Paerdegat Basin CSO Facility

Brooklyn, New York

Clients: New York City Department of Environmental Protection and Hazen and Sawyer, P.C.

Denisha Williams, Project Manager, Landscape Architect, and Certified Arborist for Abel Bainnson Butz, LLP (Construction Phase), 2012

Located on a dredged channel off Jamaica Bay in southeast Brooklyn, the purpose of the Paerdegat Basin CSO Facility is to improve the water quality in the basin and bay by preventing combined sewer overflows. This complex, $404 million construction project, designed and construction-managed by Hazen and Sawyer, P.C. with Abel Bainnson Butz, LLP (ABB) as landscape architects and Dattner Architects as building designers, includes a 30-million-gallon underground retention tank with a 32,000-square-foot green roof over a portion of the tank; 44,000 square feet of buildings to house operations, equipment, and community facilities; and a range of environmentally friendly plantings including upland, intertidal, and wetlands areas. In addition to the grey infrastructure, the 3.7 acres of predominantly native plantings throughout the facility also have a tremendous positive impact on water quality in this environmentally sensitive location.

For the Paerdegat Basin facility, completed in 2012, Denisha Williams provided construction-phase services as a project manager, landscape architect, and certified arborist for ABB during this multi-year construction project. Over this period, she oversaw the planting of trees, shrubs, and herbaceous vegetation within the 11-acre project site, which includes nearly four acres of upland and shoreline plantings.

Ms. Williams also provided oversight of the pruning and protection of existing street trees in compliance with NYC Department of Parks and Recreation Forestry standards during replacement of sidewalks bounding the new facility. Close coordination allowed the project partners to avert potential damage to mature street trees along an adjacent residential street by finding alternative strategies to proposed utilities that would have imperiled existing trees.