Council Lambasts City Response To Queens Sewage Flood Nightmare

NEW YORK — In the basement of Laron Harmon's South Ozone Park home, no space went to waste. It was fully furnished, and Harmon kept all his clothing down there. It's where his daughter, who was back home from college for Thanksgiving, had put her clothes into the washing machine. His 10-year-old son's toys and bicycle were there too.

About 2:30 a.m. on Nov. 30, that basement started filling with waste. Harmon had gotten used to sewage and flooding issues in the three decades he'd lived there, and he cleaned out the sewer trap in his basement twice a year. But he had never seen anything like this.

"By nine o'clock in the morning, I had close to four feet of sewage in my basement," he said.

Harmon was one of four South Ozone Park residents who recounted tales of raw sewage flooding their homes that morning as part of a City Council oversight hearing Wednesday on how city officials dealt with the crisis, which affected an estimated 74 homes.

"I'm one of those families that had to sleep in their car, in my driveway with my children," Harmon said in his testimony.

Nearly two weeks later, residents like Harmon continue to grapple with the aftermath of the sewage that devastated their homes. Harmon said he still hasn't gone back home, where there's no heat or hot water. Instead, he's living in a hotel.

"I've never seen nothing like this before," he said. "This was a disaster."

City Council representatives lambasted the Department of Environmental Protection, which oversees the city's wastewater plants and sewer system, for being slow to respond to the crisis and promoting a narrative that blamed the backup on residents pouring grease down their drains.

"They certainly didn't deserve to be publicly shamed in the midst of a tragedy," City Council Member Adrienne Adams said.

Adams said her constituents' calls to 311, the city's emergency hotline, went unaddressed for hours and that it took the Department of Environmental Protection hours to arrive at the scene and start fixing the issue.

Department of Environmental Protection Commissioner Vincent Sapienza said crews had arrived that morning, hours before Adams claimed, but acknowledged that issues communicating with 311 representatives meant they were slow to realize all the flooding complaints were connected.

Response time was further worsened by the fact that the sewer where the backup happened turned out to be deep underground, underneath the 150th Street overpass, Sapienza said. In other words, there wasn't a simple fix; crews would have to excavate the site while monitoring the bridge infrastructure to make sure it stayed secure during the process.

The agency is still investigating what caused the sewer backup, Sapienza testified Wednesday, while also apologizing for what City Council Member Costa Constantinides referred to as "double victimization" of residents.

A bypass system now carries wastewater around the blocked sewer line and into the Jamaica treatment plant where it normally goes. Workers are still figuring out a permanent fix, which may require building a new sewer line around the current one, Sapienza testified.

Meanwhile, two lanes of South Conduit Avenue, a major east-west thoroughfare running just above JFK Airport, remain closed.

"Incidents of this scale are exceedingly rare," Sapienza said.

The city hired seven contractors to help clean up the mess caused by the sewage flood, and Mayor Bill de Blasio has said the city would pay for repairs to damaged boilers or hot water heaters. At a service center at the Courtyard Marriott hotel at 145–11 North Conduit Ave., residents can get assistance with filling out claim forms within 90 days to get reimbursed for damages.

Under city law, the comptroller's office can't cut those checks until the Department of Environmental Protection finishes its investigation and determines the backup was the city's fault, according to Tyrone Stevens, a spokesperson for the comptroller's office.

That poses an issue for some residents, who testified Wednesday that they don't have enough money to pay upfront for much-needed fixes in their ravaged homes.

"I want to know, where am I going to get the funds to make these repairs?" Bena Balgobin said, explaining that she lives off her pension and social security. "Why should it be our responsibility when it's not our fault that the basement is messed up?"

City Comptroller Scott Stringer, whose office spearheads the reimbursement process, declined to testify at Wednesday's hearing, drawing condemnation from Adams, the City Council representative for South Ozone Park.

"Our office has been working closely with good faith partners to provide clear information about the claims process and how people can get relief," Stevens, the comptroller's spokesperson, said in an emailed statement. "We understand not everyone has been as involved in this important work, but these are the facts. We'll leave the political posturing to others."

@TyroneCStevens Today's compelling hearing was ALL about my constituents. Wish you were there to answer them instead of here...
— Adrienne Adams (@AdrienneEAdams) December 11, 2019

To get reimbursed for any damage, affected homeowners should file a claim with Comptroller Scott Stringer's office within 90 days by clicking here.

Residents who were affected by the sewage backup and need assistance may also call City Council Member Adrienne Adams' office at 718-206-2068.

To view a full list of available resources, click here.