Brooklyn Botanic Garden offers model to tackle city’s sewage problem
Amidst the emerging cherry blossoms, Brooklyn Botanic Garden revealed an ambitious conservation project on Tuesday that would reduce its freshwater consumption and its stormwater runoff by millions of gallons (each) per year. Its proponents say it’s a model that can take pressure off of the city’s overburdened sewage system.
The $13 million project, which is the first of its kind in North America, uses underground pipes to recirculate rainwater throughout the garden’s 52-acre watershed, reducing its water consumption by about 96 percent — from 22 million gallons to just 900,000 gallons per year.
But for Scot Medbury, president of BBG, the greater environmental impact falls on their reduction of stormwater runoff, which will be cut from 8 million gallons to 2.5 million gallons per year using state-of-the-art satellite technology.
In heavy rains, stormwater runoff – or rain that flows into city sewer systems – can overwhelm the city’s waste treatment plants, forcing them to dump untreated sewage into New York’s waterways. When this happens, it’s known as combined-sewer-overflow — CSO.