New york sewage system history

Baltimore Sun. Sweeping in Times Square during the s. February 01, Wire Photo. End of Strike. The Wire. Getty Images. A view of Fresh Kills landfill on Staten Island, circa The dump ground closed in Solid waste loaded onto barges destined for Fresh Kills.

Photo by Chester Higgins. Barges transport waste to Fresh Kills in Docks at Fresh Kills. Fresh Kills, A pile at Fresh Kills. Steam rises as a compactor rolls over freshly dumped garbage at Fresh Kills Landfill, , photo by Michael Falco. Mierle Laderman Ukeles. Touch Sanitation, — The Social Mirror, This network consists of over 7, miles of sewer pipes, , catch basins, and 95 wastewater pumping stations.

Stormwater is the rain and melting snow that falls on our rooftops, streets, and sidewalks. Stormwater makes its way into our sewer system through storm drains, or catch basins, located outside of our homes and businesses, usually somewhere along the street.

New York City has two types of sewer systems and they are defined by how they handle wastewater and stormwater:. By , sewers served virtually all the developed sections of the city, and even tenement houses began offering private flush toilets. Today, sanitary sewers snake their way beneath all but a handful of outlying streets, and storm sewers crisscross just about every neighborhood.

Each day, the city's 14 sewage treatment plants handle 1. Whenever you flush or turn on a faucet, the wastewater flows through pipes that lead to sewer pipes, called mains, in the street. Sewer mains are typically three to five feet in diameter. Runoff from rainstorms and all the stuff that collects in the gutter joins it in combined mains. The sewage and runoff flow into a series of progressively larger pipes until they reach the wastewater treatment plant.

The system relies almost entirely on gravity to keep the waste moving, although pumps help where the topography is difficult. For decades, the waste simply went from the pipes out into the waterways surrounding the city.

Most treatment plants in the city were not built until after World War II, and the last of these, the North River plant in West Harlem and the Red Hook plant in Brooklyn, were not completed until the late s. Ending that sewage flow played a big role in the river's rebirth. Now the sewage goes to a plant for several stages of treatment. In the first stage, known as primary treatment, the water flows through filters and then collects in pools, where solids settle to the bottom so they can be removed.

Until , the city dumped about five million tons a year of these solids, known as sludge, in the ocean. It now dehydrates the sludge at special de-watering facilities that reduce its volume dramatically. The sludge is then either carted to dumps out of state or processed into materials that can be used for landfill cover.

In the secondary treatment stage, the wastewater is sent to large tanks where bacteria consume nutrients and organic materials.

After the bacteria do their job and die a natural death, they are allowed to settle out of the water in tanks and then the cleaned water is released. One of the byproducts of the bacteria processing the waste is nitrogen, which mostly comes from the breakdown of ammonia in the sewage. That is what happens when the system operates properly, but all too often it does not.

Whenever there is a significant rainfall, sewer pipes overflow, and trash and chemicals pour directly into rivers and bays. Normally, all the waste in a combined system - toilets, sinks and runoff -- flows into sewage treatment plants. But when it rains heavily, all the the pipes tend to become overwhelmed and spill their contents. Today, the system has a reservoir capacity of The largest of those reservoirs is the Pepacton, at Along the way to the city, the water is disinfected with ultraviolet light, tested for purity at 1, different stations, and treated with chlorine; for every million parts of water, one part of fluoride is added.

A security force of about officers, once called the Aqueduct Police and now known as the DEP Police, protects the water supply. His website is LeanderAlphabet.