The Conservation Conversation: Sewers vs. No Sewers (Part I)

One of the truly great success stories in the annals of public health and environmental protection has been America’s establishment of modern sewage treatment systems in cities and town, large and small, across the length and breadth of the country. The improvement in the quality of our streams, rivers, lakes and harbors has been dramatic. 

Ironically, this success has bypassed the Douglaston peninsula, one of the wealthiest enclaves in the nation’s largest city. There are no sewers in Douglaston Manor and that's how most of the residents want it - notwithstanding that sewage often runs in the streets like in a third world country.

Managing our bodily wastes has presented a challenge since humans first started to congregate in permanent settlements. The mismanagement of sewage is responsible for the spread of some of the worst diseases that have afflicted humanity, notably cholera, typhoid and yellow fever.

In 1832, nearly 2 percent of New York City’s population died of cholera in one six-week period. To appreciate the impact of such an epidemic, imagine the panic if more than 150,000 present-day New Yorkers were to die of some dread disease in a month and a half. 

For most of human history, “sewage treatment” consisted of using either a hole in the ground to receive the wastes or letting the currents of a handy river or the ocean carry them away. During the past 200 years, more elaborate holes-in-the-ground have been developed known as cess pools and septic systems. These are still in wide use today, particularly in less densely settled areas, and can be very effective if located, built and maintained properly. 

This is the system that prevails in most of Douglaston north of the Long Island Railroad, though not all of these in-ground systems work as well as they should.  That’s why not infrequently you will see sewage seeps in various places, particularly along Shore Road.

Modern sewage treatment began in densely populated urban areas in the middle of the 19th century. At first, underground pipes or trenches simply carried sewage away from buildings and dumped it into a nearby river or other water body. By the early 20th century, relatively simple plants were being built to provide “primary” treatment: in large tanks the solids are allowed to settle out for later disposal, while oil and grease, which float on top of the wastewater, are skimmed off for disposal. The cleaner water is then discharged to the river. 

After passage in 1972 of the federal Clean Water Act, "secondary" treatment was generally required nationwide for all sewage systems. This level of treatment uses biological processes to further break down the sewage and purify the wastewater.  Compulsory secondary treatment has yielded exceptional improvements in water quality and public health. 

Most of New York City is served by more than 6,000 miles of sewer pipes that carry our wastes to 14 huge treatment plants located throughout the five boroughs. Sewage flows by gravity to low points, where it is pumped back up to higher areas to resume its gravity flow to the treatment plant.

In this manner, sewage from most of Douglaston and Little Neck reaches the Tallman Island treatment plant in Whitestone, which is capable of handling 80 million gallons a day (MGD). The City’s largest plant - with a capacity of 310 MGD - is on Newtown Creek on the Queens/Brooklyn border. It is visible west of the Kozciusko Bridge, featuring eight futuristic, stainless steel, egg-shaped structures illuminated at night in blue light.

Douglaston Manor is one of the very few places in the city not served by sewers.  For decades, residents have fiercely resisted occasional proposals to extend the system throughout the peninsula north of the railroad. They believe, correctly, that the absence of sewers ensures no more apartment buildings will ever be built there. Historically this was a persuasive argument, although it lost much of its weight once citywide zoning was enacted in the early 1960s. 

The Manor is zoned for single-family dwellings and the likelihood of that changing over the objections of this well-organized and influential community is very low.  Moreover, most of the area is now a historic district, further decreasing the chance of any apartment building ever being approved. In any event, sewering the very hilly community would be extraordinarily expensive, so it is unlikely the city will be proposing it again in the foreseeable future.

By contrast, the Doug-Bay community west of P.S. 98, developed in the late 1960s, was constructed with sewers, but at first the pipes didn't connect into a main sewer line anywhere. Instead, the sewage was collected in a big tank that had to be emptied frequently by pumping into a truck. 

In the mid-1970s, the city planned to install a large sewer pipe from Doug-Bay to the main sewer line under Northern Boulevard. The new pipe was to head south from Doug-Bay, crossing directly through the wetlands on either side of the LIRR.

Just a few years earlier, legal protection for tidal wetlands had been a hard-won fight for conservationists, so Udalls Cove Preservation Committee vigorously opposed this plan. So did many Douglaston residents, not least because the planned pipe would have been large enough to serve all of Douglaston, not just Doug-Bay. It was, therefore, seen as a stalking horse for the eventual sewering of the Manor. UCPC and other local groups sued to stop the plan. Although we lost the legal battle, the city sensibly changed the plan anyhow. Doug-Bay wastes are now pumped up to an existing sewer main in Douglaston Parkway south of the LIRR.

Next time: the Sewer to Nowhere.