Council Member Gennaro Discusses Stormwater Management Legislation

Recognizing Councilmember Gennaro, followed by Hanif.

Thank you, Madam Majority Leader.

Uh happy Earth Week, everyone.

I want to talk about intro 1130, and that's uh about um uh storm sewers.

This is a follow-up to local law five of 2008, which is the city that which I authored, which is the city's first um comprehensive stormwater management plan.

Uh that plan we had sewer we we had storm sewer problems back then, and the idea of that uh of that plan was to emphasize bioretention and green roofs and uh tree pit design and rain gardens and blue belts just to sort of maximize like the natural way to get rid of stormwater.

Um unfortunately we're uh at a time now uh where that is not going to get it done.

Uh so we're gonna do now that which we didn't do then, which is actually increase the capacity of the sewers.

Uh currently the sewers are are built to absorb about one point seven 1.75 inches of rain per hour, which is which was a pretty good standard uh once upon a time.

That accounts for a five-year storm, uh, but now five year storms happen five times a year.

Um so uh last year we passed local law 124, the inland rainfall risk area maps to make sure that we highlighted that that uh um DEP was gonna highlight where all the hot spots are in terms of flooding.

Uh and then this plan, which will uh which will uh play out over 10 years just to get the plan together, um, is gonna focus on those uh hot spots, you know, uh make those priorities, uh, figure out what kind of stormwater capacity we can actually put under the street, figure out how to pay for it, uh, and then it's gonna play out over decades to actually get it in place because we have more than 7,000 miles of um uh storm sewer main.

So uh that uh uh storm sewer main.

So buckle up.

It's gonna be a long ride, but it's gonna be a good one.

At the end of the day, we're gonna have a more sustainable, flood-free city.

Thank you very much.