
This is awesome: A group of people opposed to Jets Stadium on the West Side, including a state assemblyman, dug deep into the Jets Stadium proposal's Envirnomental Impact Statement to find that sewage might be dumped into the river with the stadium's development. The NY Times reports, "Deep in its 4,300 pages the statement says that the sewage flow from the West Side to the North River Wastewater Treatment Plant] would climb to 8.6 million gallons a day by the time of the project's expected completion in 2025, from 1.1 million gallons now." Note to everyone: It pays to read those boring, hefty tomes. The article also mentions how EIS says notes there are number of envionmental issues that could be caused by the presence of a stadium, like traffic, noise (nearby buildings would need special insulation - Mayor Bloomberg's noise codes take that!) and not to mention the need for new schools, since there aren't any in the immediate area, so a number of stadium opponents (hello, Cablevision) and environmental groups are now poring through the document carefully. While the City Planning deputy director Sandy Hornick says, "I don't think there's any place in the United States where you could do a development of this magnitude with as few environmental issues as we're facing," there are some phrasesGothamist feels are important to heed: "Sewage backup" and "untreated sewage being pumped into the Hudson."
Read the Hudson Yards Environmental Impact Statement yourself. And Gothamist's coverage of the possible Jets Stadium in Manhattan.




This project stinks in many ways! We need to improve the quality of life, not just pack zillions of more megastructures into Manhattan.
Is there going to be some sort of divine payoff included in the costs in order to provide the heavenly sunlight that shines only on the new architecture?
I hope this project comes through... the bashing is silly. its good for the city, jobs and its not coming out of the city budget
This is a late comment, but: While the article does point out many of the issues, for better or worse, of the proposed development, a few things should be pointed out: (1) the North River plant in question is running at approximately 40 mgd less than its maximum dry-weather capacity, so an average daily increase of 7 or 8 mgd shouldn't effect things; and (2) the City's treatment plants are actually designed to discharge into the surrounding waters during wet-weather events (millions of gallons of extra flow is contained in an interceptor, and when that overflows the additional excess is discharged into the water bodies surrounding the City), so that really isn't unusual news – more like an unpleasant fact that never really gets talked about, i.e., something similar probably happened when it rained last Friday. Interesting fact: the City is spending billions right now to develop enormous holding tanks to reduce such sewer overflows at a number of its treatment plants.
It might be a good idea for the writer to actually read the "boring, hefty tome" of the EIS because she (and the NYTimes) got it wrong. Look in Chapter 16, on page 16-15 of the EIS, there's a handy little table which shows the stadium (multi use facility) generates 425,000 gallons per day (when its in operation) versus the total of 7,336,600 gallons per day in the projected development. So why does the stadium get the blame? Because of lazy reporting and an ill-placed bias against a project that will bring jobs and economic development to the city.