The wooden hut in the community gardens of northern Manhattan is not just for storing rakes, hoes and shovels.
It also plays a small role in strengthening New York City from the devastating storms that flooded streets and buildings and overloaded sewers.
Rainwater rolls down the corrugated steel roof of the hut into white pipes that connect to large plastic tanks.Setup installed last year Mobilization to change the community garden Upper Manhattan captures up to 2,000 gallons of rainwater spills annually.
“The water was running away from us,” said Adem Clemmons, 41, a financial tech engineer who now sprinkles rainwater captured by tomatoes, pumpkins, peppers and rosemary in his garden plots.
The New York network of more than 550 community gardens is a haven for cramped apartment residents, providing space for growing fresh vegetables and absorbing the sun and fresh air. Increasingly, they have also become nearby outposts in urban efforts to control floods.
Many have added rain gardens and bioswale (trench with vegetation designed to absorb water) and have “rainwater harvesting systems” such as those found in huts, gazebos, pergolas and even Mobilization for Change. We collected water from the roof of a nearby building that we had prepared.
According to Earthjustice, a non-profit organization of environmental law, an estimated 165 million gallons of rainwater is diverted from city streets and sewers each year for community gardens. 2016 analysis Published on Science magazine..
Supporters like Earthjustice Pushing Especially for a wider recognition of the garden’s ability to divert rainwater after last year’s hurricane Aida was trapped in a basement apartment, a paralyzed street or neighborhood and unleashed a flood that killed a New Yorker poured into a subway station. ..
“Community gardens are part of the solution because they are the permeable spaces of the city, filled with impervious surfaces,” said Mike Resney, assistant director of green spaces. GrowNYCA non-profit organization that has worked with community gardens to build 115 rainwater harvesting systems since 2002.
Still, cities also need impervious surfaces, including affordable housing. Both rent and extreme weather appear to be rising, but government officials, housing and environmental advocates are working on a delicate balance to prioritize both.
“It’s not about stopping development, it’s not about stopping affordable homes,” said Alexis Andyman, senior lawyer at Earth Justice. “Recognize that if you cover all the green spaces with development, you end up with an uninhabitable community.”
Situation of Pleasant Village Community Garden East Harlem presents the tensions that can arise between housing and environmental needs. It has been since 1978, when residents decided to carry rubble away from where the building was burned down. Then they threw a “seed bomb,” or a pack of mud with seeds, said garden president Kim Lim.
More recently, there are 60 members who take care of apples, pears and peach trees, grow vegetables in 40 plots and collect eggs from chicken coops. Members planted native pollen mating plants to absorb the rainwater that runs down the street. During the pandemic, they composted over 10 tons of food waste from the neighborhood.
But this fall, they need to vacate part of a garden on city-owned land supervised by the Department of Housing Conservation and Development to build affordable homes there. “We don’t have to choose an initiative,” Lim said. “Both are needed and should not be in conflict with each other.”
City officials said the new building will include measures to reduce rainwater runoff, as the neighborhood is in desperate need of affordable housing and the area is prone to flooding.
Over 70 groups to protect community gardens from development Petitioned city official Designate green spaces as “important environmental areas” under state law.
The campaign was born out of a Pratt Institute student project.There, the president of Raymond Figueroa Jr. New York City Community Garden Union I am a teacher. In 2019, Figueroa sent half a dozen graduate students to a community garden in the city to conduct interviews and collect data.
“Where the plant floors, compost and trees are high, it has contributed significantly to the garden’s ability to absorb and retain water,” Figueroa said of the expedition’s findings.
City park officials who oversee most of the community gardens through the GreenThumb program acknowledge that the gardens are an important part of New York’s green infrastructure. “These are small but powerful resources in our portfolio of city-wide rainwater management efforts,” said Jennifer Greenfeld, Deputy Park Commissioner for Environment and Planning...
However, not everyone agrees that community gardens need to be labeled as important environmental areas. According to park officials, New York City currently has only one such designation, which covers Jamaica Bay and its tributaries, tidal wetlands, and the entire area of the adjacent area. Community gardens are already protected from development under city rules, these officials claimed, adding that one garden in the GreenThumb program has not been closed in the last five years.
Amy Chester, managing director of the recently released nonprofit Rebuild by Design, said “raining the city” as more frequent and violent storms caused by climate change are expected to hit New York. He said he needed to do more at every level to do so.Report on the importance of “Turn the concrete jungle into a sponge.” It can be reused for more ambitious projects such as placing barrels in the backyard to collect rainwater, watering plants, washing cars, and converting school and office buildings to green roofs. It’s as easy as doing.
“We need to turn every surface of the public territory into a space that absorbs water,” Chester said. “There are many things we can do.”
In Brooklyn’s Crown Heights district Walt L. Chamel Community Garden Rainwater is collected from a nearby brownstone roof and piped to a 1,000 gallon tank. When the tank is full, the overflow is sent to Astilbe plants, violets, and grassy bioswale.
Photographer and garden member Zachary Schulman, 41, said: “This is where water can get into the soil.”
Many gardens are the result of community organization in the 1970s and 1980s, helping residents unite and save abandoned rubble-studded lands, such as what became Pleasant Village in East Harlem. Better and raised food in difficult times. Figueroa said.
This spirit continues today, with many gardeners overcoming the negative environmental impacts of decades of pollution and development, often in low-income areas where residents have limited access to parks. I’m fighting to do. “Community gardeners do not accept environmental injustice and poverty as defining their destiny,” he said.
However, Figueroa emphasized that gardening enthusiasts, many of whom grow food to save money to pay rent, also want more affordable homes. He said there are creative ways to do both, such as developing a garden or rooftop that has a common area that can be used to grow fruits and vegetables.
Some city officials appear to be approaching the need to balance environmental issues with housing needs. Over the last eight years, 36 community gardens under the jurisdiction of the city’s housing agency have been transferred to the GreenThumb program for increased protection from development. An additional 50 community gardens have been added to the subsidized estate.
At the Mobileization for Change Community Garden, rainwater collected from the hut fills the watering can for months. The rainwater harvesting system was installed by Grow NYC at a cost of $ 15,000 and was subsidized. Four barrels are also installed to capture rainwater.
This eased the life of a gardener who had to run a hose across the street to use the hydrant at least a couple of times a month. Now they only need to do it when the rainwater is low.
“It’s convenient,” said supply chain manager Cara Sclafani, 46. “And I know I’m using water that might otherwise be in the sewer.”