Wait! Is a community engagement campaign to reduce problems with combined sewer over ow. This program uses printed media and text messages to encourage residents to limit their use of unnecessary water during rainy events. These activ- ities include washing dishes, using laundry machines, having multiple baths and ushing the toilet. A pilot program is set to start this June on a small targeted area in Brooklyn. With Success, the pilot will grow to cover all communities in Brooklyn.

After initial planning sessions with city wide water quality advocates including the S.W.I.M. Coalition and Newtown Creek Alliance, NYC DEP hired Futerra a behavioral design agency and M&R, a strategy and community engagement rm. Together they generated printed media, helped create the pilot scope and conducted preliminary community outreach.

Pratt Institute joined the Wait! effort the Spring of 2016 to assist NYC DEP in assessing the pilot’s success and scaling it up citywide. Pratt’s research team includes graduate Green Infrastructure Fellows Maria Gonzalez, Lekhana Chidananda and Miguel Diaz led by Jaime Stein, Professor and Director of the Sustainable Environmental Systems program and graduate Communications Design students Corwin Green and Melissa Berman led by Professor David Frisco. Collectively, the research team, over the course of the Spring semester, generated a strategy and a list of recommendations to consider for measuring Wait!’s success expanding citywide.

Want to know more about the WAIT! Program?

Please read our report developed along with the Graduate Communications Department.

Recommendations Report For Wait Program!