Wet Weather Discharge Point
January 1st, 2013
As we learned last January:
Most of New York's sewers are combined sewers, meaning that stormwater runoff and sanitary sewage are collected together in a single pipe. When there is a heavy rain, the volume in the combined sewers can exceed the capacity of the wastewater treatment plants. To prevent a backup of sewage into the system, the excess overflows directly into various waterways around the city at these discharge points.
This outfall is located, appropriately enough, on Flushing Bay
. You can see a boom placed on the water to capture discharged floatables
, which primarily consist of street litter that has washed into the sewer system.