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Noise In New York


Though it will not take effect until next July, the city’s new noise code seems to have few champions. Passed last December, the first revision to the code in 30 years was Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s effort to silence everything from dog barking to Mr. Softee trucks. But businesses, noise awareness groups and others find fault with the new law. They are especially doubtful it will be able to do much about the noise emitted by nightclubs, bars, and car alarms.

Meanwhile, both the noise in New York, and New Yorkers’ intolerance of it, seem to have increased. According to a poll of community leaders conducted by Baruch College's eTownPanel and released in July by the nonprofit Citizens for NYC, street noise is seen as the biggest infringement on the quality of life in New York City, rising from number three on last year's poll. And noise is the number one complaint phoned into the 311 hotline. In a recent month, there were 24,191 noise complaints, which was some 200 more than the same month two years earlier, which was around the time Bloomberg announced his anti-noise legislation.

By many measures, noise has become New Yorkers’ biggest concern.

What Can Government Do?

In late 2002, the mayor announced a citywide quality of life program in conjunction with the New York Police Department called Operation Silent Night, which targeted 24 zones throughout the five boroughs that were plagued by “chronic and disruptive” noise. As of August 2005, almost three years after its inception, the program made an example of nearly 20,000 noise violators with both misdemeanor and felony arrests.

Yet it would be difficult to find anybody who says that the problem is improving.

“You can’t rely on the government to solve a problem of respect,” said Peter Kostmayer of Citizens for NYC. “People need to understand that this is a problem they have more individual control over.”

Kostmayer believes noise pollution is a concern that needs to be tackled at the personal and community level. To stimulate that interest, Citizens for NYC will soon be awarding grants to neighborhood groups with innovative approaches that help solve the problem without legislation or police activity.

Glenn McAnanama, however, of the community organization Upper Green Side has a different interpretation of why the problem persists, despite the laws and initiatives in place.

“The people responsible for the noise production do not live in the areas where they produce the noise,” McAnanama said. “There is little social pressure that the community can apply to perpetrators, especially those in automobiles.

“For instance, every Saturday morning, when the garbage truck comes to pick up the trash, it creates a back-up all the way down the block and frustrated drivers express that by honking their horns.”

McAnanama believes that’s where governmental policy and enforcement can have a great impact. If traffic agents temporarily closed blocks of traffic while the truck made its pick-ups or had the pick-up dates coincide with the alternate parking side days, there would not be any anger-inducing gridlock.

Car Alarms

Despite their differences over the government’s role, both activists agree that car alarms are the most prevalent and intrusive of the noise pollutants.

In fact, one New York City-based group is working to ban car alarms all together, asserting that the audible anti-theft device is nothing but a neighborhood nuisance.

“The right way to stop alarm noise would be to ban noisy alarms, and the mayor hasn’t done this,” said Aaron Friedman, head of Silent Majority, referring to Bloomberg’s 2004 veto of council-approved legislation that would have banned the sale of certain kinds of audible car alarms. Bloomberg received flack at the time for holding on to the hope that car thieves are deterred by noisy alarms.

According to a 1997 analysis of insurance-claims data from 73 million vehicles, which was reprinted in a recent report by Transportation Alternatives, cars with alarms “show no overall reduction in theft losses,” when compared to cars without them or with silent alarms. The report, titled Alarmingly Useless, also figured the average New York City resident pays a car alarm “Noise Tax” of about $100 a year, based on lost productivity, decreased property value, diminished quality of life, and health costs.

Diseases exacerbated by noise include from cardiovascular disease, gastrointestinal illnesses, and psychological problems, according to well-established research that goes back to former U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Luther Terry, who is better-known for issuing the first warnings from the US Surgeon General about tobacco.

A German study conducted last year found that a person does not have to be annoyed by noise to be damaged by it -- cardiovascular disease was more closely related to the level of the sound than with the reaction to it.

Nightclub Noise

Currently, nightclubs can be cited if police officers simply determine “unreasonable noise.” But after discussions with the New York Nightlife Association, the City Council agreed to change the language of the new noise code and create a specific technical definition of “unreasonable noise.”

When the law takes effect next summer, officers will actually be using noise meters to measure sound levels 15 feet outside bars and clubs. If the establishment is 10 decibels or more above ambient sound in the daytime and seven decibels or more above ambient sound at night it will be issued a fine.

Despite the agreed-upon compromise, some owners feel they are being forced into a catch-22 situation by another quality of life measure, the smoking ban.

Bars and nightclubs face the loss of their operating license if state inspectors catch patrons lighting up inside, so they must force smokers onto the street. But this creates tension with neighborhood residents, who continually call the 311 hotline and complain about the late night noise from the smokers below their windows.

Robert Bookman, a lawyer for the New York Nightlife Association, said the law only addresses sound systems, not people. He described a scenario where a noisy outdoor restaurant can get by without a violation, but the bar next door is liable.

The New York Nightlife Association offered to pay off-duty police officers to patrol the streets and help keep the peace by preventing quality of life violations. So far the New York Police Department has refused the offer and the City Council has blocked a proposal supporting the effort.

Is Noise Necessary?

“Everyone is entitled to peace and quiet,” Peter Kostmayer said. “The question is whether it’s unnecessary. We live in a big city where a certain amount of noise is inevitable. But there are many more residential neighborhoods in Queens and Staten Island, where noise is not even an issue.”

Aaron Friedman of Silent Majority, however, said that notion reminds him of what someone living in New York a hundred years ago might have heard: “It’s like saying people need to realize that they are living in one of the biggest cities in the world, and that there are going to be a lot of tenement fires and cholera epidemics.”

And Glenn McAnanama of Upper Green Side said certain rights are being trampled when noise pollution is regarded as a necessary evil.

“People have a right to shape how the world around them is used,” he said. “If they want fewer cars coming into their area, they have a right to demand that people be encouraged and given the right incentives to take mass transit instead. If people want a dedicated lane that emergency vehicles can use to prevent blaring sirens, then they have a right to ask their public officials to do that.”

Several supplements to the noise code are already in the works. Councilmember Alan Gerson of lower Manhattan introduced five new bills, dealing with noise levels from circulation devices, portable generators, motorcycles with straight pipes, and construction work. He also plans to take up the issue of patio and courtyard restaurants.

The volume may be rising, but many believe that New York does not have to be the subject of so much auditory pollution. “It is completely within our control,” McAnanama said, “to reduce noise.”

 

New City Council Bills -- Conserving Energy, Limiting Noise


At each of the City Council's stated meetings, council members introduce bills, most of which will never become laws (for the process by which bills become laws, click here). As a regular feature, Gotham Gazette discusses some of the legislation proposed at each meeting.

The New York City Council introduced 15 bills at its most recent meeting on August 16, 2006, many of which focused on energy conservation or noise.

ENERGY

 

Due in part to the controversy over the Astoria blackout earlier in July, three bills have been introduced to strengthen the city's attempts to conserve energy.

Councilmember James Gennaro from Queens introduced two bills that would require the mayor 's office to be more proactive on energy conservation.

Intro 410 would require the mayor to create a contingency plan to respond to high levels of energy uses. Modeled on the city's drought contingency plan, the bill would require the mayor to design a graduated response to various levels of energy usage.

Intro 411 would make the mayor responsible for creating an energy policy that the public is aware of. Under this bill, mayoral programs would encourage energy conservation and alternative modes of transportation. As an example, Gennaro's office suggested encouraging buildings that use a lot of power to install solar panels to create their own energy, rather than relying on power plants alone.

Councilmember Miguel Martinez, representing Washington Heights and Inwood, wants to encourage buildings to use more efficient cooling systems. Many buildings use relatively small coolers, instead of larger "chillers", which cool water and circulate it throughout the building, even though chillers are one and a half times as efficient as the smaller devices. The reason is that chillers require "personal supervision," meaning a full-time employee must be physically present at all times.

Martinez argues that this standard is outdated. Intro 418 would subject all new chillers to general supervision only, making their supervision no more expensive than the smaller, less efficient system.

NOISE

 

Councilmember Alan Gerson of lower Manhattan has introduced several bills to supplement the city's noise code.

Intro 414 would require that agencies that issue permits for construction work on nights and weekends to submit a noise mitigation plan to the local community board and city council member.

Intro 415 would set caps on the levels of noise that construction work can make within one hundred feet of a school or court on days they are in session, or within one hundred feet of a hospital, even if a noise mitigation plan is in place. Intros 412 and 413 would cap the allowable levels of noise from circulation devices and portable generators, respectively.

Intro 416 would prohibit motorcycles with straight pipes from parking on the street. Motorcycles with straight pipes, which are illegal, do not have mufflers. The police department, and the departments of consumer affairs, environmental protection and transportation would have the power to enforce the ban.

"These are quality of life issues that we didn't feel were specifically enough addressed in the noise code," said Paul Pastor, Gerson's legislative director. "Unless you spell things out very often they don't get enforced."

He said that Gerson plans to introduce another bill further restricting noise from patio and courtyard restaurants in the council's next session on September 13.

 

Succeeding Green in Fort Greene -- and Beyond


 

At a recent forum, Freddie Hamilton, a candidate for State Assembly in central Brooklyn, told the audience packed into an unventilated church basement, that she would not be answering any questions about the Atlantic Yards proposal. The disappointed crowd responded with boos.

The exchange illustrated how devisive the Atlantic Yards issue has become in the race for the Assembly seat being vacated by Roger Green, who is running for Congress.

The three Democrats. Freddie Hamilton, William Batson, and Hakeem Jeffries, all have different views on the controversial proposal for the district. The one Republican candidate, Henry Weinstein was unreachable for comment.

Atlantic Yards

The Frank Gehry design for Atlantic Yards calls for building 16 high-rise structures for offices and apartments as well as an arena for the Brooklyn Nets professional basketball team in downtown Brooklyn.

Freddie Hamilton, a staunch supporter of the project, was a signatory of a community benefits agreement between six community based organizations and the developer of the project, Forest City Ratner Companies. Hamilton believes that the project 'will ultimately provide the best outcomes for the district.'

William Batson, former aide to State Senator David Patterson, is an outspoken opponent of the 6.5-acre real estate development. 'This project has everything that's wrong with overdevelopment in it' .It's a three-card monte proposal that changes every time you look down' said Batson.

Hakeem Jeffries, a litigator for the CBS Corporation and third time candidate, refuses to denounce the $4.2 billion project, but criticizes the plan in its current form. 'The proposed project is too dense and would dramatically change the character of the tree-lined residential neighborhood that it borders,' he said.

Affordable Housing

All the candidates agree that the district needs more affordable housing. However, they differ over whether Atlantic Yards will help provide that.

New York State Assembly- District 57:
Prospect Heights, Fort Green, Clinton Hill, and Crown Heights areas of Brooklyn.

The Candidates

' William Batson
Prospect Heights resident, is an artist and activist.

' Freddie Hamilton
C hild and family services advocate.

' Hakeem Jeffries
Litigator for the CBS Corporation and a Crown Heights native.

Other Races

New York State Assembly- District 21: Ethnic Politics in Changing Flushing


New York State Senate-District 13: Bringing the Money Back from Albany
New York State Senate-District 20: Debating Health, Education, Reform and, Yes, Atlantic Yards, in Central Brooklyn

New York State Senate-District 24: Democrats Move in on Staten Island's Republican South Shore

Freddie Hamilton believes that it will. According to her, plans for the development include over 200 units for residents with annual incomes as low as $19,00 .

William Batson, who has worked with local residents to protest the pending development, calls Forest City Ratner's promise of new affordable housing a 'fraud.' 'We need real government action to address our housing crises, not the dubious promises of private developers,' said Batson during a recent speech.

If elected, Hakeem Jeffries hopes to address the housing situation by repealing the Urstadt law, which places the power to control rents in the hands of the state legislature rather than city government.

'Working families and senior citizens on fixed incomes are being pushed out of the only neighborhoods they've ever called home,' said Jeffries, who was born and raised in central Brooklyn and provides free legal advice to residents who are facing displacement.

Arson

The housing problem has been made worse by a rash of over 18 arsons in the past 14 months. Most of these crimes have not been solved. Many of the areas they affected are low-income neighborhoods where many residents do not have insurance. Along with losing a place to live; those lucky enough to survive the fires lose everything they own as well.

William Batson is focusing much of his campaign efforts on addressing the arson problem. Co-chair of the Fire Safety Committee on Community Board 8, Batson has been very vocal about his opposition to Mayor Michael Bloomberg's cuts in the number of fire marshals throughout the city, reducing the force by 25 percent in 2003. If elected, Batson has promised to work with city officials to improve response time for emergency services by ensuring all residents are never more than three minutes from a fire station.

Hakeem Jeffries wants to add more fire marshals to the district as well as establish arson prevention units to understand the cause of the problem better.

Schools and Youth Services

Freddie Hamilton has adopted the strengthening of childcare programs 'which she refers to as safety net services- as the defining issue of her campaign.

Freddie Hamilton, who believes the city should 'rethink' letting the mayor control the public school system, says that she will work to improve the training that teachers receive and to reduce class sizes.

Hakeem Jeffries, a father of two young boys, echoes similar concerns about the condition of Brooklyn public schools.

'Public schools are still failing some of our children; overcrowded classrooms, insufficient books,' said Jeffries ' We are at risk of dooming hundreds if not thousands of our young people to lives of disadvantage and despair.'

Candidate Debates

Citizens Union will present several Democratic candidate debates before the September 12 primary.

Assembly District 74
(The Lower East Side, East Side, Midtown East, and Murray Hill)
Candidates: Sylvia Friedman, Brian Kavanagh, Esther Yang, and Juan Pagan
Monday August 14; at 7:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.
St. Nicholas Church, 288 East 10th Street, (between First Avenue and Avenue A)
(Presented in partnership with Our Town Downtown and City Hall.)

Assembly District 13
(Flushing and surrounding areas)
:Julia Harrison and Ellen Young
(Flushing and surrounding areas)
Monday, August 21, 2006; 6:15 to 7:45 p.m.
Flushing Library, Main Street at Kissena Blvd.

Senate District 13
(Corona, Jackson Heights, and East Elmhurst)
Candidates: Hiram Monserrate and Jon Sabini
Wednesday, August 23; 6:15 to 7:45 p.m.
Langston Hughes Cultural Center/Library, 101-01 Northern Boulevard, Corona

The two Queens debates are presented in partnership with Queens Civic Congress and cosponsored by: North East Jewish Community Council, NAACP-Corona East Elmhurst, Mid Queens Community Council, Queens Chronicle; NAACP-North-East Branch, and Flushing Jewish Community Council.

For more information, go to Citizens Union.

If elected, Jeffries says he will fight for the hundreds of millions of dollars that New York City public schools are supposed to receive through the Campaign for Fiscal Equity lawsuit on school funding.

William Batson, co-founder of the youth outreach group American Civil Rights Education Service, believes that one of the keys to improving the quality of education in the district is to expose the youth to Brooklyn's cultural landmarks and rich history.

Brooklyn Democratic Party

From Assemblyman Roger Green's guilty plea for petty larceny to former Brooklyn Democratic Party Leader Clarence Norman's felony corruption convictions, the Brooklyn political establishment has been under attack.

Despite that, though, incumbents usually win, and critics say one reason is that legislative districts are drawn to protect them.

Hakeem Jeffries knows this all too well. After he won 40 percent of the vote in his 2000 bid to unseat incumbent Roger Green, Jeffries home was drawn out of the district.

'I went to bed in the 57th and woke up somewhere else' said Jeffries. Now Jeffries supports the redistricting reform bill introduced by State Assemblyman Michael Gianaris. 'Democratic elections,' he said, 'are meant to protect the people not political positions.'

William Batson points to cronyism as a major problem preventing reform. Batson thinks that, under current redistricting laws, legislators are not encouraged to act in the best interests of their constituents. And he says the current system results in a lack of representation for some areas and over-representation for others. 'There are districts upstate that have multiple seats because they count the nearby prison population of convicted felons, who cannot vote as residents,' said Batson. 'Meanwhile we have Hempstead, Long Island, with a growing minority population that has been fighting for a seat for decades.'

Freddie Hamilton agrees that the current system needs reform and promises that she will work for a more impartial system. 'Redistricting should be done by a neutral party'. It has not worked when elected officials draw their own district,' said Hamilton.

Campaign Support

So far, Assemblymember Roger Green has not endorsed any of the candidates vying to replace him. But each Assembly hopeful has garnered support from various local organizations.

William Batson has recently secured the endorsement of the Sierra Club, a grassroots environmental organization, and City Councilmember Bill de Blasio. Batson has also received $35,491 of campaign contributions.

According to Freddie Hamilton, her campaign is being supported by several child advocacy groups, including Black Administrators for Child Welfare. As of the July filing deadline, Hamilton's financial contributions from her supporters total $22760.04.

Hakeem Jeffries has the endorsements of the Working Families Party, the Progressive Association for Political Action, the Lambda Association for Independent Democrats, the Communication Workers of America- District 1, and SEIU 32BJ. Jeffries has received financial contributions totaling $77,610.00.

 

Off the Farm and Into the Faucet


Like many U.S. farmers, Ulster County dairyman Tom Hutson is a businessman first and a romantic second. In New York City recently to accept a $10,000 Steward of the Land award from the American Farmland Trust, Hutson made a point of pulling a plastic bag of dirt out of his pocket and delivering a brief comment on its contents.

“I’m a farmer, so you just have to understand one thing,” said Hutson, holding up a sample of bottomland soil scooped that morning on his family’s 380-acre River Haven farm in DeLancey, N.Y. “This is gold to me.”

But the contents of Hutson’s little bag has significance for New York City residents as well. Hutson’s farm is within the Catskills/Delaware watershed, the city’s primary source of drinking water. What he does on his land has a direct impact on the purity of the water coming out of New York City’s taps – and on how much the city must spend to keep that water clean.

Hutson is a member of the Watershed Agricultural Council, a city- and state-sponsored organization designed to reduce organic pollution within the Catskills/Delaware watershed. He earned his award by letting his farm serve as a laboratory for testing the council’s land management recommendations. Starting in 1994, Hutson has retained “buffer strips” -- wide swaths of vegetation alongside streams – intended to protect the waterways on his farm from direct fertilizer runoff and bank erosion. He has built manure containment systems and implemented a rotational grazing program to minimize and distribute the impact his 108-animal herd has on the farm’s 100 acres of pasture. Hutson also adopted the Watershed Area Council’s forest management plan, limiting cutting and development on the 57 acres of woodland within his farm boundaries.

“Nobody cares more about protecting the land than a farmer,” says Hutson. “But when you’re developing a whole farm plan, there’s a real learning curve involved. Farming’s tough enough as it is.”

Good Environment, Good Business

 

To help Hutson make the adjustment, the city’s Department of Environmental Protection kicked in $100,000. The money is part of a $100 million effort to protect New York City’s drinking water at its source. The program has two goals, according to Barry Beckhardt, program director for the Department of Environmental Protection’s Watershed Agricultural & Forestry Program. It wants to encourage upstate farm managers to do the right thing environmentally and it hopes keep those farms in business instead of succumbing to development pressures.

“Instead of supporting farms through subsidies, we’re proposing that farmers be supported by the way they protect the land,” says Beckhardt.

Development in the city’s second major water source, the Croton Watershed, is already forcing the city to build a plant to filter runoff before the water. The plant, to be constructed in Van Cortlandt Park, is currently estimated to cost at least $1.3 billion. And to make room for it, the city is devoting a 10-acre portion of Van Cortlandt Park to the plant’s construction. Building a similar filtration plant for the Catskills water supply would cost an easy $4 billion, Beckhardt estimates.

In light of that, the $100 million being spent by Watershed Area Council makes economic sense. “This is clearly a more cost effective approach,” Beckhardt says.

The Watershed Agricultural Council owes its existence to a 1992 deal between the city and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. In exchange for preserving wild acreage and reducing runoff from the 300 farms in the Catskills/Delaware watershed, the city has been able to avoid the need to filter water from that region. Working through the council, "the city has paid to return 15,000 acres of farmland to uncultivated wilderness, and by 1995 had gotten at least 85 percent of the affected farms to sign up for a pollution prevention program. In return, the Watershed Agricultural Council doled out subsidies to cover the cost of wastewater diversion ditches, barnyard drainage systems and other pollution reduction strategies. The council also helped participating farms draw attention to their products under the “Pure Catskills” brand name.

“The goal is to strengthen the linkages between the producers upstate and the consumers in New York,” says Beckhardt. “It doesn’t make sense to do all this and have the farmers go out of business.”

Marketing the Catskills

 

“Pure Catskills” has helped farmers looking for a local edge in the commodity foods marketplace. Still, as Hutson notes, many farms have a hard time taking advantage of the program. The cultivated acreage on River Haven is devoted mainly to hay and other surplus forage crops that the farm sells to neighboring dairies. As for the milk, most of that is pooled and sold through regional cooperatives and routed to New York City via bulk distributors. Elmhurst Dairy, a Queens-based distributor that bills its milk as “New York’s Own” but not “Pure Catskills,” handles Hutson’s milk.

“Milk is such a perishable commodity,” Hutson says. “You’ve gotta move it every day, and that makes it hard to market as locally produced.”

While direct marketing of “Pure Catskills” milk may not yet make economic sense, the New York City greenmarket system has provided support to the upstate farm economy. According to the Council on the Environment for New York City, an organization that provides information on greenmarket produce and schedules, the city’s 51 markets have helped sustain 11,000 acres of cultivated farmland and keep 27,000-plus acres total out of development.

“The good news is that New York City boasts the best greenmarket system in the country,” says Jeremiah Cosgrove, northeast regional director for American Farmland Trust. “The only thing missing right now is the consumer education component. We’re trying to make it so food buyers in the city recognize that the few cents extra they pay on local dairy products or local produce is actually a cost savings when you compare it to the amount they save on their taxes if the city has to build a new filtration plant.”

 

Unknown (Unused) Beaches of NYC


Though they are little-known, hard to find, often harder to get to, there are at least a dozen “natural sand beaches” in New York City -- along the Hudson River, the East River and the Harlem River . That was the discovery of a group of walkers, boaters and especially kayakers who have started mapping them. These are not generally, and may never be, good swimming beaches; river currents and pollution would make swimming off most of them impractical. But the kayakers in particular see them as potentially wonderful landings.

There are ambitious plans for some of them. For others, their strongest advocates would prefer for them to remain obscure.

East River Beach

One stretch of sand -- the only one in Lower Manhattan -- lies under the Brooklyn Bridge in Manhattan. Debris covers much of the beach -- twisted metal from wrecked pier pilings, lumber, concrete. But at low tide, water laps a sandy shoreline some 200 feel long and 20 feet wide. A fence along the walkway/bike path under the FDR Drive blocks access, but there's quite a view with the shoreline below and the bridge rearing up overhead.

In May, at the Waterfront Committee meeting of Community Board 1, a proposal to make the beach more accessible met resistance. Rob Buchanan, an avid kayaker and magazine writer about the outdoors, was among a group proposing a boat landing and access to the walkway. There are so few places for boaters to launch and land, and the place under the bridge has the advantage of being on the lee side of the river in calm water, he said.

The plan includes access from the walkway. Board and audience members worried that easy access would lead to children wandering in and drowning. They tabled the proposal. Four years ago, they also reacted negatively to Lower Manhattan Development Corporation plans for access to the water as part of the development of the area.

After the meeting last month, the chair of the Waterfront Committee made her distaste for the project clear to Downtown Express, “I’m not a proponent of the beach, quite frankly. I do worry about children and drownings.”

Others say that there is little danger of this, pointing to a just a handful of incidents in the past. Gary Fagin, who has lived near the South Street Seaport for 20 years, remembers just one accidental drowning in the area.

Maggie Greenfield of the Bronx River Alliance, an organization that is working on developing greenways in the Bronx, says that more public access to the water will actually enhance safety. "We'll have more eyes down there," she says.

Hudson Access

The other beach-like areas on the rivers are generally treated with benign neglect. But one proposal is likely to gain purchase. That is for a beach that may include swimming on the Hudson River west of the Meatpacking District. It's a long-term proposition, however. First sanitation trucks have to be relocated, and that won't happen until 2012, says Chris Martin of the Hudson River Park Trust.

David Snetman, bicycle campaign coordinator of Transportation Alternatives can think of only one area where water laps the Hudson shoreline in Manhattan. It is north of Riverbank State Park at 145th St. and continuing up past the George Washington Bridge. Along that stretch, cyclists and walkers stretch out on a grassy bank that slopes into rocky shoreline. That area provides the longest, most civilized and good-looking shoreline access in the city.

Harlem River, East River Access

At either end of Dyckman Street in Upper Manhattan New York Harbor Beaches show places to get to the water. On the east, on the Harlem River, a muddy beach by New York Restoration Project's restored wetlands. On the West end of Dyckman Street, there is a parks department sign for a kayak launch site. That doesn't make the place easily accessible. "It's official, even though you have to crawl through a hole in the fence," says the caption to the picture of the lovely-looking natural area.

On the East River, Stuyvesant Cove (around 23rd St.) provides a view of water lapping a rocky outcropping.

Brooklyn and Queens

In other spots along the river it takes some ingenuity to stick a toe in the water or park a boat. The New York Harbor Beaches Web site shows an aerial view of little beach areas in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, Hallets Cove and Queens near Socrates Sculpture Park. In DUMBO, there are a few areas along the river with rocks, sand, and grass. One is right under the Manhattan Bridge. Another is in Empire-Fulton Ferry State Park.

Bronx Advocacy

Greenfield of the Bronx River Alliance says the greenway will open up water access in several places in the long-neglected and closed-off area of the South Bronx. An old concrete plant is being remade into a park that will have access to the shore. Now, residents can get to the water along Soundview Park, West Farms around East Tremont Avenue and the Bronx River Forest.

Leaving It Alone

Not everyone wants to remake bits of the shoreline into official parks. Gary Fagin, who leads the Seaport Community Coalition, which is involved in historic preservation and quality of life for the neighborhood around the South Street Seaport, says that cleaning up the debris to make the beach under the Brooklyn Bridge more conventionally attractive would be useless. The tides would just bring back more detritus. "I scratch my head when I think of other ways for it to be of use," he says. He'd like to see it just left alone with the remnants of the old pier that once went out to the base of the bridge. "You can see water lapping against the beach. It's an evocative vista." He worries that attention to the scruffy spot could lead to some kind of reconstruction that would obliterate the little shoreline. For him, no news is good news. "The further under the radar, the better for the area," he says.

 

Harvesting the Rain


In 2002, when a severe decline in winter snow and spring rainfall forced the city to declare a drought emergency, gardeners throughout New York City faced a new twist on an age-old dilemma.

Unable to tap city fire hydrants -- the traditional irrigation source for community gardens -- garden managers looked to the skies for respite. Taking a cue from early farmers, they gathered as many jars, barrels and cisterns as they could find and set them out to capture and store a portion of every summer downpour that passed over the city. By the end of the year, at least seven gardens had created elaborate rainwater harvesting systems channeling water from neighboring rooftops and downspouts to 55-gallon drums and underground cisterns.

Four years later, the pressure to capture each precious drop of water may not be as high, but the rainwater harvesting continues. A loose-knit coalition of environmental groups calling itself Water Resources Group has helped community gardeners install water retention systems in 25 local gardens. The group has even secured a $45,000 grant from the Environmental Protection Agency to finance systems in at least four community gardens, starting with the Bedford Avenue Block Association Garden in Brooklyn near the corner of Bedford and De Kalb avenues.

Some of the larger sites use 1,000 gallon tanks, says project coordinator Lenny Librizzi of the Council on the Environment of New York City, a group member. But others use 55-gallon olive barrels donated by a Queens olive distributor.

As assistant director of the Council on the Environment’s open space greening project, Librizzi sees rainwater collection as an easy way to fulfill that project’s agenda to expand and enhance comunity gardens. For now, most community gardens rely on free city water from fire hydrants. This makes the gardens beholden to the whims of a city government that, for at least the last 10 years, has taken note of the value of the land underlying most community gardens and considered putting the acreage to more financially profitable use. For security's sake, many of the green spaces would prefer to have their own back-up water supply, free of city control.

But there are additional environmental benefits. Last year’s grant from the Environmental Protection Agency, for example, came about because the group was able to show that recycling rainwater reduces demand on the city’s storm sewers and so can help cut water pollution. Although the city is overhauling its aging combined sewer overflow system, many neighborhoods still send storm water runoff and household waste into the same sewers. Catching rainwater reduces the demand on the sewers, giving city pumps in these neighborhoods more time to work before the sewers reach the overflow stage and send untreated sewage into local waterways.

“It’s a win-win for the environment and for gardeners,” says Robin Simmen, manager of the Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s GreenBridge horticulture program. “First of all, rainwater is better for plants than chlorinated tap water so you’ll get bigger, healthier plants. Also, by harvesting rainwater, we reduce the amount of storm water that we are currently flooding into our sewer system.”

Or as Librizzi puts it, “In collecting rainwater, we’re not only making the city greener, we’re making it bluer.”

Granted, it takes more than a few dozen community gardens to put a dent in the city’s storm water runoff problem. The Water Resources Group estimates that its 25-garden network currently captures a little more than 250,000 gallons of rainwater annually. Compare that to the average family’s use of an estimated 100,000 gallons a year and it’s hard to resist the punning drop-in-a-bucket metaphor.

But rainwater harvesting can also produce a change in the way New Yorkers think about water. Once New Yorkers stop seeing water as something they can take for granted, they start appreciating what it truly is: a fickle resource that takes time to capture.

“We happen to be kind of lucky in that we just turn on the tap and have all the fresh water we want, but that may not always be the case,” Librizzi says. “The educational aspect is a big part of this.”

Just as community gardens have taken the lead in bringing nationwide issues such as open space preservation and solid waste composting into the five boroughs, so too has the movement played a leadership role in a city where many residents already grasp the common-sense value of rainwater recycling but don’t see how to make it work in a heavily urbanized environment.

“In a way we’re reinventing the wheel,” Simmen says. “Many of the immigrant cultures in our city come from places where rainwater harvesting is a way of life. People who come from the Caribbean -- there’s no groundwater supply there, every drop of water you use for irrigation comes from the sky, and people know to catch and store the water when it rains.”

To further that education, numerous websites offer set up and safe storage tips to the aspiring rainfall harvester. For example, the site for Tree People, a Los Angeles tree-planting group, offers an interactive application to help calculate proper cistern size depending on the size of the collecting rooftop and the expected rate of rainfall. A University of Florida Extension site, meanwhile, provides a how-to guide for anyone looking to hook up a simple, self-containing 55-gallon rain barrel system to an existing gutter or downspout.

Designing a self-contained system is important. Not only does rainwater evaporate when left uncovered, it also can be a magnet for mosquitoes, rodents and other disease-bearing pests. Finally, there are the issues of drowning risk and potability. Like a backyard pool, a good rainwater collection source should we well marked and well-guarded, and it should be abundantly clear to passersby that the water that just flowed in off somebody’s rooftop is for plant use only.

“Rainwater is generally free of harmful materials and in most cases chemicals, but can be adversely affected by air pollutants and/or contaminated by animals in the catchment area,” warns the rainwater harvesting website Harvest H20.

There are various methods to prevent contamination. Jonah Braverman, an urban agricultural coordinator with East New York Farms, says his group uses a “first flush” system. This involves a plugged, 10-gallon PVC downspout directly adjacent to the collection source - the gutters of a nearby house. Once the downspout fills completely, remaining water is automatically diverted to the main downspout, which flows directly to a 500-gallon tank. After the rainstorm, garden volunteers, remove the plug and dispose of the first few gallons of water, and with it, whatever early sediment came washing in off the rooftop. Most research has found that filtering the first 10 gallons – as the first flush system does – is enough “to protect yourself from bird excrement and other pollutants,” Braverman says.

The collection system also includes a direct line to the city sewer, so that volunteers can shut off and drain the system during the winter when freezing might shatter the permanently filled water lines. So far, the only lingering concern with the three year-old irrigation system is water pressure. To address that, the group is planning to purchase a solar-powered pump. “We will also be hooking the system up to a second roof,” he says.

Looking down the road, rainwater collection enthusiasts sees opportunities to expand the Water Resources Group’s efforts to private lots and facilities other than community gardens. In early June members of the Water Resources Group along with members of the City Council’s Committee on Environmental Protection will visit Philadelphia where Philadelphia Green, a project funded by the Philadelphia Horticultural Society, has been working on pilot projects involving permeable paving materials, including asphalt. Such projects, if successful, could dramatically increase the percentage of rainwater captured and minimize storm runoff from parking lots and streets. The newly permeable surfaces can then be planted with trees and other plants, making them cooler and more attractive – without consuming additional drinking water.

In a sense such projects hark back to an earlier era. Simmen notes that that the lots of many Brooklyn brownstones still contain the buried backyard cisterns local residents once used to store rainwater during the dry months. “Since the early 20th century, New York has one of the few cities that doesn’t exist next to or on top of its water supply,“ Simmen says. As a result, many of us haven’t learned the importance of protecting the local waterways from pollution, something we might have learned growing up in another city. It’s something that we had here and it’s something that we’ve lost.”

 

Fighting Pollution and High Fuel Costs


With gasoline prices in the city well above $3 and heading ever upward, New York motorists gnash their teeth and grumble whenever they refill their tanks.

But government feels the effects of rising gas prices as well. "Our expenses are going up when the cost of heating oil, the cost of diesel fuel, when the cost of gasoline goes up," Mayor Michael Bloomberg has said. "There's not a lot that this city or this state can do about it."

Many aspects of the energy situation certainly remain outside the mayor's control, but there are some steps he and the City Council could take that would not only lower costs but also address New York's serious air pollution problem.

With gasoline prices on the rise, drivers are looking for ways to save. Sales of hybrid cars -- powered by electricity, as well as gasoline -- have risen sharply in recent months, with Ford Motor Company telling the Washington Post that sales of its two hybrids had doubled in the past month and Toyota reporting that it cannot produce enough of its Prius hybrid to meet the demand. Sales of Honda's natural gas powered car, the Civic GX, have reportedly increased as well.

While consumers may be choosing these vehicles to save money, they are also helping the environment. Automobile exhaust is a key component of smog and soot, and a contributor to the greenhouse gases that cause global warming. The hybrids and cars powered by natural gas cause less of this pollution than conventional gasoline-burning cars.

Anyone who lives in New York breathes auto exhaust. But most New Yorkers -- living in a densely developed city with a good mass transit system -- do not suffer from rising gasoline prices as much as residents of rural areas who may have to drive 30 miles for a gallon of milk. As taxpayers, though, we all pay at least indirectly for the costs of another fuel -- diesel.

Diesel powers most trucks and buses, including city-owned garbage trucks and city-funded school buses. Like gasoline, it is a petroleum product, subject to the vagaries of the oil market -- but even more expensive than gasoline. The city could save money and improve public health by cutting down its use of diesel -- and a good place to start would be with its garbage trucks.

REPLACING DIESEL

Even if diesel cost only pennies a gallon, it would still extract a high cost. Thanks largely to diesel exhaust, Manhattan air is the most dangerous in the nation. According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's National-Scale Air Toxics Assessment, residents of the borough bear the greatest risk in the U.S. of getting cancer simply from breathing. The soot contained in diesel emissions is also a significant reason why children in New York City are hospitalized for asthma at twice the national average.

Cities around the country recognize that diesel exhaust poses a threat to public health and are doing something about it. They are switching their truck and bus fleets from diesel to cleaner fuels and technologies. New York has already taken some steps as well. Last spring, the City Council passed, and the mayor signed, bills that would require the city to purchase cleaner vehicles, mandate that city diesel-powered vehicles use low-sulfur diesel, and control emissions on trucks, transit buses and sight-seeing buses. But the city could do more -- one important step would be switching its garbage trucks from diesel to a cleaner fuel.

THE UN-DIESELS

There are a number of commercially viable alternatives to diesel.

Biodiesel

Biodiesel is a domestic, renewable fuel made from vegetable oils. Despite news stories about cars that fill their tanks on leftover restaurant vegetable oil, vegetable oil must go through a chemical process to remove certain components before it be used as a fuel.

The use of biodiesel to replace diesel in trucks and buses does not significantly reduce fuel costs or pollution because it is typically blended with 80 percent regular diesel to form B20. B20 can power diesel vehicles without modifying their engines.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, running an engine on B20 results in a 12 percent reduction in soot and carbon monoxide and a 20 percent reduction in hydrocarbons, which are associated with increased cancer rates as well as global warming. However, emissions from an engine running on B20 contain a slightly higher number of pollutants thatlead to smog.

Biodiesel can be used in its pure form, B100, which does not contain a drop of regular diesel. According to the EPA, burning pure biodiesel in an engine reduces hydrocarbon emissions, soot and carbon monoxide by far greater amounts than B20 does. But manufacturers' warranties do not cover engines that run on B100, and the fuel can damage some rubber hoses and gaskets in older truck engines. In addition, biodiesel would do nothing to ease the burden of high diesel fuel prices on the city budget, since it costs more than conventional diesel.

Hybrid Vehicles

Hybrid-electric vehicles run on a fossil fuel, such as diesel or gasoline, and electric energy generated during braking. When drivers of a conventional car or truck hit their brakes, that energy is lost. However, in a hybrid-electric vehicle, that energy is captured and stored in a battery, which can then power the vehicle under certain driving conditions. When a hybrid vehicle runs on the stored electric power, it does not spew harmful pollutants into the air or burn fossil fuel. And because they do not use gasoline or diesel oil when running on the battery, hybrids save money.

Not all hybrids are created equal. Some have a better fuel economy than others. The extent to which hybrids displace diesel, generate pollution and produce cost savings also depends on whether they use diesel, gasoline, or natural gas.

Natural Gas

Unlike biodiesel and hybrid-electric vehicles, natural gas vehicles can fully displace diesel powered ones. Natural gas is domestically produced and burns cleaner than any form of diesel. Running an engine on natural gas, compared to conventional diesel, produces 32 to 73 percent fewer pollutants that lead to smog, and 69 to 83 percent fewer hydrocarbons. And while natural gas prices have gone up in recent years, it still costs less than diesel. In September 2005, diesel cost (in pdf format) an average of $2.81 a gallon, while the equivalent amount of natural gas cost $2.12.

Some private companies have already switched their trucks to natural gas. Last year, for example, Manhattan Beer Distributorsopened a natural gas refueling station in Brooklyn and retrofitted an additional 15 of its trucks to run with the cleaner fuel. Because natural gas is a gaseous fuel, regular filling stations cannot handle it, which is why Manhattan Beer Distributors had to build its own station. A lack of such stations represents a major impediment to increased use of natural gas vehicles. But of all of the commercially viable alternatives, natural gas vehicles can do the most to help people breathe easier.

THE CLEANER GARBAGE TRUCK


The city is limited in what it can do to put cleaner, more efficient vehicles on New York's streets. It cannot, for example require all car owners to swap their gas-guzzling SUVs for hybrids. But the city does have the power to clean up its fleet of garbage trucks. And doing that would produce enormous benefits, improving air quality -- and setting a good example for other government agencies and for private business.

Per mile, refuse trucks consume the most fuel of any vehicle on the road, burning one gallon of diesel fuel every 2.8 miles. Partly because they are among the oldest vehicles on the road (nationally, 41 percent of them have been in use for more than 10 years), garbage trucks are among the most polluting vehicles. As trucks age, their pollution controls deteriorate, allowing higher levels of pollutants to escape into the air. A recent report by INFORM (in pdf format) calculated that the 3,607 diesel-fueled refuse trucks operated by private garbage haulers in the city collectively generate as much as 9,500 tons of soot and pollutants per year. Thousands more tons spew from the Department of Sanitation's 2,500 diesel-powered refuse trucks.

The city's refuse truck fleet -- mostly diesel powered -- travels 6,300 miles each day. So, at $2.81 for a gallon of diesel, the city spends more than $2.3 million a year on diesel fuel for garbage trucks. If the city's fleet ran entirely on natural gas, New York's taxpayers could save more than half a million dollars a year a year in fuel costs.

Natural gas trucks do cost $40,000 to $50,000 more than conventional diesel trucks. However, state and federal government grants are available to help pay for natural gas trucks and refueling equipment.

And the gap in costs is narrowing. The EPA's tighter emissions standards for 2010 could spur the price of a diesel powered truck to increase by as much as $10,000 to $12,000. A study conducted by TIAX, an independent research firm, estimates that the pollution controls needed to meet the new emissions standards will soon erase any cost advantage that diesel refuse trucks have over natural gas trucks.

If every one of the public and private diesel refuse trucks in the city ran on natural gas, it would save 54 million gallons of diesel fuel a year, sharply reducing noxious emissions. (This is based on figures in another INFORM report, Greening GarbageTrucks.)

Of course there are other things the city can do as well. When awarding contracts, it can give preferenceto private companies that use cleaner fueled vehicles. City government can also offer incentives such as tax credits to private companies that switch to alternative vehicles.

Many New Yorkers are not familiar with natural gas, biodiesel and hybrid-electric vehicles. But these technologies, which can save money and help address the public health problems, are not some kind of futuristic fantasy. They are available right here, right now, if we choose to use them.

Stephanie Mandell is with the Sustainable Transportation Program at INFORM, an independent research organization that examines the effects of business practices on the environment and on human health.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Green Is Gold (Though Not Yet In NYC)


Those attending an event known as the Green Trading Summit in midtown this month had two unshakeable convictions, one backed by science, the other by finance: Global warming is doing damage to the environment, and efforts to reduce its severity have proven lucrative; green, they say, is gold.

Michael Liebreich of a financial information company called New Energy Finance who traveled from London to give a presentation at the conference, calls it the "Kyoto Effect.' After most of the world's nations signed the Kyoto Protocol, the 1997 agreement calling upon industrial nations to reduce the emission of harmful 'greenhouse' gases such as carbon dioxide and methane, there was a surge in European investment in technology companies working to help reduce consumption of the fossil fuels that produce these gases, or, failing that, to boost fuel efficiency.

The United States did not sign the Kyoto Treaty, and, Liebreich pointed out, it shows: There has been a 68 percent drop-off in investment in clean energy on this side of the Atlantic.

Had the Senate chosen to ratify the Kyoto Protocol, U.S. manufacturers and utilities would face the same pressure as their European counterparts to switch to low emissions energy sources such as solar, wind, and nuclear power. As things currently stand, however, American companies have a free pass from Congress and the courts to dump as much carbon dioxide as they wish into the atmosphere, leaving the investment in clean energy to a handful of risk-tolerant companies.

In a global marketplace where businesses and industries often flock to the friendliest stock exchanges, that spells bad news for New York City. However, there was optimism at the conference. Citing a 50 percent surge in registrations for this year's conference, Green Trading Summit organizer Peter Fusaro credited post-Katrina anxiety over bad weather and high energy prices for forcing a mood change on Wall Street. Throw in the success of European investment markets and you had the sentiment that, ratification or no ratification, the world's money is already voting in favor of Kyoto compliance.

"Everybody and his brother knows the U.S. will have a greenhouse gas regime sooner rather than later," Fusaro said, meaning he believes the federal goverment is certain to create a policy that attempts to limit greenhouse gas emissions. "And when that happens, New York will be the center of financial trading.'

Of primary interest at the conference was the proven success of the European Emissions Trading Scheme, a direct outgrowth of the Kyoto Protocol. Since January 1, 2005, the European utilities and manufacturers that invest in clean energy have been able to recoup the costs through the sale of 'credits' to their dirtier peers. In other words, for every ton a European company falls under its government-imposed emissions target, that company can sell a credit that knocks a ton off the total net emissions target that another company is required to meet.

Similar to the 'cap and trade' programs used to curb acid rain pollution here since the 1980s, the European trading scheme focuses primarily on carbon dioxide, the chief byproduct of fossil fuel combustion. For decades, scientists have seen a linkage between rising global temperatures and rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. While agreement on carbon dioxide's role in climate change may not be unanimous, European nations have been enthusiastic supporters of reduced carbon dioxide emissions and have passed strict regulations.

As a result, the price for each ton of carbon dioxide eliminated at the smokestack has risen from $10 last year to $34 now. Last year's market participants bought and sold more than 360 million tons of carbon dioxide credits, giving the market a conservative value of $3.6 billion.

So far, the only place where U.S. traders enjoy a home field advantage is in Chicago, where the Chicago Climate Exchange has been offering U.S. utilities a chance to recoup their own clean air investments. Unlike the European system, however, the Chicago Climate Exchange is voluntary. To qualify, companies need only reduce their emissions by four percent between now and 2012, a little more than half the seven percent target requested by Kyoto. As a result, Chicago's activity, 6 million tons, is less than two percent of European volume. The average price per ton of carbon traded is less than one-tenth the European price.

'The bottom line is carbon trades for $3 in Chicago and $30 in Europe,' says Fusaro. 'That's what's known in the business as an arbitrage opportunity and companies are already moving to take advantage of it.'

So are state governments. Noting federal inaction on Kyoto, New York's Governor George Pataki in 2003 issued a challenge to fellow governors to set up a regional cap and trade system for carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. Last December, Pataki joined six counterparts in signing the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, or RGGI.

Pronounced 'Reggie' by market participants, the initiative applies only to utility companies but aims for the Kyoto-worthy target of a 10 percent greenhouse gas reduction between 2009 and 2019. New York's 2002 State Energy Plan already calls for similar reductions, so the initiative is in many ways an attempt to broaden state policy to the entire region and give local businesses a head start on credit trading should Fusaro's prediction of a federal greenhouse emissions policy prove correct. Under the terms of the now eight-state agreement, utilities who do business in New York must cap their carbon dioxide output at a collective 64 million short tons (roughly 58 metric tons) in 2009 and reduce that output at a rate of 640,000 tons each year thereafter. Overall, the regional program covers roughly 121 million tons, which means that New York utilities who invest in alternative fuel sources and clean air technologies now would conceivably control half of all trades in the marketplace once trading starts. That type of situation would give Con Edison and other local companies the chance to set the market price for carbon credits and would give brokers working with Con Edison a distinct early advantage.

Charles Fox, New York's deputy secretary for energy and the environment and an attendee of the Green Trading Summit, said the governor's office has yet to decide on where that trading will happen. Noting that the Chicago Climate Exchange recently opened a New York subsidiary, the New York Climage Exchange, Fox hesitated to say anything that might indicate favor for that exchange or the New York Mercantile Exchange, the city's 132 year-old hub for commodities trading. He did, however, affirm the governor's commitment to make New York City the regional center for new energy trading, if not the world center.

'We want to see these trades being made by people who are sitting at desks in Lower Manhattan,' Fox says. 'New York City is the world's financial capital, and this is a financial market that's growing. It's important that the city not miss the boat.'

Yankee Stadium Parkland Swap


What if the city decided to put a stadium in the middle of your local park?

Don’t worry, though. The city would rebuild most of the displaced athletic facilities in several other places. Your old park is dilapidated, and the new one would have a sparkling new running track and state-of-the-art fields.

But instead of being set inside a large, green space surrounded by hundreds of mature trees, the fields would be scattered on separate parcels, including the tops of parking garages. The new recreational spaces would be closer to the highway and train tracks and an additional five-minute to half-hour walk from where people live. Most of the trees would be cut down. The new stadium would go smack in the middle of the community’s current park, next to a residential area.

That’s the parkland trade the city agreed to in the South Bronx, allowing the New York Yankees plan to build their long-desired new stadium in Macombs Dam Park. If this were to happen on the Upper East Side of Manhattan or in a middle-income neighborhood of Queens, there would be a howl of protest louder than when the Red Sox beat the Yankees in 2004.

New York State common law requires that when parkland is taken away from the public’s use, it must be replaced by new parkland nearby of equal or greater value. The parks department says that in return for losing Macombs Dam Park and part of John Mullaly Park, residents would end up with more acres of parkland and far superior playing fields. Residents say they would be shortchanged.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion, and state legislators have fast-tracked the plan, which includes a stadium with fewer seats but with luxury boxes and wider concourses, as well as four new garages to hold about 5,000 cars. In June of 2005, the state legislature swiftly passed the necessary approval to take the park, before most residents were aware it was happening. Last month, the City Planning Commission, whose members are appointed by the mayor, voted unanimously in favor of the plan. The plan will be final if the City Council approves it in April.

Opposing the plan are park advocates, fiscal watchdogs, and mass transit supporters, as well as residents of the neighborhood and nearby South Bronx communities, who were not consulted when the Yankees and the city worked out the deal. The local community board voted two to one against the plan in November of 2005, but the board has only an advisory role. Tony Costa, a long-time resident and member of Save Our Parks, one of the groups fighting the stadium, said, “The Yankees made the plan and then said, ‘Come on, why don’t you love it?’”

The taking of parkland for the stadium and parking garages raises a number of public health and environmental justice concerns. The area’s residents are mostly black and Hispanic, including many recent immigrants from Africa and Central America. It has some of the highest rates of asthma and obesity in the city, yet the lowest ratios of parkland to 1,000 residents. With public funding for four new parking garages -- but not for a stop on the Metro North line that goes right through the area -- the plan seems guaranteed to increase traffic and pollution.

There are other problematic aspects to the plan, including the taxpayers’ contribution to its financing and overblown projections of economic returns to the city and neighborhood, which are addressed in a recent report by Good Jobs New York and Tom Angotti’s Gotham Gazette article, Yankee Stadium Without Tears. But let’s leave those issues aside and look more closely at the parkland exchange.

WHAT WOULD BE LOST

Macombs Dam Park and a third of the adjacent Mullaly Park. The stadium and a VIP parking garage would go in the middle of a long rectangle of recreational space that residents consider their Central Park. Nearly 400 mature trees, which beautify the neighborhood and filter pollutants, would have to be chopped down. The apartment buildings across the street, which were designed to be opposite the park, would face directly onto massive stadium walls to be built right up to the sidewalk.

The part of Macombs Dam Park that now wraps around the existing stadium would be replaced with parking garages, decked over to allow athletic facilities on top. The garages would be built on land that slopes down, so the playing fields would be level with the adjacent land.

The park space slated to be taken contains four baseball diamonds, one soccer field, 32 handball courts, two basketball courts, and 16 tennis courts. One of the most popular features is the Joseph Yancey Track and Field, used by school teams for practice and meets and by residents of all ages for exercise.

The plan pushes the recreational space away from the community and toward the waterfront, the Metro-North tracks, and the Major Deegan Expressway. The tennis courts, which also draw people from Manhattan and other parts of the Bronx, would be on the waterfront and a greater distance from the subway stop.

Macombs Dam Park is a community park where residents come to toss a football, take a stroll, and just enjoy the grass and trees. Families often gather on weekends to picnic while watching the men play soccer in the middle of the track.

During the three- to five-year construction period, residents would lose the use of most of the athletic fields. The parks department says it would try to minimize the disruption by phasing in construction and creating interim fields and by helping teams find other places they can play, giving youth teams priority for the easier-to-reach fields. According to the Environmental Impact Statement, a temporary running course in one location or another would be available throughout construction for walking, jogging and recreational running, but would not be suitable for competitive track meets.

WHAT WOULD REPLACE THE LOST PARKLAND

The current version of the project, called the “Alternate Plan” in the Environmental Impact Statement, provides 27.5 acres of replacement recreational space to the south of the existing parkland. It would include three ball fields on the current Yankee Stadium site and a track, a soccer field, and basketball courts on the roofs of parking garages. The rest would be in bits and pieces, including tennis courts about a half mile away on the waterfront and two tiny pocket parks, including one next to the spot where the subway emerges from the tunnel.

The swap provides a few additional acres of open space with pretty much the same recreational uses as the existing park. The details would be adjusted to meet the needs of the community when a final design is created, said Joshua Laird, assistant commissioner of planning at the parks department. He said the department is also considering building a special “destination” playground, the kind of place around which parents would plan a weekend outing with their kids. The department also hopes to bring more maintenance to the area through the community benefits agreement being negotiated with the Yankees.

Residents are particularly unhappy with the garage-top facilities. With the high rates of childhood asthma in the area, one concern is exposure to exhaust. Laird said that there will be no stacks or grilles in the park and that exhaust will be vented so as not to affect people using the space.

Residents also don’t like the replacement of natural fields with artificial ones. Synthetic turf is more durable than grass, which is quickly worn to dirt with the hard use city ball fields get, and the parks department is installing the artificial stuff in fields all over the city. But because synthetic turf is much hotter than grass, the rooftop fields, which would lack the trees of the existing park, would likely get steaming in the summer. Laird said that trees would be planted between playing fields in pockets where the soil could be deeper, although it’s hard to believe anything could grow successfully except small ornamental trees. There is also a possibility that security concerns would make these spaces off limits on the team’s 80-plus game days.

The tennis courts would be moved to the Harlem River waterfront. At present, that is a 30-minute walk through a run-down, deserted area, across a scary covered pedestrian bridge over the Metro North tracks and then underneath the elevated expressway. (The Yankees rejected this area for the stadium because of its limited public access.) The area immediately surrounding the courts would be landscaped and include a pedestrian esplanade, but it would remain isolated along an industrial stretch. There is a construction demolition debris plant a pier away on one side; stadium parking would go on the other.

According to Laird, however, plans are in the works to transform the area. “Part of the reason people have been skeptical about the waterfront is that they have in their minds’ eye the conditions today,” he said. The parks department would replace the pedestrian bridge and make it handicapped-accessible. The city is backing a developer’s proposal to replace the nearby Bronx Terminal Market with a million-square-foot mall of big-box stores, a large project whose environmental impacts have not been considered in conjunction with the Yankee Stadium plan.

As for the trees, there really is no way to give the neighborhood back what would be destroyed. The environmental impact statement said the city would mitigate the loss of the 40-year-old trees by planting “from between 8,356 trees of a 3½ inch caliper to 29,248 trees of a 2-inch caliper within the replacement recreational facilities and along streets.” Laird said that the department figures on planting between 8,000 and 12,000 street and park trees, but many would have to go outside the area that would suffer the loss. Some would even be planted outside the neighborhood. In addition, newly planted street trees have a very low survival rate due to the city’s hot, dry conditions and to errant trucks and automobiles.

THE TRADE-OFF

The main benefit for the community to the parks swap is that it will replace the old track, fields, and courts, which are in poor condition because the parks department hasn’t had the maintenance funding to care for them properly or capital funds allocated to replace them. Given enough money, the parks department can undoubtedly design beautiful new recreational facilities.

But a park is more than the sum of its fields and courts. It is the breeze under the spreading arms of a tree, the fresh smell in the air after a rain, the feeling of being in the middle of a green space apart from brick and concrete. It is a place close by where neighbors come together and community is formed. It makes city life a little easier when you can see a bit of green and sky across the street or down the block. Are these luxuries only for people in affluent neighborhoods?

Even opponents of the plan want the Yankees to stay in the Bronx and to get a modern stadium. But especially in a neighborhood that is already short on green space and long on health problems worsened by the lack of exercise and fresh air, taking a tree-lined community park and replacing it with artificial playing fields farther from where people live should be the last resort, used only for something that has a clear public good.

It is a dangerous precedent to take land held in the public trust for the benefit of a private corporation. Supporters say the new stadium will bring jobs to an economically stressed community. If a few hundred new minimum-wage and temporary construction jobs (that may or may not go to local workers) justifies giving away parkland to baseball’s wealthiest team, then why not let businesses build in every park?

In the rush to get approval, the city and the Yankees have dismissed alternatives that would let the team have its stadium and at the same time allow the community to keep its park. Elected officials need to subject the plan to greater scrutiny and to negotiate a better deal for the neighborhood and the city. To paraphrase Yogi Berra, going forward with the current plan would be making a wrong mistake.

Articles on the Yankee/park swap

How The South Bronx Lost Its Parks To Yanks (Metro, 3/14/06)

Two Stadiums. No Waiting. Yanks and Mets plans leave little room for public debate (Village Voice, 3/14/06)

Yanks Get City Bonds (Metro, 3/15,06)

Bloomberg Boots Yankee Stats City's own figures show that the new Bronx stadium would be a money pit (Village Voice, 1/13/06)

Anne Schwartz, in charge of the parks topic page since its inception in 1999, is a journalist who specializes in environmental issues. 

Wind Power In NYC


The Statue of Liberty, our nation’s 119-year-old national symbol of freedom, will soon become a symbol of something else as well – wind power.

Last month, the General Services Administration, the U.S. government agency that oversees management of federal buildings and federal monuments, announced that it will be purchasing 100 percent of the electricity needed to light up and power the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island and 22 other federal buildings -- a yearly electricity demand of roughly 27 million kilowatt hours --- from so-called windmill farms located in western New York, Pennsylvania and three other states.

While the source of this power will be largely invisible to city dwellers, the deal fills a major symbolic void at a time when city and state officials, and even President George W. Bush, are singing the virtues of alternative energy sources.

Remember The Freedom Tower Windmills?

Only a short while ago, there promised to be a far more visible symbol of wind power in New York – Freedom Tower at the site of the World Trade Center. Architect David Childs, in a modification of Daniel Libeskind’s high concept plan for a 1776 foot tall Freedom Tower, unveiled a design that would embed a series of 30 vertical windmills at the top. More than just eye candy, the windmills would provide much-needed local electricity in a city that, only four months earlier, had experienced a major blackout.

Child’s attempt to harness the wind has been forgotten. A May 2005 redesign, while primarily responding to New York Police Department security concerns, quietly jettisoned the windmill stack in an attempt to give something a little closer to the original World Trade Centers 1 and 2 profile. (The new design still has some environmentally-friendly elements, such as clear glass to allow more natural sunlight into the building, and a system to collect rainwater, probably for use in the restrooms and the fire sprinklers.)

The General Services Adminstration power purchase, while lacking in the showpiece visibility of the 2003 Freedom Tower design, more closely reflects the reality of the current wind power marketplace. Despite state and federal tax credits for suppliers and purchasers alike, wind energy requires exploitation on a large scale in order to be cost competitive with coal-burning and other, traditional electricity generation methods. The kind of windmill often used to generate electricity (a 750-kilowatt turbine) costs roughly $800,000 yet generates only $80,000 to $100,000 in salable electricity per year.

Wind companies have learned to locate dozens of turbines on “wind farms” -- remote facilities that take advantage of steady predictable wind currents, low land-leasing costs and an additional helping of subsidies from the U.S. Department of Agriculture which currently encourages farmers to exploit this secondary revenue source. Added together the resulting cost savings have brought wind-powered electricity generation down to the market-critical four to six cents per kilowatt-hour, the same wholesale cost range for electricity that comes from burning coal.

“Essentially a wind farm operates like any other power plant,” says Paul Copleman, spokesman for Community Energy Inc., a Wayne, Pennsylvania company whose wind farms in the mid-Atlantic region are supplying the electricity that will eventually power the Statue of Liberty’s lantern. “When businesses or homeowners are choosing to purchase wind energy, they’re not taking the step of putting a windmill on their home. It’s just as easy as purchasing any grid-connected power source.”

Still, in New York, a city that has added six natural gas-burning power plants over the last half-decade, some are looking to make wind power more visible to the local energy consumer.

Windmills On The Fresh Kills Landfill

Currently the most ambitious plan of this type is the Fresh Kills Landfill redevelopment plan. At the urging of Staten Island Borough President James Molinaro, BQ Energy, a Pawling, N.Y. company which has a cost-sharing agreement with the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA), is investigating the feasibility of installing at least five windmill towers atop the closed landfill’s tallest mound.

According to the Staten Island Advance, BQ Energy engineers already believe the winds that buffet the former landfill could sustain up to five large turbines, generating enough electricity for 5,000 nearby homes. The process must first clear FAA regulatory hurdles to make sure the windmills don’t interfere with the Newark Liberty International Airport flight path. It will also most likely face a challenge from environmental groups who want to protect the migratory waterfowl that currently use the recovering Fresh Kills waterway and could be threatened by the spinning turbine blades. Finally, there is the risk that Staten Island residents near the facility, much like their counterparts in Cape Cod, Massachusetts, will balk at losing their rapidly-improving view to a series of industrial windmills.

Despite such challenges, Molinaro sees the turbines as a chance to make Staten Island the “renewable energy capital of New York City” while at the same time deflecting complaints over the New York Power Authority’s new natural gas-burning power plant on the northeastern corner of the island.

“Our plan to erect a wind energy facility at the Fresh Kills landfill will tackle tomorrow’s energy challenges today, right here on Staten Island,” Molinaro said in a statement issued immediately after the president’s State of the Union address.

The Windy City

Meanwhile, with the passing of the Freedom Tower wind turbine design, the struggle to marry wind turbine efficiency and aesthetic design moves west to Chicago, where Mayor Richard Daley is an enthusiastic supporter of green building design, especially those designs that take advantage of Chicago’s “windy city” reputation. In January, city officials announced plans to integrate two wind turbines into the structure of the Richard J. Daley Center in The Loop and eight turbines into the still-unbuilt Ford Calumet Environmental Center on the north side. Unlike the propeller-shaped windmills that had been proposed for the Freedom Tower, these newer windmills, developed by University of Illinois at Chicago professor William Becker, will employ a tube-shaped corkscrew design. As Becker noted in an interview last year with the trade magazine Building Design and Construction, the design is intended both to minimize the industrial look of turbine fans and increase turbine efficiency.

The Kidwind Project In The Bronx

While New York City has yet to match that creativity, Dr. Reid Strieby, a professor at the Bronx Community College Center for Sustainable Energy, has been working with local teachers to get students thinking more about the next generation of turbine design. Strieby’s program, which is in partnership with a small nationwide non-profit called the Kidwind Project, is part of an effort to give high school and middle school teachers (mostly earth science and environmental science teachers) the lesson plans and wind turbine kits to explore wind energy as a concept.

The next Bronx installment of the Kidwind Project will be in the fall. Strieby sees this as more than just a lesson; to him it’s a mission. With so little apparent enthusiasm currently for wind energy among governments and public utilities, he hopes to help create a new generation of energy consumers who will see things differently: “One of the ways to get the word out is to tell the teachers," he says, "and the teachers can tell the kids, and the kids can become advocates.”

 



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