In late September, Dinu Ahmed was getting ready in the bathroom on the ground floor of her East Elmhurst, Queens home when she heard a sound she hasn’t forgotten since: glurg glurg.

A feeling of dread washed over her as she watched a slow stream of clear water trickle from the toilet. Eventually, water sloshed out from under the toilet lid — and then a funnel of black water emerged.

It was a sewer backup. Ahmed, a 37-year-old public defender, hadn’t even realized it was raining, but outside, rain was accumulating quickly, overwhelming the drainage system and pushing the water the wrong way.

It wasn’t the first time this had happened in her house, and she was not alone.

From July through October 2023, New Yorkers logged almost 5,400 complaints to 311 of sewer backups, a nearly 14% increase compared to the same period in the previous year, according to data from the preliminary Mayor’s Management Report. 

The city’s sewer pipes are designed to accommodate about 1.75 inches of water per hour (though it’s slightly less in Queens), and about 60% of them deal with both wastewater and stormwater. When there’s too much rain for the system to handle, the sewers, catch basins, manholes and other drains can back up. 

And that can lead to water gushing up from toilets and gurgling out from bathtub drains inside New Yorker’s homes.

The Department of Environmental Protection chalked up the increase in sewer backups to the historic levels of rain. With as much as 10% more rain expected each year by the 2030s as a result of climate change, the problem of backups likely won’t subside without individual and government action.

Low-lying neighborhoods with poor drainage capacity can experience sewer backups. New Yorkers from Park Slope in Brooklyn, to Pelham Gardens, in the Bronx have in recent years witnessed water bubble up through toilets and drains in their basement and ground-level floors when it rains.

But sewer backups can also be caused by failing infrastructure. In 2019, for example, a pipe collapsed in the sewer main and flooded more than 100 South Ozone Park homes with sewage, displacing residents.

In the past four years, the most complaints about sewage backup have been reported in an area of Brooklyn that includes Gerritsen Beach, Mill Basin and Marine Park. More than a decade ago, Hurricane’s Sandy’s surge overwhelmed the sewer system and caused sewer backups in homes in some of those same neighborhoods. Neighborhoods including Canarsie and South Jamaica in Queens also saw top volumes of sewer backup reports.

Organizing around sewer backups and neighborhood flooding in East Elmhurst, where President Joe Biden paid a visit after Hurricane Ida in 2021, has come to a head in the last several months. Neighbors are pushing for sewer and drainage upgrades in the long run, nature-based solutions like rain gardens to manage stormwater in the short-term and financial assistance in the meantime as they work to clean up and protect their homes.

“You cannot put a rain barrier over the toilet. The solutions being offered are not matching the problems,” Ahmed said.

Check Valve, Please

Installing a check valve can protect against sewer backups. The valves have a one-way flap that allows wastewater to flow out a pipe into the sewer system, but prevents water from coming back the other way and entering a home.

Ever since Hurricane Ida, Queens-based company Balkan Sewer and Water Main has seen a big increase in property owners looking to install check valves, according to a sales representative. But the process — which entails ripping up a floor, cutting open a pipe, installing new plumbing and the valve and then re-cementing the floor — isn’t cheap. Prices can go up to $12,000, the rep said. (A law enacted last year requires the DEP to create a financial assistance program to reduce the costs of installing backwater valves by April 2025.)

After her toilet flooded in a way that “sounded like cannonballs,” Tina Jimenez, another East Elmhurst resident, paid about $5,000 to have a check valve installed in June 2023. She hasn’t been flooded since. 

But check valves do come with another price: since the water from flushing toilets and showers has nowhere to go when the valve engages, residents have to pause using running water.

“Whenever it rains, we don’t run any water in the house. You don’t do dishes, you don’t take a bath, so you don’t open the system, and nothing comes back,” she said. “You have to see the dance that we do, sticking our heads out to see if it’s raining.”

Jimenez, a 64-year-old with cancer, said she and her sister, with whom she lives, have gone for two days without running the water, instead cleaning their hands with sanitizer and drinking water from a pitcher.

She considers the check valve a bandaid — and one that requires regular upkeep for it to work.

Engineering Solutions Years Away

East Elmhurst is highly residential, its streets mostly lined with tidy two- and three-story brick rowhomes, often with slanted driveways. Planes fly low overhead on their way to LaGuardia Airport, and the neighborhood is near the Bowery Bay Wastewater Treatment Plant, which receives much of the greater area’s wastewater.

Those factors complicate any sewer expansion projects on deck, according to the DEP. Any change to the local sewers could affect other neighborhoods whose wastewater flows through Elmhurst to get to the treatment plant. 

Still, the agency is studying long-term “engineering solutions” that could be appropriate for the neighborhood. The study won’t be done for at least 14 months, and any actual construction would be years away from that, according to DEP Deputy Chief Operating Officer Kim Cipriano.

“We want to build something that works not just for today but for future generations,” she said at a community meeting earlier this month. 

The DEP has installed slotted manhole covers to increase drainage areas and applied for federal funding for a “cloudburst” project for the neighborhood to handle heavy, sudden downpours. It’s also looking to install rain gardens to prevent water from hitting the sewer system.

Those plans will take time to fully implement, leaving residents potentially facing years of sewer backups.

“I’m still scared for these years where we’re waiting,” said Ahmed, whose home repairs from the last several floods are just winding down. “I hope there’s movement in a reasonable, thoughtful timetable.”

But residents have noticed the effort and attention. Many have observed city workers clearing catch basins and inspecting sewers in their neighborhood more often. 

“They are vacuuming the sewers now. I‘ve always seen them clean the catch basins, but I’ve never seen them with the vacuum trucks,” said D. M. Brady, who has lived in the neighborhood for most of her 68 years. “Things are happening. They explained to us the situation and how the water flows and blah, blah, blah. I understand it, but I live it, so I don’t like it. But they’re listening. They’re trying.”