Vanessa Galvez, a 26-year-old Queens Village resident and resident engineer at the Department of Design and Construction (DDC), is currently leading a project to install 164 bioswales in Maspeth.
Bioswales are natural areas located near stormwater catch basins that use extremely porous soil and specific plants to absorb and divert stormwater from filling up city sewers and ultimately, our streets.
“Instead of letting runoff flow into our storm sewers or ponds, or create floods, the bioswales will be collecting the water to saturate the soil, to water the plants and the trees. It will beautify the neighborhood and disperse and clean the water to an extent,” Galvez said. “I take pride in bioswales. If I’m driving around with my family, I’ll say, ‘Oh look! I built that!’ At first you look at it and it just looks like a tree pit, but once you look at all the specs, all the standards, you realize it’s helping the city.”
Galvez, a alumna of NYU’s Tandon School of Engineering, joined DDC in 2012. Her first day on the job was the same day that Superstorm Sandy struck.
Her family comes from El Salvador. When she visited her parents’ home country as a 12 year old, she noticed children playing with dirty water on the streets of the city. A graduate of Thomas Edison High School in Jamaica, Galvez said her interest in mechanical engineering percolated after watching a documentary about the environmental failures in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina.
“Looking back on it now, they could have built a simple filter out of rocks,” she said about her trip to El Salvador. “Maybe it wouldn’t have cleaned the water enough to drink it, but it might have exposed the kids to a bit more cleanliness. The way we function impacts the cleanliness of the environment. It’s all related.”
Galvez said the installation of 164 bioswales in Maspeth should be completed by the winter. The $3.8 million project will also include new sidewalks and curbs.
