How Extreme Flooding Of This Bronx Highway Could Have Been Avoided

When remnants of Hurricane Ida swept into New York City, it flooded parts of the Major Deegan Expressway, an 8.5-mile arterial roadway in the west Bronx.

Most of the flooding happened in the Kingsbridge and Van Cortlandt sections of the Bronx, stunning residents who could not recall another time this stretch of Interstate 87 was severely inundated with upwards of five feet of water. In interviews with WNYC/Gothamist the day after the storm, many described the dozens of abandoned vehicles left behind the roadway as a result of flooding as apocalyptic.

Environmental advocates in the Bronx said this distress could have been avoided. For years, they’ve harangued the city and state to proceed with a multi-purpose infrastructure project called Tibbetts Brook Daylighting. It would redirect billions of gallons of water from the city’s stressed sewer system into the Harlem River annually through an environmentally friendly man-made waterway.

But a series of delays has hampered the roughly $87 million project, leaving the Major Deegan Expressway vulnerable to flooding. Those holdups are compounded by stalled talks between the city and the railway company CSX Transportation, which owns a strip of property vital to the project.

A coalition of environmental advocacy groups is now hoping the recent storms can incentivize the city to advance the plan.

“For the first 20 years or so, it was just us advocates screaming like this needs to get done. And none of the government agencies would listen to us,” said Christina Taylor, director of programs and operations for the Van Cortlandt Park Alliance, an advocacy group that’s been pressing the city to advance the multi-agency effort. “It was frustrating. We would sit here and explain, and the government agencies—we couldn’t tell [if] they just didn't get it or they just didn't care. They just couldn't make it a priority.”

The rendering on the right by Mary Miss with Aaron Asis and Julia Lindgren shows how the abandoned CSX rail line in the north Bronx retrofitted to daylight Tibbetts Brook. The photo on the left shows the property's current state

The Tibbetts Brook Daylighting project takes its name after a brook that begins in Westchester County. Its waters wend from Yonkers and into a lake at the southern tip of Van Cortlandt Park. On a typical day, 5 million gallons of water flow into the lake, disappearing into a 100-year-old drain that is mixed with domestic wastewater flowing into the sewer system underneath Broadway. The lake also functions as a depository for drains at high points of the Deegan and nearby Henry Hudson, Saw Mill River, and Mosholu parkways.

When Ida’s clouds swept over New York City, they produced a total of 7 inches of rain in 24 hours. The torrent overloaded the city’s drainage system, city officials initially said.

“Rainfall rates were really extraordinary and far exceeded the capacity of the system,” Vincent Sapienza, commissioner of the city Department of Environmental Protection (DEP), said at a September 2nd conference the day after the storm. “Anything over two inches an hour, we’re going to have trouble with.”

But it also overloaded the lake. As rain poured down, at one point reaching a peak of 3 inches per hour as estimated by the National Weather Service, the lake began to swell.

“All the water that doesn't get absorbed in the land ends up in here, including every single highway that cuts through this park,” Karen Argenti, a member of Bronx Council for Environmental Quality, said.

Calamity struck in part because the lake’s drain was already blocked by tree sticks and debris ahead of the storm, according to Taylor. After the lake reached capacity, water rushed toward some low-lying wetlands and the nearby Putnam Greenway, named after a decommissioned rail line the path sits atop of at the southern tip of the park.

The floodwater, as it typically does during rainstorms, flowed into a property adjacent to the Deegan near Exit 10 by West 230th Street, considered a low point in the neighborhood. In a typical rainstorm, water does pour into the highway but only a few inches at best.

This time, the volume rose high enough to also seep into the southbound lane of the highway, trickling into the northbound lanes. The combination of an overloaded sewer system and water coming from the lake overpowered the Major Deegan Expressway, leading to backups and eventual closures.

While most drivers were redirected off the roadway, others abandoned their vehicles on the inundated expressway, leaving them to stew in waters at least three feet high. Dozens of vehicles, including freight trucks owned by Amazon and UPS, were abandoned.

Some remain unclaimed. Two weeks after the flooding, Taylor said some of the vehicles still sat inside a lot inside Van Cortlandt Park where they had been towed. Inside Van Cortlandt Park, the overflowed lake damaged the cross country path and pool. Taylor said the group is now having a hard time trying to manage the upkeep.

“We’ve seen damage from Sandy, after Irene,” Taylor said. “It was devastating to see, but this was definitely the worst.”

The Tibbetts Brook Daylighting would pump the majority of any rainwater away from the drain and into a man-made waterway called the Old Putnam railroad bed, essentially “daylighting” or exposing the water to ground level. The multi-purpose project would reduce flooding that could impact local businesses and the park’s infrastructure while preventing rainwater from mixing with sewage.

Water would flow from the canal and to a new pipe that would go back underground, bypassing existing Metro-North tracks on 225th Street and into the Harlem River. It would also prevent 2 billion gallons of water every year from entering the overburdened system--that winds up at a plant on Wards Island to be treated before entering the East River.

Tibbetts Brook Daylighting is part of the DEP’s Long Term Control Plan, a capital project meant to reduce the amount of untreated sewage discharge, or combined sewer overflow (CSO), that flows into the Harlem River in accordance with a decades-old federal mandate to depollute the waterway.

That work is underway in parts of the city, but Tibbetts Brook has not been a priority, according to advocates, even though nearly a third of the Broadway sewer’s combined sewer overflow, or 400 million gallons, originates from there yearly. The city acknowledges the surrounding neighborhoods are prone to flooding, as identified on the NYC Flood Hazard Mapper. But the project was not included in the DEP’s capital plan until two years ago despite demands by advocates to be included for more than 20 years.

“It’s like our High Line, but it’s on ground level,” Karen Argenti, a member of the Bronx Council for Environmental Quality, said. “It's going to help not only just for the combined sewer, but it's going to help with sustainability and resiliency.”

A similar project has been completed in Yonkers, daylighting water from the Saw Mill River that had tormented the city’s southern sections.

“It helped mitigate flooding and it created these median strips of parks that are naturalistic and quite beautiful,” said Olivia Georgia, executive director of City as a Living Laboratory, which promotes green infrastructure projects through the arts.

The group has helped the Van Cortlandt Park Alliance promote the environmental benefits of the daylighting project through a campaign called “Rescuing Tibbetts Brook.”

While Tibbetts Brook Daylighting would alleviate some pressure, another aspect of the project involves the creation of an eco-friendly pedestrian and bike greenway running alongside the canal and to the South Bronx.

“It's really challenging with anything with the city trying to get them to move forward. It took us a long time to convince the DEP that this was a priority. That this was how they were going to reduce the CSOs. They didn't believe us for years,” Taylor said.

But the project hinges upon a strip of land owned by CSX Transportation, a multibillion dollar rail company. The land, stretching about a mile between Van Cortlandt Park South and 230th Street, would be the site of the canal and greenway. News reports suggest that CSX does not appear to use the property, befuddling environmental advocates and elected officials such as U.S. Senator Charles Schumer and Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. on why the project hasn’t moved forward.

The asking price for the property has reportedly increased over the years, with an initial bid of $2 million. Estimates now suggest the current asking price is $11 million. The DEP, whose adopted budget stands at $1.4 billion, would have to pay for the property. Even as talks have gone as far back as a decade, a deal is nowhere in sight. In a statement, Sheriee S. Bowman, a spokesperson for CSX, characterized the deal as a “potential sale.”

“We maintain our commitment to seeing if a mutually beneficial transaction can be agreed upon,” Bowman wrote.

A statement from the DEP confirmed as much. It’s estimated that the first phase of the Tibbetts Brook Daylighting project could begin in 2024.

Taylor said she always knew flooding would be a constant threat until the daylighting project would be completed. She just didn’t think flooding would be that big of a problem.

“Originally, we were told that these were 100-year-storms,” Taylor said. “Now, it looks like they’re happening every year.”

Editor's Note: An earlier draft misstated Christina Taylor's current position.