ADA compliant and Permeable Walkway @ Pleasant Village Community Garden! We aim to replace our existing walkway to help mitigate storm water run off from flooding east harlem!!
Leader
Kim Yim
Location
342 Pleasant Ave New York, NY 10035
Pleasant Village Community Garden(PVCG)is located on Pleasant Ave. In East Harlem. This fall PVCG will be losing a portion of the garden, which is forcing us to reevaluate how to adjust to the remaining land. One concern east Harlem faces from the effects of climate change is flooding. When it rains, storm water collects with debris and pollutants and enters our sewer drains. During extremely high rainfall this water can overflow with our sewage line and empty into our local water ways. This hosts a multitude of problems since this waste water is untreated and released into fragile ecosystems. . Community gardens can become a great resource for absorbing rainwater into the ground. One method is to install a permeable walkway in the garden. Using the garden as a way to mitigate excess water can divert and relieve added stress to our infrastructure. The benefits would preserve natural resources in a more sustainable way, benefiting the environment and the residents living in these communities. . A permeable walkway allows water to empty into a redirected area or can be designed to absorb slowly into planting areas that can benefit from the natural rain. Our goal is to replace our walkway with a path forward that uses permeable materials and harvests rain to other parts of the garden that can benefit from it. We believe this can help mitigate further pollution from entering our local ecosystems. Community gardens can act as built-in green infrastructures to most urban cities. The use of bio swales, rain water collection, retaining walls and installing rain gardens, or plants that tolerate wet environments, are also solutions for the garden to combat flooding. PVCG will allocate remaining misc funds toward purchasing plants and planting material, and tools to implement our own rain garden, tools to form bioswales and retaining walls. Your support and attention to this matter is greatly appreciated!!!
Installing a permeable path will set an example for how storm water can be consciously managed.
New York Times article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/07/27/nyregion/community-gardens-nyc.html