New York City’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) is advancing plans for a $3.3 billion Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO) storage tunnel beneath Newtown Creek to reduce sewage discharges into the waterway.
Designated a Superfund site by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) in 2010, Newtown Creek has suffered from decades of industrial pollution and sewage discharges. In 2011, the EPA entered into a federal Administrative Settlement Agreement and Order on Consent with the city of New York and five major industrial companies to investigate and remediate contamination under the federal Superfund program. The proposed CSO tunnel project complements these ongoing cleanup efforts by addressing one of the creek’s primary modern pollution sources: combined sewer overflows that discharge untreated wastewater during heavy rainfall.
About 90 percent of overflow volume in the Newtown Creek watershed originates from four tributaries: Dutch Kills, Maspeth Creek, East Branch and English Kills. Focusing on these areas, the CSO tunnel project includes a 50-million-gallon storage tunnel, a dewatering pump station, diversion chambers, drop shafts, conveyance sewers, outfall structures and odor control systems designed to capture and manage combined sewer flows before they reach the creek.
To build the tunnel and related infrastructure, the DEP must acquire parcels near the four tributaries for diversion facilities that will direct flows into the tunnel system. The project will be funded through a combination of state and federal dollars.
The project entered the city’s Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP) on Sept. 15 and is currently undergoing community board review.
The approval process includes:
- Community Boards BK1, QN2, QN5 review: September–November 2025.
- Borough Presidents’ review: November–December 2025.
- City Planning Commission public hearing: December 2025–February 2026.
- Final Environmental Impact Statement: February 2026.
- City Council review: February–April 2026.
- ULURP completion: April 2026.
Following successful approval, land acquisition will begin in the third quarter of 2026 and is expected to be completed by the end of 2028. The NYC Department of Sanitation is scheduled to start preparing the site in the second quarter of 2028. Construction on diversion facilities and the CSO tunnel will begin in late 2029. Construction on the pump stations will begin in the middle of 2032. The project is expected to be completed in 2040.
Photo by MTA Capital Construction Mega Projects, CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0, from Wikimedia Commons
