REMARKS
Council Member Gennaro's opening remarks on sewer backup and flood risk mapping bills
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4 min
Council Member James F. Gennaro opens the meeting of the Committee on Environmental Protection, Resiliency, and Waterfronts by introducing two bills up for vote: one addressing sewer backups and another creating a flood risk area map. He explains the background and importance of these bills, acknowledges staff contributions, and recognizes other council members present.
- Proposed Intro 814-A aims to mitigate sewer backups by requiring DEP to update its prevention plan every 5 years and share investigation results with homeowners.
- Proposed Intro 815-A mandates DEP to create and regularly update a flood risk map for both coastal and pluvial flooding, considering sea level rise projections.
- The flood risk map will be used in conjunction with other proposed legislation to regulate subgrade and ground floor ADUs in flood-prone areas.
James F. Gennaro
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Thank you, sergeant.
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Good morning.
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I'm council member Jim Gennaro, chair of the Committee on Environmental Protection, resiliency, and waterfronts.
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Today, we will vote on 2 bills that I sponsored, proposed intro 814a in relation to addressing sewer backups and proposed intro 815a in relation to creation of a flood area a flood risk area map for both for both coastal flooding and pluvial flooding.
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Pluvial full flooding means caused by rainfall.
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This committee first considered these bills on April 26th this year.
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Sewer backups occur when heavy rainfall or physical blockages prevent normal conveyance of storm water or wastewater through the sewer system.
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This can result in raw sewage flowing into homes leading to costly damages and potentially facilitating the spread of disease.
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Although no New Yorker should have to endure sewer backups, DEP received approximately 12,000 complaints of sewer sewer backups in f y 23.
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The department regularly conducts field investigations in response to these complaints, but the outcome of of the investigations may not always be shared with the impacted residents.
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We don't like that.
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Proposed intro 814 a would help to mitigate, sewer backups by requiring DEP to regularly update its plan to address such backups and to share the results of a sewer backup field investigations with the homeowners.
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The bill would require that DEP update its plan to present to prevent sewer backups every 5 years and identify areas, where sewer backups cause significant damages.
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Additionally, the bill would require DEP to alert impacted residents when it when it determines that a sewer backup was not caused by a condition in the city owned sewer system and therefore may have originated may have originated from some other source.
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Many neighborhoods across the city have, flooding from rainfall, coastal storm surge, and high tide.
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These factors often co occur to create compounding damages.
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In the most extreme cases, such flooding causes severe damage to life and property.
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When Hurricane Sandy struck in 2012, it flooded 17% of the city's land mass causing an estimated 19,000,000,000 in damages and resulting in the deaths of 52 New Yorkers.
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And when hurricane Ida inundated the city with 9 inches of rain in 2021, it caused pluvial flooding that killed at least 10 New Yorkers, living in unregulated basement apartments with inadequate flood protection.
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Proposed intro 815 a would require DEP to adopt a flood area risk map for both pluvial and coastal flooding.
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The department would be required to update the map by 2028 and within 1 year of the Federal Emergency Management Agency publishing new flood insurance rate maps.
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The flood area risk map would also consider the impacts of sea level rise as projected by the New York City panel on climate change.
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Proposed introductions, 1127a and 1128a, which were referred to the committee on housing and buildings and will be voting on and will be voted on at today's stated meeting, would use the flood risk map created by this bill to prohibit subgrade and ground floor, ADUs in certain flood prone neighborhoods.
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I would I would like to thank the committee staff, legislative councils, Austin Malone and Natasha Bynum.
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We welcome Natasha.
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This is her first hearing.
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Good for Natasha.
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I don't know what the bang in the gavel does, but it just seemed celebratory.
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And so we've got 2 committee councils, policy analyst Ricky Chawla and Andrew Born, financial analyst, Tanvir Singh and my legislative director, Josh Gachette.
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I want to thank them for all their hard work on these two bills.
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First, I would like to recognize the council members who have joined us.
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We're joined by council members Holden, Salamanca, Ressler, Aviles, Mamarano, and Nurse.
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Thank you very much for being with us and at this vote.
