OUR ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO THE BOROUGH OF KINGS
COURIER LIFE, MARCH 11–17, 2022 49
BY JESSICA PARKS
Green-Wood Cemetery is constructing
over 22,000 square feet of rain gardens
on their grounds — the largest of
its kind which will prevent hundreds
of gallons of stormwater from entering
its surrounding communities.
“We applied for building 22,000
square feet of… rain gardens,” said Joseph
Charap, Green-Wood’s resident director
of horticulture. “We thought it
was the largest bioretention project on
private land in the city that has been
proposed yet.”
Gov. Kathy Hochul awarded $23 million
in water quality grants to 17 organizations
across New York State in
December 2021, with Brooklyn’s own
44-acre cemetery issued $1.7 million in
funding to construct 30 to 40 rain gardens
on their grounds over the next decade.
“We applied for a program that focused
on stormwater, and stormwater
mitigation here at Green-Wood,”
Charap said.
Green-Wood’s horticultural department’s
plan for the sprawling cemetery
bordering Sunset Park, Kensington,
and Windsor Terrace was chosen for
the grants as it met the criteria of supporting
environmental justice communities
by implementing green stormwater
infrastructure in addition to water
and energy effi ciency measures.
“This impacts about 30,000 residents
of Sunset Park, Green-Wood is
also three avenues away from the coast
of Brooklyn,” said Sara Evans, Green-
Wood’s manager of horticulture operations
and projects. “Understanding a
little bit of our impact, we fi gure that
this is one of the best ways by actually
mitigating our run off and removing it
from even entering the system, it’s just
a great way to at least help this area alleviate
some of the negative impacts of
heavy rain events.”
The rain gardens, scientifi cally
known as bioswales, absorb stormwater
naturally in the ground before it
travels into the sewer system, using
vegetation and amended soils that will
slow the water down and increase its
infi ltration into the soil, which sifts
out pollutants — effectively lessening
the impacts of rainwater on the surrounding
sewer systems.
“During a heavy rain event with
the New York City infrastructure, having
a combined sewer system, it overwhelms
the pipes, it overwhelms the
infrastructure of the city,” Evans said.
“That’s where we see fl ooding in the
streets, there’s a lot of back up, there is
risk of literal raw sewage in the streets
of New York City, and raw sewage that
discharges into our coastal system.”
Their project will also help reduce
the amount of potable water, or water
from the city’s water supply, used by
the cemetery— which requires a variety
of water use to upkeep its grounds
such as for irrigation— by implementing
a harvest and reuse system that
will recycle water from their largest
body of water on the property.
“We approached stormwater here
from two essential perspectives, was
trying to limit our impact on potable
water use, using city water for irrigation,”
said Charap. “And then we applied
for a way to prevent water from
overfl owing into the combined sewer
system during a storm event.”
The cemetery’s horticulturalists
have not determined the exact locations
of the incoming rain gardens nor
decided the specifi c fauna that will be
planted there — but told Brooklyn Paper
they will be plants native to this
region, which is said to attract native
birds, like the state bluebird, to return
to the area.
“We haven’t entered the design
phase yet,” Evans said. “These bioswales
will be confi ned to the areas
where our existing water works and
sewer systems lie.”
“We intend to focus primarily on a
native pallet,” Charap said.
Let it
rain!
Cemetery to
construct dozens
of rain gardens
Green-Wood Cemetery. Photo by Art Presson