South Ozone Park residents describe ‘horror movie’ sewage flood at Council hearing
/
Councilmembers Adrienne Adams, Costa Constantinides and Donovan Richards sought answers from the Department of Environmental Protection after a sewage flood damaged homes in South Ozone Park. Photo courtesy of Richards via Twitter.
By Victoria Merlino
Some lost prized possessions, like clothes, toys and furniture. Others said they waded through knee-deep muck to try to stem the tide of raw sewage. One man questioned how he would ever get the stench of human waste out of his basement, where the wastewater rose more than four feet.
Inside the City Council chambers on Wednesday, South Ozone Park homeowners took turns describing the impact of the sewer backup that flooded dozens of basements during Thanksgiving weekend.
The wastewater affected about 80 houses in the early morning hours of Nov. 30, destroyed belongings and filling home with a lingering odor.
“It was almost like I was in a horror movie,” said Kari White, president of the 149 Street South Ozone Park Civic Association. White described moving from house to house in his neighborhood as wastewater filled neighbors’ basements. He said he refused to even enter one house because it was the stench was so foul.
Resident Leron Harmon said he had four and a half feet of sewage in his basement, which is where he stored most of his clothes, his son’s toys and many other important possessions. The smell of human waste permeated the house, and Harmon had to throw out living room furniture and mattresses, he said.
“I live in a very good neighborhood. Hardworking people. We deserve better than this,” he said.
Bena Balgobin, another resident affected by the flooding, spoke of only eating one meal a day as she tries to contend with costs from the flooding.
“I don’t know how we’re going to rebuild,” she said.
South Ozone Park Councilmember Adrienne Adams and Councilmember Costa Constantinides, chair of the Committee on Environmental Protection, sought answers from Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Vincent Sapienza.
“We have to do better than this,” said Constantinides. “People lost treasured memories, while they sludged through sewage and exposed themselves to harmful toxins.”
“At a time when families should be excited to decorate for the Christmas holiday, my constituents are enduring the stress of not knowing when they will be back in their homes,” Adams said.
Sapienza said that the severe sewage backup is not a normal occurrence.
“These types of large-scale backups of sewage are extremely rare,” he said. However, he said that DEP and other city agencies were taking multiple steps to try and address issues with residents, such as paying for professional cleaning services, conducting air quality tests and reimbursing to residents.
Sapienza said that DEP tries to open manhole covers and check for blockages before backups occur. DEP could have been proactive in alerting 311 about what they were doing to solve the matter as sewage was spilling in residents’ homes, so that residents would have had more information when they called in a panic, he said.
Councilmembers asked why DEP initially blamed the sewer blockage on residents dumping cooking grease down the drain after the Thanksgiving community, an argument that angered residents and that officials later backtracked on.
“There’s this perception that people in Southeast Queens eat fried food all day,” Southeast Queens Councilmember Donovan Richards said. “Grease is used in all communities.”
Sapienza said that the “vast majority” of sewer blockages are caused by cooking grease, and that DEP sends out a truck designed to deal with grease in the sewers in response to any call about a sewer blockage.
“Until we actually get into the pipe and see what it is, we don’t know,” he said, adding that it was difficult to access the clogged pipe, located near 150th Street, because it was under a bridge support. The DEP is evaluating whether it should build a new section of sewer around the support.
