Change is coming along the heavily industrialized East River shores of Greenpoint and Williamsburg in Brooklyn.
Brooklyn streets with lovely names like Metropolitan and Grand once linked Manhattan's teeming Lower East Side to the city's largest borough via ferries. They retain magnificent skyline views, as do the unused piers and wharves off of Huron, India and Java Streets, that via freighter linked these neighborhoods to markets and goods worldwide. These once busy waterfronts now house the Newtown Creek wastewater treatment plant, the hulking remains of abandoned industrial structures, dilapidated piers.
Today, a thriving club and residential scene has emerged on Bedford Avenue, one stop from Manhattan by the "L" Train and a short walk from the river. Waterfront that was once the exclusive preserve of power plants, oil storage facilities, lumber yards, ferry slips and working piers, is being transformed into parkland, housing and a focus for a community returning to its maritime roots. The existence of large, underutilized, relatively inexpensive, waterfront parcels, easy access to Manhattan and superb views of the Manhattan skyline fuel the transformation.
Change comes to these neighborhoods, much as it comes throughout the city, in fits and starts. In recent years, residents have opposed municipal uses such as solid waste transfer stations and power plants. Today, the locals are advocating for public access to both the East River waterfront and the banks of polluted and much-maligned Newtown Creek while continuing to oppose power plants.
Conflict has come to this corner of Brooklyn as large empty spaces have been discovered by groups as diverse as power plant proponents, waterfront recreationists, housing developers and open space advocates. The neighborhood's lack of open space and waterfront access combined with a long history of having noxious municipal uses sited in the community makes today 's clash interesting even by New York City standards. A City Planning Commission zoning review, that promises to be contentious, is under way.
In Williamsburg, NAG, a community organization originally founded to fight waste transfer stations, has called for improved public waterfront access, open space and mixed-use development. In Greenpoint, 41 local, civic and non-profit community groups joined to form the Greenpoint Waterfront Association for Parks and Planning, GWAPP, an umbrella advocacy group. Again, the association's original focus was opposition to power plants. Both organizations now focus on the challenge posed by development --residential, commercial and industrial.
Joe Vance, co-chair of the Greenpoint association, described his role as one of the many watch dogs for the community. He hopes to "shepherd the neighborhood through the rezoning, open space and development processes" now unfolding.
At Brooklyn Borough Hall on June 13th, Governor Pataki announced grants to study and plan for public access to these Brooklyn waterfronts and for joint city and state development of open space at the WNYC transmitter site by the Greenpoint piers. These grants follow the recent $9.3 million purchase of more than six acres at Kent Avenue between North 7th and North 9th Streets for New York University sports fields, a waterfront esplanade and community open space.
Private sector forces are in the mix too. Two proposed waterfront developments in Greenpoint, comprising 38 acres, would, in Joe Vance's estimate add 15,000 new residents to a community of perhaps 75,000 people, dramatically inundating the ara.
And then, there is the power plant. To help meet the city's estimated future electricity demand, the TransGas Energy (TGE) System has proposed a 1,100-megawatt facility for the Bushwick Creek Inlet at the border of Williamsburg and Greenpoint. The energy company favors the site because of its proximity to electric transmission lines, oil pipelines, Con Ed steam and the river. The neighborhood groups have banded together to oppose the project. According to Vance, "this is the first power plant of this size proposed for a waterfront site without a power plant."
TGE is expected to submit its application late this summer.
Peter B. Fleischer, currently writing a book on the New York City waterfront, was formerly a transportation and environment policy advisor to New York City Mayors David Dinkins and Rudy Giuliani.
In recent weeks, New York's elected officials, including Senator Charles Schumer and Congressman Anthony Weiner, have identified harbor security as an essential piece of the region's post-9/11 response. New York harbor has numerous strategic and potentially vulnerable waterfront sites such as oil depots, airports, docks and bridges. Citing the risk of terrorists and weapons of mass destruction arriving on ships or in containers through the port of New York and New Jersey, the officials have called for much more security.
The Coast Guard, already involved and stretched thin, has been recruited to augment these efforts. Inspections of freighters bound for New York will occur out at sea. The Coast Guard reports that boardings have increased seven-fold. FBI inspection of cargo manifests and ship personnel will begin four days prior to a ship's arrival in the harbor (compared to the one day that it is currently).
Technological methods to efficiently detect people and dangerous materials within containers entering the port are being developed on an expedited basis. Ironically, the globalization process that spurred increased use of container transport, moving ever faster from ship to truck and rail and then on to the nation's interior, now brings the threat of global terror to all parts of the U.S.
Coast Guard security provisions put in place after September 11th continue to constrain recreational water users including jet skiers, kayakers, and boaters. The Coast Guard enforces strict off-limit zones near bridge supports, power plants and port facilities.
Fleet Week
The U.S. Navy, Coast Guard and naval vessels from Canada and Denmark will make their annual entry into the Port of New York for the period of May 22 to May 29th. Amphibious Assault craft, guided missile cruisers and anti-mine vessels will highlight the visit. Since 1984, this annual rite is the Navy's way of showing appreciation to New York and other port towns around the country. Fleet Week also serves to build and rally the Navy's constituencies. Typically, over 200,000 New Yorkers visit the ships and view the Parade of Ships. The naval vessels will be berthed along West Street on the Hudson River near Pier 86. Some exhibits will take place in Staten Island.
Waterfront Conference
On May 15th, the Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance's Waterfront Conference convened in the cavernous and once grand Hoboken terminal on the New Jersey waterfront and in the damaged but still impressive World Financial Center in Battery Park City. Those morning and afternoon locations were linked by a lunch cruise on the river on a New York Waterway ferry.
Dennis Suszkowski of the Hudson River Foundation presented research detailing the declining levels of pollutants and heavy metals in the harbor' s water and sediments. He noted twenty-five years of improvements from 1974 to 1998. The conference keynote speaker was New Jersey Governor James McGreevey, who talked about "improving access to the waterfront, enhancing parks and waterfront facilities, and making the eighteen-mile. Hudson River Waterfront Walkway a reality."
Led by its president Kent Barwick, the Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance has, over the last two years (since the last conference) assembled a diverse group of commercial, environmental, governmental and recreational interests concerned with the ongoing development and use of the city's waterfront. It0 has prominently proposed the Harbor Loop Ferry as a means to bring New Yorkers and tourists to the harbor's reaches and possibly trigger development in underused harbor niches.
The Flotilla
On June 2nd, an ad hoc flotilla of hundreds of watercraft ranging from historic sailboats to powerboats to locally built rowboats and kayaks will meet in the waters off the Battery and from there descend upon Governors Island. The Flotilla, the brainchild of Al Butzel and Carter Craft, and sponsored by www.ReclaimGovernorsIsland.org seeks to focus attention on Governors Island, arguably the most valuable, underutilized parcel of land on the metropolitan area waterfront. Organizers hope to make the point that the 175-acre, mid-harbor island should be made available for public use, open space, historical and cultural awareness as well as educational pursuits. The island has been virtually unused since the Coast Guard left New York.
Peter B. Fleischer, currently writing a book on the New York City waterfront, was formerly a transportation and environment policy advisor to New York City Mayors David Dinkins and Rudy Giuliani.
For almost three decades, Ruth Anderberg was a leader in the struggle to clean up and restore the Bronx River, the city's only true free flowing river. Inspired by Earth Day and variously aided by Boy Scout troops, the National Guard Auxiliary, and the Bronx Chief of Police, Anderberg oversaw efforts that removed refrigerators and washing machines, planted trees and educated local children about the river.
Then, Anderberg retired. Last year, in her place, the Bronx River Alliance was created to lead the 60 corporate, governmental and community groups involved with the river's restoration. The river these groups focus on runs for roughly twenty miles, from a spring-fed marsh near Valhalla, New York through pristine parkland in Westchester before it meets up with the East River near Hunts Point.
Alexie Torres-Fleming, the chairperson for the Bronx River Alliance, notes how the river and the Bronx communities along its banks have been neglected, if not abused, for years, and cites as an example a cement plant on the riverĂŞs western shore, that is representative of what happens when a community lacks political heft.
The hulking, abandoned plant is the focus of a campaign by the Youth Ministry for Peace and Justice, an organization that Torres-Fleming also directs. It calls for demolition of the cement plant, expansion of nearby Starlight Park and the construction of a bike and walking path that will literally and figuratively bridge three communities divided by the crisscrossing highways. Torres-Fleming sees the "blazed" but not yet officially opened trail between these communities as a connection to the water, a recreational resource and a link among people with shared aspirations and similar problems. She wants the shared enterprise of trail and park building to simultaneously empower the community's youth by giving them a stake and a rallying point.
And the river seems to be doing just that. Hernan Melara, 19, has volunteered for four years for the Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice, knocking on doors, passing out leaflets, typing notes and pushing bureaucrats to do more, sooner for the river that runs through his community.
His waterfront involvement began when he traveled to the Westchester section of the Bronx River where he saw a "clean river with turtles and ducks". "Why can't we have this?" he asked himself. Soon thereafter, he was knocking on neighbor's doors. The response from some older citizens was "great idea, I used to swim or fish there". From younger residents, the response was all too often "There is a river there?"
Melara wanted to experience the river. He joined a canoe trip that led him down the river from 219th Street to its confluence with the East River. He describes a journey through forests, the Bronx Botanical Garden, the buffalo park in the Bronx Zoo, portaging around dams and waterfalls, passing under city streets and alongside derelict industry before reaching the waves, tides and sandbars that are nature's markers between natural places. "It was a great journey and we got something accomplished. I learned never to limit myself".
Ruth Anderberg should be very pleased.
Peter B. Fleischer, currently writing a book on the New York City waterfront, was formerly a transportation and environment policy advisor to New York City Mayors David Dinkins and Rudy Giuliani.