As two Olympic cyclists and a dozen roller bladers from P.S. 5 glided onto a newly restored esplanade along the Harlem River, Mayor Michael Bloomberg dedicated the final link of the interim Manhattan waterfront greenway. With the September 30th completion of what is known as the Harlem River Speedway (a straightaway once used for carriage racing), it is now possible to circle Manhattan on bicycle, foot or skate - although adventurers who attempt this will still have the company of trucks and taxis part of the way.
The interim route connects a number of pedestrian and cycling paths that have been built on the Manhattan waterfront over the last decade as part of the larger 1993 citywide Greenway Plan(pdf format). These 23 miles of Manhattan greenway, which provide access to 1,500 acres of parkland, connect to temporary on-street detours. To mark the entire 32-mile route, the city put up 750 signs with the Greenway logo, including directional and safety signage.
The temporary linking of the greenway sections is just the first phase of Mayor Bloomberg's effort to fulfill the promise he made in his 2002 State of the City address to complete the greenway around Manhattan. Finishing the project in record time, Bloomberg overcame resistance by some community boards and bridged the bureaucratic boundaries between the various city and state agencies responsible for different parts of the greenway, including the city transportation, parks and planning departments and Economic Development Corporation, and the State Department of Transportation. This phase of the greenway received $4.5 million in city funding and $1.5 million from the state.
There is still a long way to go before a continuous green path runs around the shoreline of Manhattan. The area affected by the reconstruction of the Harlem River bridges will not be available for a decade. Another missing piece is the riverfront next to the United Nations, which has had security concerns about allowing access there. The city is working with the United Nations on a possible esplanade and greenway link tied to the organization's proposed consolidation plan. The next phase of the Manhattan Greenway, which will begin after the plans for the South Ferry station and the reconstruction of Battery Place are finalized, includes the construction of a world-class bikeway around The Battery.
Greenway advocates, like the Neighborhood Open Space Coalition, and Transportation Alternatives, have been cheering on the efforts of Mayor Bloomberg and the city agencies. Dave Lutz, the director of the Neighborhood Open Space Coalition and one of the people who launched the Greenway Plan, said, "This is the city we've been imagining for 15 years."
Lutz was even more celebratory about Mayor Bloomberg's comments on his radio show the week following the reopening of the Speedway. "The best news, the very best news," Lutz said, "was that the mayor announced support for a bicycle and footpath over the Verrazano Bridge." Brooklyn and Staten Island residents have been calling for such a path since the bridge was built in 1964 without one. "When I drew up the inventory of potential greenways for the city, the Verrazano was the target of it," Lutz said. "We figured if we built paths all over the city, you couldn't ignore the Verrazano Bridge."
Lutz noted that a pathway across the Verrazano could be a major tourist attraction. The bridge, once the longest suspension bridge in the world (now the sixth or seventh), has spectacular harbor and skyline views, and has parks on both sides, including historic Fort Wadsworth, part of the National Parks of New York Harbor.
Anne Schwartz is a freelance writer specializing in environmental issues. Previously, she was the editor of the Audubon Activist, a news journal for environmental action published by the National Audubon Society, and an editor at The New York Botanical Garden.
Dominic Ortiz owns a running store in Fresh Meadows, Queens. He is also president of the Quantum Feet Road Runners Club, which organizes group runs and sponsors races. So when he heard about the new Adopt-a-Park law the city recently approved, he was immediately interested in the possibility of the store and club adopting sections of the greenway that connects a number of parks in Queens. In addition to providing good publicity for his store, he said, "it would help promote our running club, which is a separate entity than the business. It would get people running in Queens – hopefully help us as we help them."
Ortiz is one of 30 individuals or groups who have expressed interest in adopting a park since the law was passed unanimously by the City Council and signed by Mayor Michael Bloomberg in early September. The law authorizes the parks commissioner to make agreements with individuals or groups to sponsor a park, playground, ball field, or other park space or facility -- even park equipment like a lawnmower -- by donating a specific amount of money or labor. The payments are to be used only for the sponsored areas. The program does not include parks that already have conservancies or trusts contributing more than $500,000 a year.
Many groups and individuals already help out in their local parks, playgrounds, and gardens by cleaning, weeding, organizing activities for kids and paying for the upkeep of plantings, benches, ball fields, and other park elements. The Adopt-A-Park program is intended to reach out to more people and businesses and create a way for smaller donations to be directed to a specific park, according to Councilmember Joseph Addabbo, who chairs the parks committee and introduced the legislation. The law also provides a more transparent process for tracking the donations.
The Parks department has three months to put the program in place. Department spokesman Chris Osgood stressed that volunteer efforts and sponsorships that already exist will continue. The department views Adopt-A-Park as a way to package and promote the philanthropy and volunteerism that is already benefiting many parks. The department is developing a menu of opportunities for people to get involved, Osgood said, depending on the amount donated. This could range from adopting a bench or tree to a whole park or playground. Small and appropriate signage would recognize contributions ; no parks would be renamed.
Adopt-A-Park is directed particularly at the smaller parks in the outer boroughs that have most felt the impact of the decline in public funding for parks maintenance and recreation over the past 15 years. While many parks could benefit, the law could create a new set of inequities, bringing funding to parks in areas that have more businesses or well-off residents.
There is also the danger that increased donations may reduce the pressure on the city to fund what is truly a public service. Councilmember Addabbo said, "Written into the language of Adopt-A-Park is the fact that this is not to be in lieu of budgetary funding. We didn't want an influx of volunteers and funding, and out of the back have the funding taken out of parks and put somewhere else." He said that the council's oversight during the budget process would be a check on any attempt by the city to reduce its appropriations for parks because Adopt-a-Park can pick up the slack.
Businesses, groups or individuals interested in Adopt-a-Park can call 311 or Councilmember Addabbo's City Hall office at 212-788-7069. For more information, check the New Yorkers for Parks website.
Anne Schwartz is a freelance writer specializing in environmental issues. Previously, she was the editor of the Audubon Activist, a news journal for environmental action published by the National Audubon Society, and an editor at The New York Botanical Garden.
Bush administration budget cuts could set back efforts to eliminate the Asian long-horned beetle from the New York City area, leaving the city and the Northeast at risk for widespread damage to parks, forests and street and backyard trees, as well as to the maple syrup, lumber, fruit-growing, and tourism industries. Funding for the eradication program, run by the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture in cooperation with local and state agencies, was cut to $26 million this year from $50 million last year.
The tree-killing beetle, first found in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, in 1996, was believed to have stowed away in wooden packing material used in shipments from China. It has since spread to a number of locations throughout New York City, including Central Park, Flushing Meadows Park, and Forest Park, as well as Long Island and New Jersey. A separate infestation was discovered in the Chicago area in 1998. Almost 6,000 trees in the New York City area have been cut and burned in the effort to wipe out the pest. The U.S. Department of Agriculture says the beetle has the potential to cause more devastation nationwide than Dutch elm disease, chestnut blight, and the gypsy moth combined.
As a result of the budget cuts, the service has had to reduce eradication efforts, particularly in Brooklyn and Queens, where it eliminated contracts with outside tree services that provided bucket trucks and tree-climbers to examine trees and also applied preventative pesticide treatments. Last year, the pesticide imidacloprid was injected into 134,000 healthy host trees – maples, ash, and other species preferred by the pest – in the entire New York quarantine zone, the areas of Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and Long Island where the beetle has been found. This year, the service treated 18,000 trees only in Manhattan and Islip, focusing on places where it believes the pest is contained and could be eliminated entirely. "Ideally, we would like to treat all non-infested host trees," said USDA spokesperson Daniel Parry. "When we have times like this with limited funds, we want to work from the outermost boundaries and compress the infestation inward."
Representatives Anthony Weiner and Joseph Crowley, who represent Congressional districts in Brooklyn and Queens, are calling on the federal Office of Management and Budget to restore emergency funding it has provided in the past for the beetle eradication effort. In an August 5th letter to the budget office director, Joshua Bolton, they asked him to approve the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service’s $46 million request for the beetle eradication program.
The service continues to conduct tree-to-tree surveys in the entire New York City quarantine zone, although at a slower pace. Trees found to be infested are destroyed and replaced with a species not attacked by the beetle. "The biggest ally in all of this is the public," said Parry, asking people to report suspected beetle infestations to the toll-free number 1-877-STOPALB. "All calls are taken seriously - an inspector will come out," he said.
Signs of the beetle are perfectly round holes (slightly larger than the diameter of a pencil) bored in trunks; piles of sawdust at the base or crotches of trees; sap and water oozing down the trunk; and the villain of this real-life horror flick itself – a one to one-and-half-inch shiny black beetle with white markings and outsized black-and-white antennae. For more information check the TreesNY web site.
Van Cortlandt Park
Just hours before the deadline, Governor George Pataki signed legislation allowing the use of 48 acres of Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx for a water filtration plant. The city is under a court order requiring it to filter the water coming from the Croton Reservoir to meet federal water quality standards. After years of disputes on whether and how this should be done, the governor's decision cleared the way for the city to build a $1.3 billion plant underneath the park's Mosholu Golf Course after completing a supplemental environmental impact statement.
The governor approved the bill only after receiving assurances from Mayor Michael Bloomberg that the city would consider two other potential sites for the filtration plant in the required environmental review. The Bloomberg administration also guaranteed in writing that the governor would be included in the process that determines how $243 million promised for Bronx parks would be spent. The money, mitigation for the years-long loss of parkland and the traffic and pollution generated by the construction of the plant, was crucial in persuading Bronx politicians to vote for allowing parkland to be used for the plant.
Several large environmental groups supported the construction of the filtration plant after the city Department of Environmental Protection went on record with a promise to provide new protections for land in the Croton watershed, according to the New York Times.
Local residents and Assemblymember Jeffrey Dinowitz, who represents the community near Van Cortlandt Park, continue to oppose the plant. In an article in the Norwood News, they charged the legislators and governor with environmental racism for agreeing to put the facility next to a low-income, ethnically mixed community with high asthma rates. Opponents of the plant question whether a fair selection process is possible now that the Van Cortlandt site has been approved by the state. Friends of Van Cortlandt Park, the group that stopped the city’s first attempt to build in the park without legislative approval, may sue again if the promised environmental review is not conducted properly.
Christian DiPalermo, executive director of the citywide parks advocacy group New Yorkers for Parks, said, "The shortcuts used by the city in taking Van Cortlandt Park for this water filtration plant set an alarming precedent for future park alienation cases and place all parkland at risk." The organization will be carefully watching how the city plans to spend the $243 million promised for Bronx parks. It has urged its supporters to ask city Controller William Thompson to make sure that the money really goes to improving Bronx neighborhood parks - not Yankee Stadium (which is officially on parkland).
Anne Schwartz is a freelance writer specializing in environmental issues. Previously, she was the editor of the Audubon Activist, a news journal for environmental action published by the National Audubon Society, and an editor at The New York Botanical Garden.