Case Study: A Walk In The Park

By Joy LePree
published by NPCA, the Association of the Manufactured Concrete Products Industry

The history of Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, N.Y., is an interesting one that began in the early 1700s when Jacobus Van Cortlandt built a dam across Tibbetts Brook to power his mills, thus creating Van Cortlandt Lake. More than a century later, New York City constructed an aqueduct, the city's first major water supply project, now dubbed the Old Croton Aqueduct Trail.

Then in 1895, the Van Cortlandt Golf Course became the centerpiece of the park, and holds the bragging rights as the oldest public golf course in the United States.

The story nearly ended tragically a few years ago when New York City engineers discovered that the lake had become the victim of the busy city that grew up around it. Once very scenic and beautiful, Van Cortlandt Park had the misfortune of being located adjacent to an area where several major New York City highways were subsequently built. Trash, debris, salt, sand and other runoff from these highways nearly choked the lake and resulted in a reduction in depth from an original 13 feet to just over 2 feet, which is not enough to support aquatic life. The pollutants also created potential noncompliance problems with the Environmental Protection Agency's Clean Water Act of 1976.

In an effort to restore the lake to its original beauty and to comply with EPA's regulations, city engineers decided to dredge the lake and install a stormwater treatment system to handle the runoff from the highways. While they knew working within the historic site to design a system large enough to treat the high volume of runoff would be no easy task, engineers opted for a sophisticated precast concrete collection system that would make the job much more efficient.