people swim.
"If people knew they shouldn’t go anywhere in the harbor or rivers whenever there’s a heavy rain, they would be screaming for action," said Jeff Tittel, head of the New Jersey Sierra Club. "There’s no one in those areas who’s going to stand idly by who knows raw sewage affects their property."
Other places in the country do far more to inform residents. New York State requires municipalities to create a public notification system to alert those who may come in contact with the water that a sewage overflow has occurred. DEP officials said they will consider a similar mandate in the future.
NO CHEAP FIX
In the short term, municipalities are supposed to make sure their pipes are clear and that spills are strained to catch "floatables," such as human waste and other debris that may have washed into storm drains.
But eliminating the spills will require much more expensive sewer improvements, such as laying new pipes to separate stormwater and sewage, as well as installing storage tanks to prevent spills from happening.
New York City built storage tanks to hold sewage during rainstorms rather than let it overflow. When the water subsides, the tanks drain the waste to a treatment plant. The city is also promoting "green infrastructure" that captures and reuses stormwater to keep it out of sewers.
DEP officials say the problem in New Jersey is more complex. With more than two dozen systems serving a large number of municipalities, they say the state needs to speak with local leaders to determine what they can afford to do.
In April, DEP Commissioner Bob Martin said in a letter to EPA that he was concerned the two agencies "are not on the same page," and that the feds were pushing "costly" short-term fixes without focusing on eliminating the spills, something he said requires more meetings with communities.
"I also question whether this current enforcement effort is the best use of taxpayers’ dollars," Martin wrote, urging EPA to stop issuing fines and penalties and instead make more money available to stop sewage spills.
With the estimated total price more than $8 billion, EPA officials will be hard-pressed to persuade cash-strapped municipalities to make sewer upgrades a priority, said Elizabeth Mayor Chris Bollwage.
(http://media.nj.com/ledgerupdates_impact/photo/10077726-large.jpg) Mitsu Yasukawa/For The Star-LedgerSandbags are piled in an attempt to block sewage pipes in Jersey City along the Hackensack River. A sign warning people about the sewage flowing into the water is also in place.
"Unless they actually restrict building permits or take some other serious action, nobody’s going to follow through and do this," Bollwage said.
EPA says there are 34 places in Elizabeth where raw sewage spews during heavy rains. Bollwage said the city has done a lot in the past few decades to capture sewage debris and upgrade parts of the system, but fears a long-term solution could cost hundreds of millions of dollars. "Should it happen? Absolutely," he said. "But nobody has the money to do it."
Some towns have acted. Rahway completed a four-year project in 2004 worth more than $3.3 million to separate stormwater and sewage into different pipelines. The city also sealed overflow pipes in the Rahway River. EPA, however, says only five of the state’s 30 problem sewer systems have been fixed.
While state environmental officials said they are sensitive to the cost of upgrades, EPA officials take a stricter stance.
"The statement that it costs too much to fix is obviously something we don’t listen to," said Doug McKenna, chief of EPA’s water compliance branch overseeing New Jersey. "However, when someone says it costs a heck of a lot and it’s going to take us time to pay, that is something we do consider. But ultimately, it has to be fixed and compliance needs to be achieved."
Title: Re: Combined Sewer Project
Post by: just watching on September 26, 2011, 07:23:55 AM
I haven't heard a peep out of Hackensack about the CSO project in over 2 years. I wonder if they are still letting the "engineers" rape the City of Hackensack by persuading the city to build a new sewage line with over ten thousand of connections, for every house and every business.
All we need is a new stormwater system with dozens of stormwater drains. The pipes will be bigger and each connection more money, but it will be way cheaper to build. Creating over 10,000 connections and having to run new pipes down every single street is the big bucks.
Here's some more details that I didn't post in March, 2009: One big pipe 5 feet diameter along the south side of Susquehanna Railroad or under Mercer Street and Gamewell Place from the river to the vicinity of the Hackensack High School athletic field. It'll be significantly underground around State Street (15 or 20 feet down), and then come closer to the surface by the time it reaches Railroad Ave, but still at least 7 feet underground. Then connections branching off from that 5-foot main line. Seal up all the old storm drains in the watershed of the old Hackensack Creek so that no storm water reaches into the old system, because the old system will become sewage only. Make about 30 new storm sewer grates, strategically placed, and draining both north and south to reach the new big 5-foot diameter pipe. Most of the new grates will be between Essex and Passaic Streets, and from Union Street to the slope of the hill. All the new grates will run into the new system. DONE. Probably less than 10 million.
Title: Re: Combined Sewer Project
Post by: just watching on September 29, 2011, 07:41:27 AM
What's the cost of doing nothing?
Well, the city is paying the Bergen County Utilities Authority to process all it's combined stormwater and sewage. I would like to see someone post what that number is annually, and also let's look at what Teaneck is paying annually. Teaneck is about the same size as Hackensack, with no combined stormwater and sanitary sewer system. The difference between the two numbers is approximately the cost for the city of Hackensack to process stormwater that should otherwise discharge directly into the Hackensack River.
Then multiply that number times 20, and factor inflation into the equation. That's what it would cost the city to do nothing. over the course of 20 years. Why 20 years, because that is the length of a typical bond.
Then compare that number to what the city would pay, annually, if they floated millions in bonds to build a new stormwater system for central Hackensack. Meaning a 20 year bond
I wonder which would be higher, even without State of Federal grants possibly offsetting what city taxpayers would pay
Title: Re: Combined Sewer Project
Post by: regina on September 30, 2011, 06:17:21 PM
I don't know what Teaneck pays, but we pay $1.3 MILLION PER QUARTER for sewer treatment. That would be $5 MILLION PER YEAR!
Title: Re: Combined Sewer Project
Post by: regina on September 30, 2011, 07:00:40 PM
Teaneck's total 2011 budget for BCUA is $4 million. Hackensack also pays BCUA about $1.5 million per year for landfill & services, bringing our total to over $6.5 million per year paid to BCUA.
Title: Re: Combined Sewer Project
Post by: just watching 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.
Title: Re: Combined Sewer Project
Post by: Editor on January 06, 2013, 01:01:09 AM
Staggering cost of repairs allows sewage to foul N.J. waterways (http://www.northjersey.com/news/Raw_sewage_pouring_into_NJ_waterways.html?page=all) 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.
(http://media.northjersey.com/images/300*199/0106A_SewerBW70p.jpg) 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
Title: Re: Combined Sewer Project
Post by: just watching 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.
Title: Re: Combined Sewer Project
Post by: Editor on March 27, 2013, 11:59:49 AM
Many rivers in poor health, including some in North Jersey (http://www.northjersey.com/news/200172251_Many_rivers__in_poor__health_.html?page=all) 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
Title: Re: Combined Sewer Project
Post by: just watching 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.
Title: Re: Combined Sewer Project
Post by: Homer Jones on March 27, 2013, 07:44:26 PM
In who's lifetime?
Title: Re: Combined Sewer Project
Post by: Editor on March 27, 2013, 08:02:29 PM
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.
Title: Re: Combined Sewer Project
Post by: Homer Jones on March 27, 2013, 08:13:09 PM
Then I guess that septic systems are the wave of the future?
Title: Re: Combined Sewer Project
Post by: just watching 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.
Title: Re: Combined Sewer Project
Post by: Editor on May 27, 2013, 09:16:17 PM
Combined Sewer Outfall Hackensack River Hackensack, NJ:
(Hackensack Riverkeeper)
Title: Re: Combined Sewer Project
Post by: Editor on November 29, 2013, 12:22:18 AM
http://youtu.be/wBY3idYRKbw
Title: Re: Combined Sewer Project
Post by: just watching 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.
Title: Re: Combined Sewer Project
Post by: Editor 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.
Title: Re: Combined Sewer Project
Post by: Editor on December 15, 2014, 06:11:59 PM
Title: Re: Combined Sewer Project
Post by: Editor 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.