Green Wall: Hugo Neu, Hunts Point, Bronx, NY

 

The Gaia Institute, along with Young Environmental, LLC, has developed a stormwater treatment system to store, filter, and evaporate runoff from the Hugo Neu metals recycling facility adjacent to the Bronx River. The design utilizes a green wall, made from recycled materials, in conjunction with constructed wetlands and soil buffers, to filter the stormwater.

 

Water is first captured in storm drains, on-site, and then moved by gravity in an underground pipe to a distribution well near Edgewater Road. Here, the water is pumped across the green wall where it will be available for use by mosses and ferns. Water that is not taken up or evaporated by the vegetation will be conveyed into the treatment wetlands where natural processes will remove pollutants.

 

Plants growing in these treatment wetlands, together with the microbes in soils and sediments, will provide additional treatment, along with further evapotranspiration of the runoff water. As the water percolates down through the treatment wetlands it will be gathered and distributed through a series of recycling pumps back over the green wall, thus creating a zero discharge stormwater treatment system under even larger stormwater loads.

(Image: Green Wall Stormwater Treatment: Plan View)

(Image: Biofiltration swales, groundwater aquifer recharge, and recycle system)

The Gaia Institute - 440 City Island Avenue - Bronx, NY 10464