Forum Will Address Alley Creek Water Treatment Plans

DOUGLASTON, QUEENS -- Alley Creek isn't as clean as most New Yorkers think it is.

At least, that's what Tom McGlinchey and his colleagues at the Alley Pond Environmental Center seem to think. The creek in Douglaston has an "overflow point" near Northern Boulevard, meaning when the city's sewers are flooded with more rainwater than they can handle, that's where excess stormwater and raw sewage spew out to relieve pressure.

Thus, the creek still suffers from an ongoing sewage problem and most people still don't know about, McGlinchey, an Alley Pond Environmental Center board member, told Patch.

If locals don't know about the problem, naturally they don't know about the Department of Environmental Protection's plan to fix it, which involves disinfecting the sewage with chlorine that environmental advocates fear could do serious damage to the pond's waters if it escaped with the sewage overflow.

That's where next month's meeting comes in. The APEC will host a clean water symposium on March 1 to address the clean water concerns that sewage overflow poses to Alley Creek and dissect potential risks of the city's plan to treat it.

"The intent is to make sure the community is aware that there is an ongoing problem and the city is working to solve that problem," McGlinchey said. "The city has posed one set of solutions, and advocates are asking the city revisit that plan and perhaps come up with something better."

He is referring to the Combined Sewer Overflow Long Term Control plan, which the DEP quietly passed last March to deal with increasing sewage output at various overflow points in the city. The goal is to make NYC waters safe to swim in.

Among plans set forth in the project was one for Alley Creek, which involved seasonally disinfecting the sewage water by chlorinating and then dechlorinating it. The $12 million plan would kill bacteria and remove any extra chlorine along the way, the DEP said. The plan would also allots another $139 million to a combined sewage overflow storage facility and other sewer improvements.

But environmental advocates have questions - and concerns - about how the first part will work and what safeguards will exist to make sure the bleach treating the sewage overflow doesn't seep into the water with it.

"The way they’re talking about it now, the sewage would be dechlorinated before it shoots out in the bay, but that’s not 100 percent certain," McGlinchey said. "Bleach sewage could shoot out into the bay."

He and other environmental advocates fear excess chlorine could spill into the creek, should an accident happen. The result could kill off fish and grasses within the estuary, with the offset in balance eventually causing it to become polluted again, McGlinchey said.

"The difficulty, or the risk, is that the bleaching process is untested," he said. "This is a process that hasn’t been examined locally."

Experts will discuss the risks to that solution and throw out some alternative ideas at APEC's clean water symposium. The discussion will take place in Lecture Hall S111 of Queensborough Community College at 225-05 56th Ave. from 7 to 9 p.m. on March 1. Moderators include QBCC Biological Sciences and Geology professor Eugene Harris and Queens College School of Earth and Environmental Sciences chairman Greg O'Mullan.

Call APEC at 71-229-4000 or RSVP online to attend the forum, which will also include presentations from the NYC S.W.I.M Coalition and the Department of Environmental Conservation.

Lead photo by Alexander Nguyen/Patch.