The quality of the harbor's waters is fundamental to the ongoing resurgence of a recreationally focused harbor. Fishing, swimming, boating, and shoreline recreating along the city's six-hundred mile coast in all five boroughs requires that high standards be set, maintained and enforced. Environmental improvements including marshland restoration, bird colonies and fish populations also require high standards set, maintained and enforced.
That is why it is worth paying attention to a recently released report by the city's Department of Environmental Proection, assessing the condition of the waters surrounding New York. In the survey's 91st year, the department reports "improved water quality for the harbor" acknowledging that "some areas and parameters may not share the general trend."
The annual summary of the state of harbor water quality (not drinking water) is based on a sampling program from 53 stations off the coasts of all five boroughs. The summary is the most comprehensive water quality survey for the region and it provides benchmarks for commercial fishing interests, recreational users, industrial concerns and municipal government. Data is broken up into four regions.
These are:
While the Department of Environmental Protection has many indicators, the four most important ones are fecal coliform concentrations; bottom dissolved oxygen; chlorophyll a; and surface water transparency. These indicators track the health of the harbor's waters, particularly as they affect swimming water safety and the ability of the aquatic environment to support marine life. High fecal coliform levels result in beach closures. Low levels of dissolved oxygen reduce the survivability of plants and fish. Other indicators track high levels of algae, which thrive on the high levels of nitrogen released by wastewater treatment plants.
Since the expansion of wastewater treatment, mandated and funded by the Clean Water Act, measures of harbor water quality have shown steady improvement. In addition to the federal standards, the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation also sets standards for harbor water quality and municipal performance.
Upper East River and the Western Long Island Sound
Dissolved Oxygen levels have remained high despite decreases in nitrogen loadings from the water pollution control plants Hypoxia, i.e., oxygen deprivation, remains an issue in Western Long Island Sound, as does a high rate of lobster mortality.
The Inner Harbor
The department has claimed credit for recent improvements in water quality in the waters of the Inner Harbor. In 2000, most of the 21 stations had summer fecal coliform means nearly two orders of magnitude better than the State standard. All summer means for dissolved oxygen exceeded the standard.
Jamaica Bay
The report notes that dissolved oxygen concentrations were higher in Jamaica Bay than anywhere else in the harbor and high in terms of the levels of recent years. They cite recent efforts at the wastewater treatment plants to reduce nitrogen loadings. The report also noted a long-term and recurring dissolved oxygen problem in the Bay. Poor circulation, point source loadings and plankton growth were cited.
Lower New York Bay
This area includes many popular regional beaches such as Coney Island, Rockaway Beach and Staten Island's South Shore. The report states that this area "has consistently met State standards" adding "there have been almost no beach closures in recent years".
General Conditions
Many interrelated forces including weather, geography, manmade pollution, natural conditions, and biological cycles determine harbor water quality. The summer of 2000, which was when the survey was taken, was colder and rainier than average. Rain induced run-off increases the levels of suspended sediments which may have reduced summer-averaged, surface water transparency between 2000 and 1999. The survey attributes many of the cited improvements to implementation of water conservation steps and operational changes at wastewater plants that increased treatment capacity.
Maintaining harbor water quality is no easy task, The Hudson-Raritan River System receives an astonishing 20 percent of its volume from municipal and industrial sources including the combined storm/sewer outfalls. The city claims it now treats as much as 56 percent of the combined storm sewer outfall run-off. The impressive eleven-percent decrease in daily water use in the 1990s has benefited the entire system.
The city agency deserves credit for its ongoing initiatives aimed at harbor water quality. Its pace and intensity however could be accelerated. The agency is still run more like a water and sewer utility than a protector of the marine and recreational environment. The survey's artfully presented statistics omit key environmental failures that are as telling as the explicit story. The public would be better served by a full account of recent declines in performance that are cloaked in the survey report by the repeated mention of long term improvements. It is the periodic setbacks that need highlighting to ensure that the positive long-term trends are not permanently reversed. It should also be noted that the survey focused on the summer of 2000, but was issued in December of 2001. This is late, inexcusably so.
To look at Governors Island, one would think that it was untouched by September 11th. But a proposal for the island, sponsored by the Regional Plan Association, has languished, in part because of the uncertainty in and around lower Manhattan. The private investment needed may falter now. The mayor and governor have not significantly advanced the plan, a mixed-use development concept for the island, despite their well-publicized agreement of twenty months ago.
There will almost certainly never again be available, another waterfront parcel as large, perfectly situated and symbolic of the city's history.
So what should happen?
Governor's Island should be designated the new home of the United Nations. A new UN campus, replacing its cramped seventeen-acre facility, would be a powerful reaffirmation of the world body's increasing importance. Such a move would also be an affirmation of New York City as a global city and a centuries old refuge for huddled masses.
On thirty acres of Governors Island, the UN could have both the modern facilities it needs and the security it clearly requires. Through dues paid by all the world's nations, the UN could afford to maintain the island's historic structures as ambassadors' residences, conference space or offices. The bulk of the 175 acre island - including its historic forts and waterfront esplanade - could become an International Peace Park, paid for and maintained by the world, open to all, but used most heavily by the host population, the people of New York and New Jersey.
The Regional Plan Association's plan for recreational, educational and cultural facilities could guide the non-UN, development. Space on the island for hotels and conference venues would remain, possibly at scaled-down levels, but private capital would not need to be the trigger.
The United Nations could sponsor ferry service from New Jersey, nearby Red Hook in Brooklyn as well as the Battery, providing easy and free access for park users, tourists and others. In fact, Governors Island is uniquely situated to become a harbor ferry crossroads linking points in all corners of the harbor. Existing East River ferry landings could facilitate the commute of UN personnel and dignitaries from Manhattan's East Side where many consulates are located and where many officials live. The East Side would benefit from the loss of traffic.
Benefits would accrue all around. The city and state would not need to buy the island to gain open space that many New Yorkers believe is theirs anyway. The valuable land at the present UN site would return to city tax roles. As a development site or a corporate headquarters, the present UN complex would have extraordinary market value to many parties. Jobs created there would yield city and state income tax. New York City would benefit from a mini-construction boom.
Could it happen?
Before September 11th, probably not. Afterwards, polls show that New York City's "favorable" rating reached 93 percent. Five years ago, it was 42 percent. Vice President Cheney recently declared that "America Loves New York". The President vowed to assist. Governor Pataki's $54 billion request to Washington is in trouble, perhaps owing to its size, perhaps because it has been perceived as a call for a blank check. Still, the New York area needs extensive disaster relief.
This proposal, admittedly addressing only part of the region's needs, asks for support in a symbolic and very practical way. It calls on the governor and the mayor to jointly and immediately make a 911 call to the president asking him to ask the United Nations to build a new home on Governors Island amidst an International Peace Park that is accessible and open to all. Congress and the federal government would be asked to transfer Governors Island to the world body.
Governors Island has a three hundred-year history as a military base. Its forts, docks and barracks, unused for years, should be designated, even in war, for peaceful purposes as a symbol that New York City, the innocent victim of international terror, can become the place where the world unites to dramatically and clearly turn swords into ploughshares.
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.
One hundred years ago, New York City's major financiers, Jay Gould and Jim Fisk, the 'Commodore' Cornelius Vanderbilt, and JP Morgan, all vied for the lucrative cross harbor rail float business to wrest the concessions to move goods to and from the City of Wealth and Power and the rest of the nation and the world . Now, after a fifty year decline, waterborne freight of all kinds is growing, and more services are being planned: rail car on barge, container on barge; slow boats, fast ferries; intra port, and port to port; and businesses and governments are again investing in water transport.
Why is there an enormous amount of activity in this arena? Because metropolitan NYC, the largest consumer market in the US, and perhaps the world, is also the capital of truck congestion, costing the city an estimated $10 billion annually. Congestion will only get worse before it gets better. And the way it will get better is with the construction of the cross harbor rail freight tunnel.
CROSS HARBOR RAIL FLOATS
One hundred years ago, 2,000 to 3,000 rail cars were floated across the harbor each day. At the start of the 21st Century, only 3,300 rail cars are barged across each year (about one barge load a day). The public benefit is great since each barge load carries about 15 rail cars and each rail car is the equivalent of four trucks, and therefore each four-hour roundtrip crossing removes 120 trucks from the local bridges, tunnels and roadways. And the business is growing, according to Ron Bridges, new president of Cross Harbor Rail Road. The growth rate this year, 21 percent, is expected to continue in the coming year. There has been a concomitant increase in revenue. Cross Harbor takes rail barges between Brooklyn's 51st in Sunset Park and the only landing in New Jersey, the Greenville Yard in Jersey City.
Meanwhile governments and the private sector are investing to make the service grow.
The New York City Economic Development Corporation already invested $20 million in upgrading another rail float landing at 65th Street in Sunset Park. In June the agency announced that they retained a consulting firm, Moffat and Nichols, to help design waterfront rail freight facilities in the northern section of Sunset Park and in Red Hook. The budget for the construction of these two projects is $16 million. More improvements are likely.
The private sector is not sitting still. The Cross Harbor Rail Road company is planning to go beyond transporting boxcars, tankers and hoppers on barges, and is also stepping up service to handle containers from ocean-going ships onto railroad flat cars, which are then barged to Jersey City and railed out to the west. The company is also working on a deal to transport truck trailers on flatcars across the harbor. Twenty-five trailers per crossing could be moved off the road a day, and railed out to Long Island, a start for relieving the traffic on the Long Island Expressway and the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway leading to it.
Were the New Jersey landing to be improved, cross harbor rail float operations could expand. The Greenville rail yard in Jersey City needs a second floatbridge, which would allow one barge to be loaded while the second barge is offloaded.
COCOA AND CONTAINERS ON BARGES
Red Hook in Brooklyn is the largest cocoa port in the US. Cocoa from Africa and South America is off-loaded, fumigated, and transported in rail floats or container barges across the harbor. Red Hook container on barge service has been subsidized by the Port Authority since 1991 as mitigation for the reconstruction of the Gowanus Expressway. By subsidizing container on barge transport across the harbor, the Port Authority helps relieve congested truck transport on highways whose construction is federally subsidized at the same time the Authority supports expanding port and international trade.
The Economic Development Corporation recently purchased two new cranes for improved service at Red Hook, and the Port Authority will provide two additional barges. What is new, is that the Port Authority Board, at its July meeting passed a resolution supporting continuation of the Red Hook barge service for another three years and helped address a shortfall .
FUEL, CONSTRUCTION MATERIALS, AND A NEW WAY WITH GARBAGE
Billions of gallons of refined fuel -- heating oil, gasoline, jet fuel, etc -- are transported annually by barge around and through the harbor. In addition, according to Linda O'Leary, vice president of the American Waterways Operators Atlantic Region, construction materials, sand, gravel are brought to businesses in the harbor and redistributed to customers. Barges also transport "project cargo," huge oversized machinery, like General Electric turbine motors from Schenectady, that are too large for road transport. On a daily basis, tug and barge movements within the port constitute over 75 percent of all vessel traffic .
As is well known, municipal solid waste had until recently been barged from marine transfer stations throughout the city to the Fresh Kills landfill, Mar 22, 2001 being the last day of the Fresh Kills maritime garbage operation. New York City's long term plans for the disposal of garbage rely on maritime transport from five marine transfer stations (three in Manhattan, one each in Brooklyn and Queens) to an enclosed barge-unloading facility at Tremley Point in Linden in Union County, New Jersey. At the $50 million Browning Ferris Industries facility in Tremley Point, the waste will be transferred to enclosed railcars and railed to the landfills. On August 14, 2001, the Freeholders of the City of Linden unanimously approved the marine-to-rail transfer plan.
AIR CARGO
High value time sensitive air cargo is jetted in to Kennedy and Newark airports, where it is slowed down by congestion. Empire WaterLink a locally-based company, among other companies, is working toward establishing a high speed vessel intra-harbor delivery service. They recently obtained a hold on a lease for a vessel landing site at Kennedy airport, contingent on obtaining the proper permits.
BETWEEN THE HARBOR AND OTHER PARTS OF THE COUNTRY
The Port Authority is promoting regional maritime transport of containers, the "Port Inland Distribution Network" in which containers are stacked on barges and transported to adjacent regions, particularly to upstate New York and to southern New England. The potential partners, Albany and Bridgeport , are enthusiastic. The containers on barges will help New York and New Jersey unclog the roads, while still retaining important port business. The partner ports get the economic benefit of being a point of distribution. According to published reports in the Journal of Commerce, the inter-port barge service is expected to begin before the end of this year.
THE COASTWISE TRADE
In addition there are two vessel lines that provide waterborne freight service alternatives to interstate 95; one carries truck trailers on barges, the other containers on barges. Both were started in the past decade.
Trailerbridge, a business developed by the late great Malcolm McLean, the father of containerization, transports truck trailer containers stacked three-high on huge sea-worthy barges, from Puerto Rico to New York harbor, docking at Port Newark. Upwards of 10,000 trucks are removed from the interstate highway south from New York/New Jersey per year. Also helping to clear the air is the fact that Trailerbridge uses cleaner distilled fuels for the maritime engines instead of residual oil
Columbia Coastal offers container on barge service all along the east coast of the US, including service between the Port of New York/New Jersey and Boston as well as between the Port and Philadelphia and Baltimore. Columbia Coastal is likely to be selected to handle much of business for the Port Authority's Port Inland Distribution Network, according to this month's edition of an industry journal, American Shipper.
On the horizon:
There are now several organizations, the major one being the Coastwise Coalition, that have sprung up in the past year, whose raison d'®tre is to encourage public spending on maritime transport of freight, especially as alternative to the congested Interstate highway I-95. Their mission is supported by US Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta, a very well-informed and articulate advocate. The future for waterborne freight looks strong.