James Estrin / The New York Times
As far as the eye could see, a stream on Staten Island took on a greenish hue. It was an enlightening “discharge test”.
The bright emerald hue in the waterway at Staten Island’s Clove Lakes Park helped confirm long-held suspicions about what might be leaking from the toilets.
On Wednesday, a stream in a park on Staten Island, New York, turned green. Very, very greensays .
Visitors to Clove Lakes Park compared it to the Chicago River on St. Patrick’s Day when a bright green dye dyes the watercourse to mark the holiday. But this It was no celebration..
The green hue did not occur by chance: it was caused by the New York City Department of Environmental Protection, which decided to do what is designated as a “discharge test”
Agency officials had placed green dye in the park toilets to check if the user waste of the sanitary facilities were flow into the stream — as had long been suspected.
The test result was unequivocal. As far as the eye could see, the stream had turned green, with the dye coloring the sewers.
“They are allow feces into our public lakes and ponds“, he told the New York newspaper Estefania Brambila32, who works for non-profit organizations and was walking her dogs in the park when she came across the emerald brook. “I thought it was already being resolved, but it clearly isn’t. This is horrible“.
Jennyfer Gomez27 years old, postgraduate student who regularly runs in the park, showed himself worried about the ducks and turtles who make waterways their home.
A extent of contamination is still unclearbut one thing is certain: the sewers are infiltrate at least one stream and in a lake in Clove Lakes Park, which borders the neighborhoods of Sunnyside and Westerleigh, among others, and is close to the Staten Island Zoo. According to neighbors who live in the area, the situation has been going on for years.
Most of Staten Island processes its wastewater and stormwater separately. Much of New York City has what is called combined sewer systemin which rainwater and sanitary sewage use the same pipes which then flow to wastewater treatment plants.
On Staten Island, while stormwater runoff flows into wetlands or waterways, only sanitary sewers they end up in treatment plants, or are collected from septic tanks — or, at least, it’s supposed to work that way.
Estefania Brambila does not hide her indignation that Staten Island does not receive enough attention or resources from the city. “I would like the city to invest resources as much as it invests in Central Park and throughout all other neighborhoods.”
“When it’s wetter in the summer, you can see foamy, fecal, yellow, brown, disgusting debris. It’s disgusting, it’s disgusting and it smells bad“, says the New Yorker.
