Flushing Bay Team Ponders Breakwater Removal
BY THOMAS COGAN

The breakwater, constructed in 1964 and extending like a crooked finger into the inner bay, or lower part of Flushing Bay, pictured above, was assumed by some to be contributing to the pollution problem in the water by impeding the tidal exchange between the bay and the East River, flowing north of it.

A discussion about long-term environmental control of Flushing Bay, the broad inlet that lies between La Guardia Airport and the College Point peninsula, extending narrowly into Flushing as Flushing Creek, was the basis for the latest Flushing Bay & Creek stakeholder team meeting, held during the last week in March at the Olmstead Center in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park.

The meeting, sponsored by the New York City Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), was in two parts. The first part was a study of the effect of retaining or removing a finger dike, or breakwater, extending into the bay from the land area immediately east of the airport. The second part was a presentation of a series of pollution control plans for Flushing Bay & Creek. This Flushing Bay meeting, the fourth in a series of five, was the first one held since August 1. Minutes from the August meeting indicated that the topic of source control, the reduction of storm water runoff through such methods as green roofs, plantings and permeable pavement, was discussed. At the March meeting, however, the traditional heavy technology- dredging, relief sewers, bending weirs and inflatable dams, for instance- was exclusively delineated, somewhat to the dismay of some stakeholders present. These community board representatives and other interested public parties had hoped to have a further discussion of alternatives to the traditional "endof pipe" practices.

As presented by Chris Villari of DEP, the breakwater presentation was a reprise of a study issued in April 2003 by DEP, the Army Corps of Engineers and two private engineering firms. The breakwater, constructed in 1964 and extending like a crooked finger into the inner bay, or lower part of Flushing Bay, was assumed by some to be contributing to the pollution problem in the water by impeding the tidal exchange between the bay and the East River, flowing north of it. The study used two computerized models of the bay and creek, in which the inner bay and creek received a fictitious infusion of an evenly distributed red dye, the dilution of which was studied as tidewater flowed from the East River and the outer bay into the inner bay and creek, then back out again. One model contained the finger dike, the other did not. Villari said that when he first saw the models in 2003 he believed it a "nobrainer" that the contrast in tidal flows and dye dilution would be radical- but that did not prove to be the case. Even with the breakwater removed, down to the bay's "historical bottom", the dye dilution was remarkably similar over a period of six tidal cycles to that of the model retaining the breakwater. Villari said there was a current problem with the actual breakwater, which was lowered some 30 years after it was installed to extract material used as fill for a runway extension at the airport: sediments that have built up there give off what are described as "nuisance odors" when the tide is low and the dike is exposed to the air.

Utterly skeptical of the study was Pat Bickles of Community Board 3, who maintained that the breakwater has increased the opportunity for pollution in the bay and driven the wildlife away. Because of that, he said, it should be removed. Villari countered that wildlife flock to the dike. Between Villari's presentation and the one by Philip Hwang on pollution control alternatives, Tom Lowenhaupt, also of Board 3, said he found the evening's opportunity for public participation lacking. The meeting's moderator, Stephen Whitehouse, of Starr Whitehouse, a landscape architectural firm, said the meetings were participatory but not subject to a process of public approval. Lowenhaupt said that public awareness and promotion of source control has made it a part of the pollution control program, but the persons running these public meetings seem determined to bring everything back to technological expertise and subordinate the public interest to it. Edward Dugan, a consultant to the state Department of Environmental Conservation, said the DEC sees source control as a significant part of the long-term picture. Whitehouse said that source control is important, but because it is made up of so many small parts it is "diffuse" and "accrues actionby action". He said that he must "identify projects that are viable", even if they are end-of-pipe projects.

Philip Hwang of O'Brien & Gere Engineers took up the latter half of the meeting to describe an arresting series of actual and potential end-of-pipe projects. The actual one, whose startup is due this spring, is the Flushing Creek Combined Sewage Overflow (CSO) Retention Facility, wedged between Fowler Avenue and College Point Boulevard. This elaborate facility, on which $332 million has already been spent, can store 43 million gallons of CSO: 28 million in a tank, 15 million inline. This is conveyed to the Tallman Island water pollution control plant (WPCP) on Powell's Cove Boulevard at the eastern end of the College Point peninsula. An 83 percent reduction in CSO in the intensely polluted Flushing Creek is projected. Other alternatives for Flushing Creek include dredging and in-stream aeration. Dredging the creek has two alternatives in itself: either three feet or six feet below mean lower low water (MLLW); the first to abate odors, the second to allow vertical mixing for instream aeration. The dredging of inner Flushing Bay, to three feet below MLLW, to remove pollution-related sediments that are exposed at low tides, is still another alternative.

Hwang then described possible enhancement of the high level interceptor (HLI) that enters the Bowery Bay treatment plant on Berrian Boulevard in Astoria. It is 17,000 feet in length, thus running more than three miles from Flushing to Astoria, but has limited capacity for holding sewage and needs relief. Such relief would be gained by way of the bending weirs and inflatable dams that Hwang described to an audience apparently familiar by now with technological terms. Next, a plan for looping three tunnels under the inner Flushing Bay was described: they would have a total capacity of 164 million gallons, with an estimated cost of construction close to $2.3 billion. An alternate plan would have a tunnel system running from Flushing Creek and the inner bay down to and along the East River shoreline in Astoria, a grand total of 43,000 feet, containing pipe with diameters ranging from 20 to 40 feet.

The scale of either plan failed to impress Tim Eaton of Queens College, whose judgment on the three-tunnel loop was that it would always be flooded. He otherwise concluded that the billions of dollars said to be in play could be better spent.

The next and final meeting of the Flushing Bay & Creek stakeholders is on Wednesday, June 6 at 6:30 p.m., at a site to be determined.¦