How NYC’s Sewage System Treats 1.3 Billion Gallons Of Wastewater - NYC Revealed

across all five boroughs of new york city an estimated 8.3 million people flush their toilets multiple times a day [Music] look at all that crap it looks like rope everything from fecal matter to clorox wipes go through the city's elaborate network of sewers creating 1.3 billion gallons of wastewater per day this is the bane of my existence this deluge of wastewater travels through some combination of the city's 7 500 miles of sewer pipes 135 000 storm drains 96 wastewater pumping stations and 14 treatment plants to be disposed of but even with the system's impressive ability to hold transfer and treat all of this wastewater it sometimes gets overwhelmed feces everything else that's getting flushed down a toilet is just resting here and you can see the impacts [Music] this is the story of the big apple's historic and complex sewer system and how it is evolving to stand up against the combined pressure of 21st century super storms aging infrastructure and increased clorox wipe flushing this is nasty don't do it [Music] when new york city was founded in the early 1600s concerns about diseases from waste left on the streets prompted the city to look for a more sanitary method of disposal that need birthed the city's first underground sewer system dug down the middle of broad street and decked over with wood which helped drain waste from neighborhood streets soon vermin and disease ran rampant throughout the city and residents became increasingly vocal about their dislike of the lack of privacy in tenement latrines [Music] it wasn't until 1849 after a major cholera outbreak across the city the city leaders finally committed to building a fully functional sewer system 70 miles of sewers were laid out in the first five years approximately 40 percent of new york city uses a more modern sewer technology called a separate sewer system pipes like these carry waste water directly to a corresponding treatment plant for further processing while separate pipes like these carry storm water directly to local waterways the other 60 of new york city relies on that original sewer system from the 1800s this is called a combined sewer system it uses a single pipe or a combined sewer to carry wastewater and storm water together to one of the 14 wastewater treatment plants like this so this plant at newtown creek collects wastewater sinks toilets showers from about a million people in brooklyn queens parts of brooklyn and queens parts of manhattan and that water is very dirty so we take that water and through a series of processes we treat it to clean water standards and we produce valuable products poop pee toilet paper puke all i want to see this is flushable wipes that we take and put it in a landfill it's garbage so there are four things we want to see in the sewer system poop pee toilet paper and we'll take puke too the waters surrounding new york city are very clean now because of the wastewater resource recovery facility's performance this plant will take up to 700 million gallons in a day as waste water flows through the recovery facility the treatment process begins right now we're going to go to the dirty spot the screens this is what we do we take care of sewage we make clean water so this is the raw influence you see coming in right here [Music] bar screens continuously move in and out of the flow to remove large debris that thing that's going down there that's a rake that rake is gonna go all the way to the bottom of that deep tank and it'll bring up the wipes the tampons and condoms other stuff people shouldn't flush nasty okay this is what people flush in their toilet this is the bane of my existence oh here's another one coming up this is a white does it look familiar i wouldn't be surprised that the box said flushable this stuff will get out of your toilet it will not disintegrate the way toilet paper does sanitary products don't flush that but the bar screens will collect anything that's in the sewer system we'll get street trash when it rains that rats sometimes i heard that somebody once got a found a handgun because somebody had opened a manhole and threw a handgun in there next primary treatment starts now one of the reasons why this is wastewater resource recovery is because we have waste water but we're creating resources from it that actual scum layer that comes off the top very high in organics it's got a lot of fats we're looking to turn that into a green energy we're really driving the gas production out of these these very cool digesters so people in this neighborhood are cooking with gas that's made from their their poop and from their food waste it's amazing [Music] upstairs watch your step such a clear day it's a little a little dirty but if you look inside the solids that come to the digesters are heated to your actual body temperature 98 degrees anaerobic no oxygen they work just like your stomach [Music] as the sewage water continues to travel through the facility machines add air to help naturally occurring bacteria consume nutrients and organic material from here the sewage slows down again and gravity settles the heavy bacteria to the bottom of these large tanks any remaining bacteria is then killed in chlorination tanks through a chemical process called oxidation so this works just like a forest if a bear poops in the woods over time with the air the soil there's bacteria around it it'll break down and become part of the soil matrix so we're just basically doing that same thing here except we're speeding it up really fast through a secondary clarifier the now dead bacteria settles out of the water and the clean water is released [Music] the wastewater treatment plant here on newtown creek does a significant tremendous job at cleaning wastewater but it doesn't work when it's raining on a dry day like today everything in this blue area all goes to the wastewater treatment plant rainy day it overwhelms the system when there's a rain event anything that you flush down your toilet put down your sink or your shower there's a good chance that it's bypassing the treatment plant and coming directly out here [Music] a cso is a combined sewer overflow cso events happen about 40 times a year on average throughout new york city so newtown creek is this little tidal tributary of the east river and we have all sorts of marine wildlife here which is i think always kind of surprises people crabs shrimp so yeah the cormorants scare off pretty easily it's the water even though it rises and falls with the tides there's no real current back and forth so when cso is discharged because the water's so stagnant here it has lasting impacts so we're going to sneak into this inlet this is what's known as mass pets creek the unfortunate main function of this inlet is to service this combined sewer overflow that we're going to see up ahead fortunately we're here after a week of dry weather so this thing hasn't discharged [Music] the sign is a little bit obscured but this is known as ncq77 this is one of the largest sewer outfalls in the entire city this is over 300 million gallons a year of untreated sewage coming out of this pipe and you see all these bubbles that are coming up so this is all organic matter that is decaying here it creates gases like methane and hydrogen sulfide which is what we smell right now sewer hasn't overflowed in probably over a week at this point but the impacts are so severe because the amount of sewage that comes out of here and the very stagnant conditions all of that sewage comes out and just settles here i mean it's disgusting feces everything else that's getting flushed down a toilet is just resting here and you can see the impacts it can be very frustrating and difficult to work on issues like fixing the cso problem the plan will be to dig really large underground tunnels that will hold the rain water during a rain event until after the rain is over and then pump it to the wastewater treatment plant overall new york city has made significant progress on water quality in the city and the majority of the time places like the east river and the hudson river are swimmable the short of it is don't go swimming or touch the water after a rain event new york city may not be known as the cleanest city in the world in fact it's not even close but even this city with its 8.3 million residents could not function to the capacity it has been without its existing wastewater treatment system that relies on teamwork between sanitation workers and mindful city residents sometimes when people complain i say yes i know it's a smelly operation we got lots of systems to deal with it but we're taking care of your poo for you [Music] you

Channel: Cheddar

Views: 2,949,714

Keywords: Cheddar, cheddar, cheddar explains, explainer, nyc revealed, nyc, new york city, new york, curiositystream, curiosity stream, sewage, sewers, sewer system, water pollution, pollution, infrastructure, pipes, waste, wastewater, wastewater treatment, fatberg, flushable wipes, flushable, toilet, toilet paper, dirt, dirty, rain event, environment, science, technology, queens, brooklyn, bronx, documentary

Id: -jmyGxb2JCc

Length: 11min 38sec (698 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 27 2022