Solar-powered robotic floating pod that filters up to 9 ton of water per day. Ok – everyone is crazy about robotics nowadays, but what about power of nature? Algae, mollusks and plankton can be used to filter the water to. Floating farms have to be deployed in non-navigable corners of the bay. In worst case farm produce will end up in the dump and in best case will be decomposed into fertilizer. As I mentioned before the only infrastructure-level source of pollution is CSO that brings stoppable debris, chemical and biological contamination.

While restructuring our sewer system is long way, turning our bay into water treatment plant is a quick fix. Someone might argue about living around water treatment plant but living around raw sewage reservoir is much worse

I sure hope Tami inspires others to do the same for Sheepshead Bay, Central Park Reservoir, and any other of our treasured places in New York that need it. When Tami approached me about organizing the cleanup at Prospect Park Lake, we were super excited. That’s exactly the kind of citizen-led volunteer action that we all have to do to make our neighborhoods better, protect the environment at the local level, and know that we’re doing better for the whole earth.

So, Ray, if you, or you and some of your friends want to organize a cleanup for Sheepshead Bay (or more likely, the land around the bay), you can also use ioby.org to organize volunteers and raise funds to pay for the gloves, garbage bags, nets. I might also recommend contacting the American Littoral Society to ask them for guidance on the project. Just the past June they organized volunteers to pick up debris at Plum Beach nearby. Here’s a link to a video about their efforts there and their overall effort to protect NYC’s beaches: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p7fTHRQ-2sI&feature=channel

Bay pollution comes from CSO, boat activity and waterfront activity.
SCO is responsible for chemically and biologically active substances, floating and possibly a sinking debris. Sinking debris probably accumulates right under the outlet. Floating debris can be contained within limited area with floating booms. Then limited areas can be cleaned regularly. Biological and chemical contaminants i guess can be neutralized with plants and bacterias. I am thinking of floating gardens, algae farms, mollusc cages.

Boating activity AKA dumping waste over the board can be contained by monitoring, recording and reporting incidents to corresponding authorities. What do we pay taxes for? Keep authorities busy and violators punished. Probably the same applies not only to boaters but to general public on the waterfront as well. Keep your cameras ready!

We can start be cleaning and keeping our streets clean. Then we can address the CSO (combined sewer overflow) that dumps trash and raw sewage into the bay when it rains a little more than a 1/4″. Once the streets are clean then maybe the bay would be too. Where do we start? There are organizations that are interested but it takes a lot of work and community support. The businesses who are only interested in sweeping their sidewalk in front of their store must realize that they must be part of the soultion.