Virtual meeting between NYCHA-Disaster Recovery department and EPA

The New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) Disaster Recovery department and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) held a virtual meeting on Thursday about the soil sampling at the Red Hook Houses related to Sandy construction.

There was also an update about the two recent gas outages at the Red Hook Houses caused by the construction that has been happening. Joy Sinderbrand, who is the vice president of NYCHA’s Recovery and Resilience Department, updated everyone about the outages.

The first disruption happened during excavation a few weeks ago when the contractor hit a plastic gas pipe that led to the loss of natural gas in two buildings. NYCHA was able to restore gas for heat and hot water but they were not able to fix the gas for cooking.

“We try to avoid this kind of impact and it is a top priority for safety across the program,” Sinderband said. “We want to use this as an opportunity to get even better and more stringent on our protocols.

She added that there is new coordination between NYCHA and national grid. In addition to doing utility markings of their drawings, they are sending staff the the site before any excavation so they can locate the valve boxes.

“We (capital projects) have been working closely with operations to stay up to date with the gas pipe replacement project,” Sinderband said.

NYCHA has secured $700,000 for the two buildings. They have completed a site visit for scoping, have awarded the project to a vendor and have given the vendor a notice to proceed. The company, RJ Bruno, is very familiar with gas pipe replacement.

The company was on site on Thursday, November 6, doing prep work and waiting for the permits for next steps.

Property management is using Covid safe methods of communication to communicate with Das and residents. Sinderbrand said when they get updates from property management they send those out.

The second recent outage was on November 4. This most recent one was a water pipe break in an area where there had been digging about one week before.

“This was hand digging and that hand digging was about four feet above the water pipe,” Sinderband said. “This represents a whole new level of sensitivity of infrastructure because it is hard to get more careful than hand digging especially since the hand digging was not near the pipe that had the break.”

Minimal vibrations caused this disruption that happened on November 4 leading to building three being without water for a few hours at night.

“We were able to make this emergency repair,” Sinderband said. “We were able to do it as quickly as we could because of the new closer coordination between NYCHA and DEP.”

They are working together to make sure that when unforeseen issues arise that the right staff and materials are at the site as soon as possible. NYCHA capital projects works closely with property management to make sure water is available during unplanned emergencies.