Southeast Queens Residents Environmental Justice Coalition

The Southeast Queens Residents Environmental Justice Coalition (SQREJC) promotes civic pride in maintaining a stable, beautiful, and desirable Southeast Queens Community through direct liaison with community residents, city agencies, and community-based organizations to ensure a clean, safe, and environmentally healthy residential community.

Over the years the coalition has worked on matters as diverse as advocating for waste equity legislation and reducing the noise, odors, and pollutants created by having waste transfer stations near homes, to preventing the closure of a Veterans Affairs hospital.

Flooding in Southeast Queens

In the fall of 2023, the coalition revived and established SQREJC as an official organization to advance environmental justice in Southeast Queens, a predominantly Black and Brown community in New York City. One of their major local issues is flooding.

When most people think about flooding, they think about hurricanes or heavy rain. But in parts of Southeast Queens, families are living with a very different kind of crisis: groundwater flooding.

For nearly three decades, groundwater has been rising beneath neighborhoods like Springfield Gardens, Laurelton, Rosedale, St. Albans, and South Jamaica. In many homes, water seeps up through basement floors even during long stretches of dry weather. Residents run sump pumps around the clock just to keep their homes habitable, paying higher electric bills while battling mold, structural damage, ruined belongings, and the constant fear that the next storm will make things worse.

This isn't only a natural disaster. It is the legacy of public policy. In the 1990s, local groundwater wells that had been pumping water from the aquifer for decades were gradually shut down. Without that pumping, the water table rose dramatically. At the same time, much of the infrastructure needed to manage groundwater was never replaced, leaving residents to bear the consequences. Thousands of homeowners have lived for decades with a problem that doesn't make national headlines because it unfolds slowly. Every day, water seeps into basements, pumps run continuously, homes deteriorate, and families shoulder costs.

SQREJC is working to change this. The coalition brings together neighborhood organizations to document the problem, educate residents, advocate for public investment, and push for long-term solutions instead of asking homeowners to shoulder the burden alone.