Major milestone for Tibbetts Brook Daylighting Project: $10 million green grant secured for historic environmental plan
Karen Argenti, a board member with the Bronx Council for Environmental Quality. knows the Tibbetts Brook Daylighting project intimately, having worked on the idea since the late 90s when the idea was a mere pipe dream.
Today, the project is not only finalized but set to break ground next year.
“We did it,” Argenti said.
On Oct. 16, Gov. Kathy Hochul announced the Green Resiliency Grant would dedicate $60 million of its funding to 13 green infrastructure projects throughout the state, including $10 million for the Tibbetts Brook Daylighting Project.
The grant program, which helps build green infrastructure projects, is part of Hochul’s resiliency plan to protect flood-prone and disadvantaged communities as well as combat the effects of climate change.
In attendance at the event was Assemblyman Jeffrey Dinowitz, who said he has been an advocate for the project since the beginning.
The Green Resiliency Grant is supported by the Clean Water, Clean Air and Green Jobs Environmental Bond Act, which funds environmental safeguard projects and was approved as a 2022 ballot initiative.
According to Dinowitz, the $60 million allotted to the 13 projects of the Green Resiliency Grant is the most money provided by the 2022 Environmental Bond Act since its approval.
“Even though things don’t happen as quickly as we like, if one is persistent, we can see a lot of good things happen,” Dinowitz said, “This is an example of good things are worth waiting for.”
The project to daylight Tibbetts Brook is a large undertaking that has taken years to get off the ground. Daylighting a body of water is the process of bringing a buried water flow to the surface. Tibbetts Brook flows from Yonkers through Van Cortlandt Park, where it empties into the Harlem River.
Tibbetts Brook was dammed to create a mill pond in Van Cortlandt Park during the 18th century but, by 1912, the brook was underground and running a direct course to the sewer system.
Despite the conversation beginning in the late 90s, the project was first introduced in writing in the 20-year Van Cortlandt Park Master Plan published in 2014. In 2018, movement on the project began, as it was added to the city’s green infrastructure plan.
The Tibbetts Advisory Group held its first meeting in March 2022, with representatives from the city’s department of environmental protection and Stephanie Ehrlich, executive director of the Van Cortlandt Park Alliance.
The project will unearth about one mile of the brook, with greenway space created alongside. The plan also includes the creation of multiple access ramps and entrances to the new greenway and will connect it to Van Cortlandt Park, including at the Putnam Greenway, and the Empire State Trail.
The Putnam Greenway in Van Cortlandt Park is a 1.4-mile stretch of greenway that was converted from the old New York Central Railroad.
In the process of raising and redirecting the brook, pressure on the sewer system will be alleviated, helping to address combined sewer overflows.
Combined sewer overflows operate when the pipes become overburdened with water, typically in the event of a rainstorm. The water is rerouted into an alternative body of water rather than traveling to the originally designated treatment plant. Redirecting the water helps to pump out the water faster; however, it causes other problems by dumping the combination of rainwater and sewage into places like the Harlem River, where raw sewage is now damaging the waterway and its ecosystem.
Post Tibbetts Brook Daylighting, more than 200 million gallons will be successfully rerouted yearly from the sewer system.
Moving forward, the department of environmental protection announced in June the final plot of land needed to break ground on the project had been purchased. The land was purchased for $11.2 million from CSX Transportation, a freight railroad.
Argenti said she’s pleased to see this project begin to take shape. She said she remembers the conversations in 1997 and attending the event at Van Cortlandt Park, where the $10 million was designated to the project.
“I was really happy about this whole idea,” Argenti said. “People think the city won’t do things but it's not true.”
Dinowitz said, despite the need for more project funding, it’s exciting to see the project approach fruition.
“It’s a really important step toward making this vision … a reality,” Dinowitz said.
According to the department of environmental protection, construction is expected to begin in late 2025.
