{"@context":"http://iiif.io/api/presentation/3/context.json","id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/iiif/057cr5pj0n/manifest","type":"Manifest","label":{"en":["Brett Branco Oral History"]},"logo":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/010/original/Aviary_QPLlogo_192x192.png?1578574261","metadata":[{"label":{"en":["Description"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSummary of Full Interview:\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eBrett Branco is a marine scientist, an associate professor of earth and environmental sciences at Brooklyn College and the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center, and the executive director of the Science and Resilience Institute at Jamaica Bay (SRIJB). Branco explains that SRIJB is a partnership between CUNY, the City of New York, and the National Park Service that functions as a research institute to inform decision making about climate adaptation and resource stewardship, particularly in coastal communities and waters surrounding Jamaica Bay and New York City. Branco identifies threats posed by rising sea levels and increased frequency of extreme rainfall events on coastal waters around New York City, low-lying neighborhoods, and New York City's underground infrastructure.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e \u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eBranco describes how the city's combined sewer system carrying wastewater and stormwater can become overwhelmed by wet weather and lead to raw sewage discharging into coastal waters. Branco discusses the unfolding danger of rising sea levels and increasingly frequent flooding of low-lying communities such as those near Jamaica Bay, along with the day-to-day actions and long-term strategies that residents employ to combat flooding. Branco details several water quality monitoring programs in New York City and notes improvements in the water quality of coastal waters around the city since the early 2000s. Branco also comments on the vulnerabilities of Queens' underground subways and the impact of rising water temperatures on marine life.\u003c/p\u003e"]}},{"label":{"en":["Rights Statement"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eCC BY-NC-SA Contact digitalarchives@queenslibrary.org for research and reproduction requests.\u003c/p\u003e"]}},{"label":{"en":["Source Metadata URI"]},"value":{"en":["http://digitalarchives.queenslibrary.org/search/browse/40520"]}},{"label":{"en":["Date"]},"value":{"en":["2023-05-16 (created)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Type"]},"value":{"en":["Video"]}},{"label":{"en":["Agent"]},"value":{"en":["Brett Branco (Interviewee)","Daniela Trapani (Interviewer)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Source"]},"value":{"en":["This interview was conducted as part of the Hunters Point Environmental Education Center Program."]}},{"label":{"en":["Coverage"]},"value":{"en":["2000s-2023 (temporal)","Queens, NY; New York; NY; Jamaica Bay, NY; Hudson River; New York Bay; Long Island Sound (spatial)"]}},{"label":{"en":["Language"]},"value":{"en":["English"]}}],"summary":{"en":["\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSummary of Full Interview:\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eBrett Branco is a marine scientist, an associate professor of earth and environmental sciences at Brooklyn College and the City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center, and the executive director of the Science and Resilience Institute at Jamaica Bay (SRIJB). Branco explains that SRIJB is a partnership between CUNY, the City of New York, and the National Park Service that functions as a research institute to inform decision making about climate adaptation and resource stewardship, particularly in coastal communities and waters surrounding Jamaica Bay and New York City. Branco identifies threats posed by rising sea levels and increased frequency of extreme rainfall events on coastal waters around New York City, low-lying neighborhoods, and New York City's underground infrastructure.\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003e\u0026nbsp;\u003c/p\u003e\r\n\u003cp\u003eBranco describes how the city's combined sewer system carrying wastewater and stormwater can become overwhelmed by wet weather and lead to raw sewage discharging into coastal waters. Branco discusses the unfolding danger of rising sea levels and increasingly frequent flooding of low-lying communities such as those near Jamaica Bay, along with the day-to-day actions and long-term strategies that residents employ to combat flooding. Branco details several water quality monitoring programs in New York City and notes improvements in the water quality of coastal waters around the city since the early 2000s. Branco also comments on the vulnerabilities of Queens' underground subways and the impact of rising water temperatures on marine life.\u003c/p\u003e"]},"requiredStatement":{"label":{"en":["Attribution"]},"value":{"en":["\u003cp\u003eCC BY-NC-SA Contact digitalarchives@queenslibrary.org for research and reproduction requests.\u003c/p\u003e"]}},"provider":[{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/aboutus","type":"Agent","label":{"en":["Queens Public Library"]},"homepage":[{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/","type":"Text","label":{"en":["Queens Public Library"]},"format":"text/html"}],"logo":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/organizations/logo_images/000/000/010/original/Aviary_QPLlogo_192x192.png?1578574261","type":"Image"}]}],"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/197/279/small/thumbnail_197279_1689192869.jpg?1689192869","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279","type":"Canvas","label":{"en":["Media File 1 of 1 - branco-brett-radioedit.mp4"]},"duration":1723.09333,"width":640,"height":360,"thumbnail":[{"id":"https://d9jk7wjtjpu5g.cloudfront.net/collection_resource_files/thumbnails/000/197/279/small/thumbnail_197279_1689192869.jpg?1689192869","type":"Image","format":"image/jpeg"}],"items":[{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279/content/1","type":"AnnotationPage","items":[{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279/content/1/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"painting","body":{"id":"https://aviary-p-queenslibrary.s3.wasabisys.com/collection_resource_files/resource_files/000/197/279/original/branco-brett-radioedit.mp4?1689192281","type":"Video","format":"video/mp4","duration":1723.09333,"width":640,"height":360},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279","metadata":[]}]}],"annotations":[{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279/transcript/67558","type":"AnnotationPage","label":{"en":["Full Transcript [Transcript]"]},"items":[{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279/transcript/67558/annotation/1","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Daniela Trapani: Okay. Okay. Do you agree to the terms and conditions outlined in the Queens Memory informed consent and copyright permission form that I shared with you over email?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279#t=0.0,12.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279/transcript/67558/annotation/2","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Brett Branco: Yes.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279#t=12.0,14.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279/transcript/67558/annotation/3","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Daniela Trapani: This is Daniela Trapani with Brett Branco. We are recording on May 16th, 2023 for the Queens Memory Project. Brett, could you say your full name and spell it?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279#t=14.0,27.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279/transcript/67558/annotation/4","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Brett Branco: Yes, my name is Brett Branco:. B-R-E-T-T-B-R-A-N-C-O.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279#t=27.0,34.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279/transcript/67558/annotation/5","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Daniela Trapani: Great, thank you. So the first question I wanted to ask you was if you could talk about your work at the Science and Resilience Institute at Jamaica Bay.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279#t=34.0,47.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279/transcript/67558/annotation/6","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Brett Branco: Sure. So the Science and Resilience Institute at Jamaica Bay was created as a partnership between the City University of New York, New York City, acting through the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation, and the Department of Interior working through the National Park Service and specifically Gateway National Recreation Area. And it was created to be what we call a user-driven research institute. So do research that can help inform decision-making primarily around Jamaica Bay, but also New York City and beyond. Decisions around both climate adaptation and about resource stewardship because Jamaica Bay is such a rich ecological area, so has, holds a lot of ecological importance.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279#t=47.0,98.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279/transcript/67558/annotation/7","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Brett Branco: And an awful lot of it is National Park Service, within a National Park Service domain. But also there's a lot of communities obviously surrounding Jamaica Bay that are being impacted by climate change. And so there, there's a lot of important decisions to be made in the area. So yeah, so the institute, basically, we serve as both a research enterprise, so we work very closely with different agencies, federal, state, and city, to identify research needs. We do the same with local communities, and we focus primarily on issues of flooding and nature-based solutions, water quality, habitat, et cetera.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279#t=98.0,150.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279/transcript/67558/annotation/8","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Daniela Trapani: Great. Those are all things that we're looking to capture in the upcoming Queens Memory podcast season, so that's wonderful. I'd love to dive into all those things. Could you talk about climate change impacts that you've seen in Queens generally? And then we'll get into more specifics.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279#t=150.0,171.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279/transcript/67558/annotation/9","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Brett Branco: So there's a lot of, I mean, Queens, the Borough of Queens is definitely feeling the impact of a changing climate and will continue to do so over the next century at least. And a lot of those impacts have to do with, I think the big three are sort of rising sea levels, increase in the frequency and duration intensity of heat waves, and then the potential increased frequency in extreme rainfall events. I didn't even mention, I didn't even mention hurricanes or the sort of catastrophic events like Hurricane Sandy, because those other three things I mentioned are going to happen much more frequently than being impacted by a hurricane, for example. And those are the impacts that really affect the daily lives of residents in Queens and other boroughs around the city.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279#t=171.0,247.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279/transcript/67558/annotation/10","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Daniela Trapani: If you have, I'm not sure if you're familiar with this topic as much, we're looking to talk about the sewage system a lot in Queens in this podcast season. Could you talk about, if you're able to, climate impacts on the sewage system in Queens?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279#t=247.0,265.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279/transcript/67558/annotation/11","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Brett Branco: Yeah, so climate changes can have an impact on the sewage system of Queens. I think primarily that'd be associated with wetter weather or more extreme rainfall events. For example, what we saw during Hurricane Ida back in 2021 was a good example. And I think the primary impact is that the city's sewer system is a combination of wastewater piping, which takes raw sewage from and wastewater from people's homes and businesses and industries and directs that towards wastewater treatment plants. But those same systems are integrated with a lot of the stormwater systems, which basically just collect rainwater and direct it basically towards the waters around the city, basically drain the rain, the rainwater from the city. And because those two piping systems are integrated in a lot of places, not everywhere, but in a lot of places around Queens, oftentimes when it rains, those piping systems get overwhelmed and raw sewage gets discharged with the rainwater directly into the water bodies around Queens. So, if you have more frequent high intensity rainfall events, there's a potential that those discharges could become more frequent or more severe.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279#t=265.0,369.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279/transcript/67558/annotation/12","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Brett Branco: So that's one impact. And I think another one is that people have to remember, so much of the city's infrastructure is below ground, and also, a lot of it's below ground. And so for example, the subway systems, they're constantly being dewatered because water, they're oftentimes below the water table or something like that. And so you constantly have to be pumping water out of those underground, out of that underground subway systems, et cetera. And that also puts a burden on the wastewater systems because that water has to go somewhere. So rising sea levels, rising groundwater tables end up putting more water into those systems. That's more water we have to pump out and just more stress on our wastewater systems.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279#t=369.0,435.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279/transcript/67558/annotation/13","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Daniela Trapani: If we could go back to Jamaica Bay a little bit, could you talk about the climate impacts that you're seeing specifically in that area?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279#t=435.0,446.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279/transcript/67558/annotation/14","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Brett Branco: Yeah. So the climate impacts in Jamaica Bay are primarily sea level rise driven, I would say. And people have to remember that sea level rise is a slow, steady process. It's something you don't notice. You don't notice sea level change day-to-day, but you might notice it decade to decade, meaning we hear from residents around Jamaica Bay, for example, that they can always remember—these are in some of the low-lying neighborhoods like Hamilton Beach and places in the Rockaways, et cetera—and people have lived there all their lives will tell you, they always remember there being some flooding associated with storms and with full moon events sometimes, but never as often, or the water was never as deep as it seems to be now. And so that's something they can kind of connect what they're seeing now with what they sort of remember from 10 years ago or 20 years ago. So they're noticing those changes and it is having an impact. So that, that's really one of the big ones, right? It's a slow, steady rise in sea level that's causing more frequent flooding in neighborhoods, in the low-lying neighborhoods right around Jamaica Bay, and most of 'em are low-lying neighborhoods.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279#t=446.0,540.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279/transcript/67558/annotation/15","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Daniela Trapani: Speaking of community members or people living in these areas, how do you think they're responding to the impacts they're seeing?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279#t=540.0,550.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279/transcript/67558/annotation/16","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Brett Branco: Yeah, so the community members around Jamaica Bay have essentially been living with water for their entire lives. And so no one knows better how to cope with this than the residents who've been dealing with it all their lives, really. And there's certain things that they do, and a lot of this is local organized or local knowledge that's passed on from resident to resident and family to family. So for example, people in neighborhoods that flood during full moons, they know to move their cars to higher ground on a full moon, and they have these sort of informal, semi-formal communication systems to try to make sure that their neighbors, et cetera know. A lot of this is through social media or Facebook groups and things like that. So they communicate to each other, resident-to-resident, through these social media channels.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279#t=550.0,620.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279/transcript/67558/annotation/17","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Brett Branco: So things like reminding people to move their cars because they might get some flooding on the streets, and you don't want your car to be exposed to that salt water. Reminding people, some people when they have that frequent flooding, it affects their ability to get to work or it affects the ability of their children to get to school. It affects deliveries. So much of our commerce these days is door to door delivery. And so people have started planning around those flooding events, knowing what the impact is going to be on that particular day.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279#t=620.0,663.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279/transcript/67558/annotation/18","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Brett Branco: So it's really like, it's a lot of these, I think what was, it might seem like small things that they do to cope, but the number of things that they have to worry about on days that there's flooding are numerous. So I think that's one. And then I think another, more a larger systemic response is that communities are becoming better organized, better informed, more engaged with their public officials, with different planning processes, with agencies, basically to try to get help, to try to get the kind of large investments in infrastructure and planning that's needed to solve the problem in the longer term. So there's like the day-to-day coping, and then there's the larger scale kind of engagement and planning that's happening.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279#t=663.0,732.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279/transcript/67558/annotation/19","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Daniela Trapani: Yeah, definitely. Yeah, right, because the day-to-day and also trying to solve the problem or work to solve it. Shifting to water monitoring and water quality, what water quality monitoring is being done in Queens, and if you could talk more about that?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279#t=732.0,758.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279/transcript/67558/annotation/20","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Brett Branco: And before I talk about that, the one thing sort of a preface to that response about what kind of water quality monitoring is being done, one of the good news stories around New York City is that in general, water quality is improving and that, yeah, I don't know if it's gone unnoticed, but certainly the people that work in this field, people who deal with water know that this is happening. And the reason for that is because, primarily because the city and primarily Department of Environmental Protection has just made a lot of investments in infrastructure and other things to try to improve water quality. Everything from trying to reduce the number of raw sewage releases during rain events, or thinking of ways to hold that water until the wet weather event ends so they can then treat it before it gets discharged. So a lot of those types of investments, more green infrastructure to soak up the water, et cetera.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279#t=758.0,834.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279/transcript/67558/annotation/21","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Brett Branco: So with that being said, there's three sort of monitoring programs that I can kind of spotlight that would affect Queens. So one is the city, the Department of Environmental Protection, has a long running harbor monitoring program. So they go out every few weeks in the cold weather months, but then weekly during the warm weather months, like the summertime, and they go out and they do a very comprehensive set of samples at stations all around the city, all around Queens from the Long Island Sound all the way down into Jamaica Bay, and they measure a lot of different things. So everything from the indicators of human pathogens, so what we call fecal indicator bacteria that determines whether someone would want to come in contact with the water, to the nutrients that in overabundance can impact the ecosystem, dissolved oxygen, temperature. They just measure a lot of different things, and that, those data are readily available through the New York City Open Data website.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279#t=834.0,911.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279/transcript/67558/annotation/22","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Brett Branco: So that's the New York City Harbor Monitoring Program. Another water quality testing program that's done in the city is by the New York Department of Health. So they have a beach testing program, so when the beaches are open, they go out and they test the waters right off those beaches and make that information readily available. You can receive information about beach closures and things like that through the different advisory systems that the city has set up for communicating hazards. You can actually, I'm trying to find the information, you can actually, a text, you can get on a text list. So anytime that there's a beach closure, you can get an automatic notification that a beach has been closed because bacteria levels have exceeded a certain threshold.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279#t=911.0,976.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279/transcript/67558/annotation/23","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Brett Branco: So that's actually super useful if you're a beach goer. Yeah, especially those beaches, and of course, there's a lot of beaches in Queens down along the Rockaways, et cetera. And then there's also a more like a citizen science monitoring program also for those bacteria that indicate adverse health impacts for people. These days it's run by the Billion Oyster Project. It was started by the New York City Water Trail Association, and now it's run by the Billion Oyster Project, and they have every Thursday during the summer, every Thursday, volunteers go out all across the city and take a water sample and then deliver it to, there's certain centrally located labs that can process those. So everyone takes a sample Thursday morning, sends it to their central lab. Sometimes those labs are at, I think Queens College in the past has helped support the lab testing. Brooklyn College has done it in the past, et cetera, but also places like the Hudson River Park Trust, I think, also. So there's a bunch of different places you can bring your sample, and then they get analyzed and they all get posted on Friday, and it gives a very comprehensive snapshot across the entire city. Every Friday during the warm weather months, everyone's using the same methods. So it's really kind of a cool program. So yeah, those are some examples, right?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279#t=976.0,1078.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279/transcript/67558/annotation/24","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Daniela Trapani: Yes, I've heard about the Billion Oyster Project, but I didn't know that they did the water testing like that. So this is a really, oh, sorry, go ahead.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279#t=1078.0,1091.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279/transcript/67558/annotation/25","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Brett Branco: Yeah, I was just going to say they coordinate it, so they do some of the sample collection themselves, but it's really just a lot of different civic organizations or environmental groups, everything from the Sebago Canoe Club down in Jamaica Bay to university students. It's just a lot of volunteer effort, the Newtown Creek Alliance, just a lot of different groups will contribute to it, but the Billion Oyster Project is that, they're the central organizer these days, so they collect all the results and make sure that those numbers get posted so the public can access 'em.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279#t=1091.0,1134.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279/transcript/67558/annotation/26","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Daniela Trapani: Okay, got it. This is a question, and you may have already answered this, but what is New York City doing to ensure drinking water is free from pollutants?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279#t=1134.0,1150.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279/transcript/67558/annotation/27","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Brett Branco: So our drinking water, as you probably well know, comes from places north of the city, comes from the Catskill Mountains, basically. So I don't personally work a lot with drinking water, but I can say this about it, that the city really closely regulates the watershed where our drinking water is essentially collected. The rain falls on the watershed and that drains to a series of reservoirs. And so you have to keep the watershed fairly pristine so that as that water is draining from the watershed into these reservoirs, it's not picking up a lot of pollutants. So the water as it sits in the reservoirs is pretty pure as it is, which allows New York City to be able to provide that water without extensive treatment a lot of other municipalities have to do.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279#t=1150.0,1220.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279/transcript/67558/annotation/28","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Daniela Trapani: Okay. Yeah, good to know. Oh, it looks like you, oh, okay. I thought you were frozen for a minute.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279#t=1220.0,1229.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279/transcript/67558/annotation/29","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Brett Branco: No. Yeah.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279#t=1229.0,1232.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279/transcript/67558/annotation/30","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Daniela Trapani: Okay. This is another question about the sewage system. Raw sewage is polluting the waterways in Queens. Do you know which waterways and where we can access data or maps on this topic?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279#t=1232.0,1248.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279/transcript/67558/annotation/31","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Brett Branco: Yeah, I mean, so like I mentioned, well, it's really all around the city. The systems where you have the rainwater, the stormwater mixing with the raw sewage, those systems are called combined sewer outfalls. And you have these combined sewer outfall events, and they happen all around the city. So almost any water body, any marine water body, all the coastal waters can be affected, these combined sewer outfall pipes. And so immediately following a rainfall event is the time where you really don't want to come in contact with water, coastal water around the city, and you need a couple of tidal cycles to help flush that out. But like I said, there's been a lot of infrastructure investments to try to reduce the frequency and severity of those raw sewage discharge events, and they are being effective. If you look at the quality as a good example, if you look at the concentration of these, what we call fecal indicator bacteria, it's bacteria that indicate the presence of raw sewage in the water, that has declined, particularly over the past 20 years now, actually almost the past 30 years, it's been somewhat in decline.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279#t=1248.0,1347.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279/transcript/67558/annotation/32","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Brett Branco: Well, no, I'm sorry, the past 20 years. Past 20 years has been in decline. So that's good news. It wasn't that long ago, when I say not that long ago, I mean, some of the wastewater treatment plants around the city didn't come online until the eighties. I think the Gowanus Canal is a good example. So even though it's still a problem, we still, it's still a problem we have to address, it is getting better. But again, getting back to your original question, all the water bodies around the city are impacted by these raw sewage discharge events. It's just that they're less severe than they have been in the past.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279#t=1347.0,1396.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279/transcript/67558/annotation/33","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Daniela Trapani: Okay. That's good to know. Let's see. Moving back to the topic of flooding, and I know we talked about the subways a little bit already, but how does flooding impact the subways in Queens?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279#t=1396.0,1413.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279/transcript/67558/annotation/34","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Brett Branco: How does it impact the subways in Queens? Yeah, I mean, so again, it's the underground subways in Queens. Some of the lines are elevated, and those parts of the subway lines aren't necessarily directly impacted, but it's the ones that are below ground. But everyone's seen the photos and the little movie clips of water coming into subway stations during big rainfall events and things like that. And it's mostly the rainfall events or really big storms like the December 23rd, that December 23rd storm that we recently had. But it's primarily just water coming in. Sometimes it is just coming into the subway entrances. Water will find a way to get into the empty spaces, right? So that's what it is. It's just the water coming in, raining down onto all that infrastructure and making it difficult for commuters to even get to their trains sometimes.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279#t=1413.0,1489.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279/transcript/67558/annotation/35","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Daniela Trapani: Yeah. Okay. The next question I have is, what are the land statutes in Queens? In some states, land can't be preserved if it's flooded.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279#t=1489.0,1503.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279/transcript/67558/annotation/36","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Brett Branco: You know what? That is not my area of expertise, so I'm going to defer on that question. Yeah.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279#t=1503.0,1512.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279/transcript/67558/annotation/37","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Daniela Trapani: Okay. No worries. Okay. So those were the majority of my questions. So if there's anything else about climate change impacts or flooding or water quality monitoring that you see in your work that you haven't touched on, if you could share that would be wonderful just to help with our research.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279#t=1512.0,1536.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279/transcript/67558/annotation/38","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Brett Branco: Yeah, so my core discipline, I'm an oceanographer by training, and my work has always been focused on coastal systems and primarily estuaries, those sort of semi-enclosed bodies of water where the river meets the sea. And New York City is surrounded by this great estuary, the Hudson River Estuary, which Jamaica Bay is part of, and then the Long Island Sound is an estuary. So as an oceanographer or marine scientist focused on estuaries, one of the things I think that we always think about are what the long-term climate change impacts are going to have on ecosystems.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279#t=1536.0,1582.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279/transcript/67558/annotation/39","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Brett Branco: So there's a lot of evidence that changing water temperatures—water temperatures are getting generally warmer. Again, these are decades long shifts, but they impact the range of different species. And so you see species kind of migrating into areas that you might not have necessarily seen them before. So you see those kinds of changes, and that's going to have a long-term impact on everything from marine food webs to, and potentially, potential impacts on people whose livelihoods depend on certain types of fisheries, for example. So those are things that we keep an eye on that aren't necessarily something that the average Queens resident might be thinking about every day, right? Because they're worried about the flooding that's happening right now and those kinds of things.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279#t=1582.0,1650.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279/transcript/67558/annotation/40","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Daniela Trapani: Yeah. What kind of species have you seen migrating that didn't used to be in this area?","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279#t=1650.0,1659.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279/transcript/67558/annotation/41","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Brett Branco: Okay. Alright. I'd have to go back and think about that specifically about these specific waters. Just in general, you hear about, I've read stuff about, so for example, lobsters. Their ranges are changing. A lot of times it's, a lot of times it's much smaller organisms that people don't usually pay much attention to. The creepy crawlies in the mud and different types of smaller planktonic species and things like that. Yeah. But I'd have to think a little bit more to give you a good list.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279#t=1659.0,1702.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279/transcript/67558/annotation/42","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Daniela Trapani: Okay. No worries.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279#t=1702.0,1703.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279/transcript/67558/annotation/43","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Brett Branco: Yeah, yeah.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279#t=1703.0,1706.0"},{"id":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279/transcript/67558/annotation/44","type":"Annotation","motivation":"transcribing","body":{"type":"TextualBody","value":"Daniela Trapani: Okay. So those are all my questions. Thank you so much, Brett, for giving us all this information. Let's see. So I'll let Meral know to stop the recording. So one second. Let me just let her know.","format":"text/plain"},"target":"https://queenslibrary.aviaryplatform.com/collections/2074/collection_resources/99506/file/197279#t=1706.0,1723.09333"}]}]}]}