Coastal Green Infrastructure for Westchester Creek

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Project Overview

Water quality at Westchester Creek can be considered as a health risk. According to the Bureau of Watershed Assessment and Management, from NYS Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) Westchester Creek is stressed or impaired in all water body usage categories: Public bathing, fish consumption, aquatic life, recreation and aesthetics. Types of pollutants that contaminate the water body are oxygen demand, excessive nutrients, pathogens and floatables. The NYC DEP estimates that approximately 1.1 billion gallons of wastewater were discharged in 2013 into Westchester Creek. The majority of the discharged water comes from combined sewer overflows, accounting approximately 790 million gallons a year. Moreover, separate sewer discharges and direct runoff add to approximately 330 million gallons a year. The volume of these discharges is directly related to the size and distribution of Westchester Creek’s watershed: 4,270 acres are served by a combined sewer system, 340 acres are served by separate drainage system and the remaining 341 acres by direct runoff. Due to the interruptions of the water cycle at Westchester Creek, the quality has been degraded.

Coastal Green Infrastructure can be defined as designed and engineered landscapes that restore or imitate natural coastal conditions, while providing services to communities and the environment. Such strategies are commonly referred as to living shorelines, ecological engineering, or nature-based features (Mitsch and Jørgensen, 2004). Constructed wetlands, bivalve communities and other examples of coastal green infrastructure are known to improve water quality through filtration, nutrient absorption and pollution removal. This capstone explored the opportunities for scaling coastal green infrastructure and provided insight to water filtration capacity and quality improvement for Westchester Creek based on previous research and case studies. GIS analysis can be visualized at the following online interactive map: www.arcg.is/1ySmSG5