Exclusive | Raw sewage spills into Queens bay from broken pipe but residents swim there anyway after city alert fails to reach public

Thousands of gallons of raw sewage spilled into a popular College Point swimming hole last month — and locals are flushed with rage that they weren’t given enough warning about the hazardous event.Roughly 7,100 gallons — enough to fill a backyard pool — poured into Flushing Bay on April 23 after a pipe from the nearby Tallman Island Wastewater Resource Recovery Facility burst, The Post has learned.Rather than alert the media with a press conference or put up waring signs along the water, the Department of Environmental Protection did little more than send out a single notification via NYAlert, an obscure city text service that you have to sign up for in advance.Residents say would have slipped through the cracks if it weren’t for a lone neighbor who follows the relatively unknown information feed.“We’re using these waters for recreation.

We’re doing beach cleanups to dragon boating, kayaking, fishing and we should have a way of knowing what’s happening with our waterways other than some obscure messaging system that I guess you have to sign up for — if you are lucky enough to even know that the system exists,” fumed Kat Cervino, the president of the Coastal Preservation Network.“How many other times has this happened? I have no idea.”The tainted water flowed into Flushing Bay, home to several yacht clubs and a tiny beach favored by swimmers and fishermen, after the sewage escaped from the busted 122nd Street Pump Station and into a stormwater catch basin.The sewage gushed for five hours — at times reaching a velocity of 100 gallons per minute — before the DEP fixed the pipe, ultimately releasing a 7,084-gallon cocktail of human waste, food scraps and more into the bay.“As for our communications with the authorities and community, an immediate notification was made to the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation, as required by law.A notification was also sent out via NY-Alert, as well as posted online,” a DEP spoke...