The Truth About CSO

By: Kyah Harris

New York's Smelly Systems

Pollution. The first thing that comes to mind is car smoke, fumes from cigarettes potato chip bags on the ground. Now what comes to mind when you hear the most polluted place in the United States of America? The only place that should come to mind is the Gowanus Canal. On October 8th a group of brave 8th graders traveled to the Gowanus Canal. When they got there, eyewitness Nia White said, “It's looks as if it’s infested with germs.” Christine Petro’s, an expert on the Gowanus canal first impression was, “Whoa, this is dirty!” If you’re just coming to the area of Red Hook and Gowanus area the smell is nearly deadly especially in the summer time. What you’re probably smelling is raw sewage from New York City’s Combined Overflow Sewage System.

When Its Rains It Pours

Combined Sewage Overflow, also known as CSO is discharge from a sewer system caused by storm water runoff. According to the dictionary Runoff is water draining off any type of structure building and or land. Combined sewer systems are sewers that are designed to collect rainwater runoff, sewage, and waste that's in the water in the same pipe. Combined sewer systems transport all of water to a sewage plant, where it is treated and then discharged to a water body. (water.epa.gov) According to the diagram above The sewer systems often overflows when heavy rain from hurricanes rainstorms, etc  Each year CSO sites will pour 377 million gallons of raw sewage into the Canal (Tech and Science). This means that the waste water from the Gowanus canal goes into the east river and leads to the place we all adore in the sometime yup that's right the warm beach water. Can you imagine swimming next to gooey dark brownish green water. Build it  green, a retail store close to the canal stated, “The sewage regular overflows. And there's more than an inch of rain, we regularly have flooding on the streets’. The streets regularly flooding is not at all good because, imagine going to work or school in a pool of waste water? Not so great, right?

Pros and Cons

CSO’s have positive and negatives. One negative effect is when the CSO system malfunctions. For example during a hurricane, the CSO system fails and brown water with fecal matter can come up in your toilets and out of your faucets. This reporter was closing her bathroom window when she heard from the pipes from upstairs a little girl yell out, “Mommy the water is brown!!” Local residents are directly affected in the Gowanus and Red Hook area because the dirty polluted water from the Gowanus Canal us entering our water was making unsafe for the residents to use the water. One positive effect is that it prevents flooding on the streets when it rains. For example on a regular rainy day there are no floods this reporter’s father stated that “When it's raining the CSO system can handle the few drops that comes down but when a storm hits it's just too much water rushing to the same place at the same time and because of that the system fails...that's why when it's just a little shower nothing happens instead of the ground getting wet.” This benefits the community because in the fall it's a lot of rain and there wouldn't be flooded everywhere. Even though this system helps the community by not flooding the streets, the water is redirected to the Gowanus Canal. The polluted water from the Gowanus Canal then goes to East river Then is travels to the Atlantic ocean.  Can you imagine going to Coney Island and your poop is floating right next to you.

THE HELP

This sewage system is very, very old. Sometimes it doesn't work properly and that's when people's drains start flooding with weird colored water. A lot of people also aren't happy that the extra water is being dumped into waterways like the Gowanus Canal. Many people would like to know what could they do to stop or help with the issue. Well, according to The Atlantic’s “Ask City Lab”, people can prevent these flooding by not bathing or showering. They also suggest that you do not flush your toilets or do laundry during a storm. Stop/don’t litter, don’t pour stuff like liquid cleaning supplies beauty products, medicine, or paint down the drain. If you do those things above you will stop those chemical from entering the water supply.