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Persistent Themes and New Projects as Earth Day Hits 50 in New York


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Key themes of the first Earth Day remain on the 50th (photo: governor's office)


A half-century ago, the United States celebrated the first Earth Day. In New York City, Fifth Avenue connected Union Square Park and Central Park with tens of thousands of New Yorkers celebrating the environment and urging their government to take swift and decisive action to protect their air and water. Today, 50 years later, the world has been put on pause to combat a health crisis unseen in generations. But while we are unable to again take to the streets to mark Earth Day, it does not mean that the same spirit—or the same environmental issues—have vanished.

During the 1950s and ‘60s, New York City suffered from horrible toxic smog that killed hundreds a year and sickened many more. Thankfully, we don’t face the same scale of air pollution today, but it doesn’t mean pollution is any less deadly. In fact, we are seeing first-hand that our vulnerable and disadvantaged communities who carry the burden of poor air quality are also seeing the highest death rates of COVID-19. A recent report from Harvard connected these dots: death rates from COVID-19 infection are higher in areas of poor air quality.

In spite of this, the Trump Administration has consistently and aggressively moved to protect and prop up polluters. It has ignored science, rolled back regulations, and tried to return the country to a time before there was an Earth Day. 

So, if we can’t rely on the federal government, then it is again up to New York State to take the lead on protecting our air, water, and climate. We are in a good position to do so, having taken a huge step forward last year when state leaders passed a law that fights climate change by moving the entire economy of New York off of polluting fossil fuels and onto clean, renewable energy. That means electrifying all vehicles, expanding mass transit, transforming buildings, and developing the workforce necessary to get the job done. But that transition will require dedicated funding to help lift up the communities hit hardest by this crisis, and it’s the polluters who should be picking up the tab.

We must also expand and strengthen other pollution-reduction programs already on the books. For example, New York (and several other states in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative) make polluting power plants pay for the carbon they dump into our skies. That money—$1.3 billion since the beginning of the program—is then put into efforts that cut energy bills. This has been a successful program but could be more so by closing loopholes that exclude some of the worst polluting power plants and dedicating at least 35 percent of clean energy funding to frontline communities who suffer the worst from pollution.

Finally, we need to focus on programs and projects that will assist in an economic recovery and help protect our public health. Today, you will no doubt use tap water multiple times to wash your hands and protect yourself against the spread of COVID-19. Clean water and hygiene are at the front line of our defenses during this public health crisis, underscoring the need to continue to make investments in the state’s aging drinking water and wastewater infrastructure. There is a long line of shovel-ready projects throughout the state waiting for funding that will ensure clean water in our communities. Thankfully, this year’s state budget has authorized $500 million for these kinds of clean water projects. This will be an immediate environmental and economic catalyst for communities all over New York and why the state needs to move quickly to get these projects going. 

New York faces an unprecedented and uncertain future thanks to COVID-19. And the difficulties we confronted before this crisis started haven’t disappeared. Climate change still threatens, and we still need to protect our air and water. But the one thing that this situation has proved is that New Yorkers can come together and do what needs to be done to protect the health and well-being of ourselves and the environment. Fifty years ago, it was taking to the streets. Today, it’s staying at home. Tomorrow, it will be the hard work of ensuring a healthier, more equitable and economically vibrant state.

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Peter Iwanowicz, Executive Director of Environmental Advocates of New York, is one of the nation’s foremost climate advocates and a recent appointee to New York’s Climate Action Council. On Twitter @greenwatchdogNY.

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Now More Than Ever: Abolish The City Marshal


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The city should eliminate the marshal position, the author writes (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office:)


Since the 17th century, down on their luck New Yorkers have faced a familiar spectre: a New York City Marshal.

The marshals are enforcers of court judgments including evictions, foreclosures, utility shut-offs, and debt collections. The difference between the New York City Marshals and New York City Sheriffs are that sheriffs are salaried public servants employed by the city while the marshals are technically private entrepreneurs who, despite being appointed by the mayor, are contracted by landlords, banks, utility companies, debt collectors, etc.

For each job, the marshals collect fees and are also entitled to a 5% cut of the total amount collected, known as “poundage.” Not surprisingly, the marshals thrive in times of economic hardship; in 2009, at the nadir of the Great Recession, the marshals recorded their best year to date, with over a third of them having earned over a million dollars. This is why it’s important, now more than ever amid vast economic hardship and more ahead, to abolish the city marshal system and transfer its duties over to the New York City Sheriff’s Office.

You might be wondering: how is it that in 2020 the mayor of the proverbial “greatest city in the world” still appoints what are essentially legally-authorized bounty hunters? Mayor de Blasio, to his credit, has spoken out against the marshal system. But so too have several mayors before him. The reason why the marshals have been able to remain as an immovable part of the city’s firmament is a long history of patronage, influence peddling, and political inertia.

The marshal system was first established in 1655 when New York was then a Dutch colony and has been in operation ever since. Opposition to the marshal system goes back to the early 20th century, with the formation of good government groups that rose against the venalities of Tammany Hall-style influence and corruption. Pressed by groups like Citizens Union, mayors as far back as Fiorello La Guardia sought to abolish the marshal system, and almost every mayor since John Lindsay has come into office nominally against it. (Bloomberg was the exception; he liked the idea of privatized enforcement and appointed 20 new marshals.)

Each ran into the same problem: the New York City marshals are protected under New York State law. The most concerted effort to abolish the marshal system in the state Legislature, which Jack Newfield and Paul DuBrul described in vivid detail in their terrific book “The Abuse of Power,” was in 1975. Organized by Citizens Union, the bill had passed in the State Senate, but failed in the Assembly. The Speaker at the time, Stanley Steingut, ruled over Brooklyn’s Democratic Party, in which patronage plums like recommendations for marshal appointments were a mainstay, and so Steingut smothered the bill by sending it through the Assembly committee of a fellow machine loyalist where it failed to reach the floor for a vote.

Ever since, the marshals have maintained their license to scavenge at the expense of the city’s most indigent by reinvesting no small portion of their earnings into political influence. They are prolific campaign contributors, which is why, despite a succession of mayors who came into office against the marshal system, each not only stood down from their opposition, but also consented to an expansion of the marshals’ powers. Mayors Dinkins and Giuliani, both having received significant contributions from the marshals, ultimately supported legislation that allowed the marshals to collect judgments awarded by the state Supreme Court (in addition to civil court). Today, the marshals’ lobbyist and spokesperson was de Blasio’s biggest bundler in his first campaign for mayor. (De Blasio, apropos of a Bloomberg News series that described the essential role the marshals had played in enforcing a type of predatory lending scheme called “merchant cash advance,” did say in December 2018 that the continuing existence of the marshal system “needs a new look” and questioned whether the system “makes sense at this point,” but nothing ever came of it.)

In 2020, the marshal system simply does not make sense – neither financially, according to the Independent Budget Office, nor as a tool of effective governance, as the backroom “clubhouse” dealmakers who protected the system have ceased to exist.

Indeed, the county party machines are hardly the potent force today as they were decades ago (or two years ago for that matter); while the State Senate Independent Democratic Conference, and especially former IDC leader Senator Jeff Klein – to whom individual marshals, as well as their PAC, had contributed tens of thousands of dollars – had been voted out by a new crop of legislators with a more promising vision of how government should work for people. In other words, the political resistance to this proposal no longer exists.

While the marshal system may still work well for the marshals’ clients: landlords, Con Edison, or debt collectors – who benefit from a privatized enforcement system that incentivizes fast turnover and imposes a merciless discipline on those who are going through a tough time – it does not work well for New Yorkers.

Any realistic anticipation of the economic fallout from COVID-19 that’s underway must take into account that until the federal government figures out how to develop an administrative infrastructure that can deliver stimulus directly into people’s pockets, it is incumbent on state and municipal governments to protect citizens from eviction or having their power turned off or their wages (or stimulus checks) garnished.

Yet, as The City has reported, already the New York City Department of Investigation (which oversees the marshals) has questioned the city’s authority under the current legal status quo to intercede against a marshal’s ability to collect on a debt. But by transferring the marshals’ duties over to the city sheriff’s office – that is, to public servants employed by the city – only those city employees would be authorized to enforce a collection. The same goes for other civil judgments. New York City’s government, in other words, would have a monopoly on enforcement. Instead of delegating this authority to for-profit contractors, the city would be accountable for those most in need.

The city must step up to this task. If the state will allow it.

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Duncan Bryer was formerly the Director of Policy for Brooklyn State Senator Julia Salazar. He currently advises the senator and is a graduate student of economics at John Jay College, City University of New York.

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Sirens and Suffering: Rethinking the Soundtrack of the Coronavirus Crisis


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Sirens and the city (photo: Benjamin Kanter/Mayoral Photo Office)


A beautiful, clear April evening in Manhattan. No traffic, which is down 84% overall in the city, says StreetLight. Out of nowhere a screeching siren pierces the air. Many minutes later an ambulance appears—SeniorCare—blaring a siren that measures 124 decibels, higher than a jet takeoff or a thunderclap, the loudest natural sound on earth. The few people on the street cover their ears in pain as the noise gets ever louder, remaining in the air for several more minutes even as the ambulance disappears from sight.

Why the deafening siren on an otherwise quiet night? The argument has always been that sirens are needed to move traffic out of the way in emergencies, so that responders—firefighters, police officers, medical technicians—can make their way as quickly as possible. But this argument fades as traffic disappears under the pressure of the COVID-19 pandemic that has shut down the city, forcing worried New Yorkers to shelter in place as the sirens heighten and prolong their anxiety. We’re living in a strange new world of danger and disease. The often-interminable sirens are becoming the defining sound of the pandemic in New York City, throughout all five boroughs, much as the distinctive European siren once defined World War II.

Ironically, even though noise complaints, including sirens, have for decades topped the quality-of-life list of complaints by residents to elected officials, no methodologically sound, controlled study has ever been done on the underlying assumption that justifies extraordinarily loud sirens in New York: Do sirens effectively expedite emergency vehicles? And do ever louder sirens carrying ever greater distances expedite vehicles faster and more efficiently? In other words, do sirens make us safer? The few studies that have been done show that very little time is saved by emergency sirens, as concludes a major literature analysis for the federal Emergency Medical Services.

Anxiety in Anxious Times
A recent review of medical research articles for the British journal Lancet on the psychological impact of disease outbreaks determined that quarantine can trigger depression, irritability, insomnia, post-traumatic stress symptoms, confusion, and anger. For people quarantined and on edge, sirens can become intolerable. After all, high-pitched, ear-splitting emergency sirens are intended to generate fear and anxiety in nearby human beings—and they succeed. For most people, noise levels over 70 decibels provoke physiological changes, constricting blood flow to the extremities while increasing it to the brain. 

Yet sirens operate way above 70 decibels, meaning they have traumatic effects on people almost by definition. The specifications for sirens on New York City fire engines have long been set for 118 decibels at 50 feet. According to manufacturers, ambulance sirens range from 110 to 129 dB, which means that even at their lower end ambulance sirens are dangerously loud. 

To put these decibels, which are measured on a logarithmic scale, in perspective: Quiet breathing registers 10 decibels; your refrigerator humming, about 40; quiet conversation, around 60; shouting across a room, 75. A sound of 40 decibels will awaken sensitive people; 70 will wake up almost anyone. Back when Midtown traffic was heavy it ranged from 80 to 95 decibels, while an express subway train roaring through a local station, such as 86th Street on the West Side, regularly hits 110. Noise of 120 decibels causes discomfort and sometimes injury. 

Emergency Responders
But it’s not only the citizenry endangered by excessive sirens—it’s also the emergency responders themselves.

The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health warns that two years of regular exposure to 90 decibels will produce hearing loss. For decades agency heads—and siren manufacturers—discounted any damage to emergency personnel, arguing that sirens were directed away from them. But common sense says that if people standing on the street—or 40 floors up in a high-rise building—can hear the ear-shattering sirens, then so can personnel in the vehicle.

In 2017, some 1,500 current and retired firefighters from New York joined 3,000 first responders from Chicago, Boston, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey in a mass lawsuit against siren manufacturer Federal Signal Corp, arguing that the sirens left them with serious hearing damage. After losing a jury trial in Chicago, the company successfully argued in federal court that the sirens needed to be heard from all directions. The court did not address the question of hearing loss. Roughly 26% of firefighters nationally report suffering regularly from tinnitus (ringing in the ears).

Richard E. Fairfax, Director of OSHA’s Directorate of Compliance Programs, noted that in addition to hearing loss, with “consistent exposure to 95 decibels occurs, there exists a serious threat to the cardiovascular system, more specifically an elevation in systolic blood pressure (hypertension), digestive, respiratory, allergenic and musculo-skeletal disorders, as well as disorientation and reduction of eye focus, potentially leading to the increase of accidents and injuries.”

Protocols
Official New York State policy calls for the siren to be sounded when lights are on but this varies widely in practice by agency and by employer. On a sunny Saturday morning last month an MTA bus pulled over on Amsterdam Avenue. Lights flashing but with no sirens, four NYPD patrol cars answered a distress call from a bus driver who said he was being assaulted by a passenger.

Meanwhile, a siren blared far away. Quite a bit later a Mt. Sinai ambulance appeared, driving very slowly up a traffic-free Amsterdam, lights flashing and sirens screeching at a decibel level of over 120, high enough to temporarily deafen most people.

Said one of the police officers: We try to restrict our sirens as much as possible. Our drivers are sensible and take proper care, but we know how much sirens disturb people. Said an ambulance driver: Mt. Sinai protocols call for us to use full sirens and lights. It’s to protect you as much as to protect us.

But why, in a time of extraordinarily high levels of anxiety for many New Yorkers, especially as they’re confined to their homes, and with streets often nearly empty, should the protocols for high-decibel sirens remain unchanged? Mt. Sinai ambulances (as well as those from once-independent hospitals like Lenox Hill) seem always to be running with full sirens, no matter how slowly they’re proceeding. The slowness just worsens the pain of those assaulted by the noise.

Aware of intense hostility to the sirens on its 25 ambulances, Mt. Sinai experimented last year with different options, including the high-low, European-style siren. After playing the sirens at community board meetings to solicit public opinion, Emergency Medical Services Director Joseph Davis concluded, "People hated them all, but the 'high-low' was least intrusive. It didn't have that piercing sound." A 40-year EMS veteran who himself suffers hearing damage from the job, Davis fully understands the consequences of sirens.

The presumption that every ambulance is on a life-saving mission is far from true. Year-to-date FDNY data show an overall 73 percent increase in 911 calls that resulted in “refusals of medical aid,” or RMAs, meaning that the person refused to be taken to a hospital after the ambulance arrived. In the first half of April the number of refusals surged 235%.

Part of the problem is that dispatchers do not solicit sufficiently precise information. Last month four black cars and an ambulance drove the wrong way on our empty street, sirens blaring. They parked haphazardly, and left the lights flashing. The four drivers pushed by the doormen, heading in different directions and getting lost. The emergency call turned out to have been utterly erroneous—a housekeeper unable to access her employer’s apartment had contacted a neighbor, who called for an ambulance. The employer, who had been on the phone, refused to open the door for the housekeeper—or the EMTs. Surely the dispatcher should have obtained more information about the nature of the “emergency,” which was non-existent.

Overall 911 call volume is way up—202,000 calls year-to-date compared with 167,000 for the same period last year. How many are true emergencies? A rigorous study would be helpful.

Quiet Streets
As the coronavirus has raged in New York it has cleared many streets of car and truck traffic, inducing unusual quiet that is broken by little except sirens. Ironically, manufacturers deliberately calibrate sirens to be heard above traffic under the assumption that the most important factor is moving cars out of the way. Pedestrians have seldom been considered, even as pedestrians have become increasingly important to urban life. And as New York streets have emptied out in the last several weeks, the sirens have continued to blare for previous levels of ambient noise, making them far louder in practice since there is little or no environmental noise cushioning the sound.

Excessive sirens are a direct consequence of excessive traffic. If the traffic is curbed, as so many New Yorkers urge, then the sirens can be modified as well. This is the moment.

Urban designer and architect John Massengale proposed a radical innovation on Streetsblog: A network of what he calls quiet streets, many of which would be car-free or nearly car-free, for example: “In the long run, Broadway north of Columbus Circle could be a pleasant street with light traffic on both sides, while Columbus Avenue or West End Avenue might be the best streets for little or no traffic. These are just quick ideas. A broad study of traffic on the Manhattan grid might have different and better long-term solutions for breaking the car culture.”

Not only would quiet streets be productive for neighborhoods, they would offer a route to rethinking deployment of emergency vehicles, which would be able to move more freely—albeit carefully—while employing far less aggressive sirens. Without traffic registering 80 decibels and above, sirens would have no justification for their now excessive levels of 120 decibels.

The Future
All of this needs to be rethought in the coming months.  

In his masterpiece, Plagues and Peoples, historian William McNeill makes a crucial point for our time: All historic plagues have had a second and sometimes third or fourth wave of contagion after the first. When this wave of COVID-19 hospitalizations slows, New York needs to prepare for the next wave—and that means seriously analyzing and probably rethinking its delivery of emergency medical services.

Manhattan City Council Members Carlina Rivera and Helen Rosenthal have already started, introducing a bill to require the gradual introduction of high-low sirens, and to mandate a maximum sound level not to exceed 90 decibels, which would constitute an enormous change.

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Julia Vitullo-Martin is a writer and planner. On Twitter @JuliaManhattan.

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