When Hurricane Ida pummeled New Jersey in Sept. 2021, bringing tornadoes and flash floods from south to north, the Ivy Hill neighborhood along Seton Hall University and Ivy Hill Park in Newark, a majority Black neighborhood, saw its streets turn into rivers. Floodwaters reached three to five feet high, sweeping away cars and spilling into homes. Residents incurred tens of thousands of dollars in damages. Although they say Seton Hall isn’t responsible for all of the water, the flooding problem has been made worse from decades of construction and has remained unresolved since 2001, when residents first brought the issue to the attention of the university after Hurricane Allison.

For low-income and marginalized communities in New Jersey's major cities, archaic sewer overflow systems pose serious environmental damage and health risks to residents who have historically experienced deep socio-economic inequalities and environmental racism. But with hurricane season just around the corner and the threat of raw sewage spilling into their streets, weary Newark residents are finally seeing the beginning of environmental justice in stormwater management as community organizers push their city to build baseline green infrastructure projects.

At a virtual public hearing in April, several Newark residents and New Jersey activists opposed the Passaic Valley Sewerage Commission’s (PVSC) air permit modification application, which would allow PVSC to operate a standby power generation facility. Although part of a resiliency project initiated after Hurricane Sandy, the gas-powered facility would be the fourth power plant in or near the Ironbound neighborhood of Newark, a community already suffering from high levels of air pollution from numerous pollution sources.