| High Tide 2:13am | Low Tide 8:27am | High Tide 2:35pm | Low Tide 9:05pm* |
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Events on the Waterfront
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Climate Coalition Call to Action2pm-2:30pm, East River State Park N. 8th Street and Kent Ave, Brooklyn Volunteer at PortSide NewYork
1pm-6pm, Red Hook, 917-414-0565 149 7th Street, Brooklyn November 28
7pm-9pm, The Warsaw at the Polish National Home, 261 Driggs Avenue, Brooklyn
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For a map of vessels navigating the NY/NJ waterways at this moment, check marinetraffic.com.
Tide times above are for the waters off Port Jefferson on November 18, 2012.
For your waterfront's daily tides,
go to saltwatertides.com.
For information about environmental conditions (currents, water temperature, salinity, wave height, etc.) of the New York Harbor area, check the Urban Ocean Observatory at Stevens Institute's Center for Maritime Systems
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| CONTENTS: November 18, 2012 | Click on the links below to read the stories in this edition of WaterWire.
General Assembly Tackles Tough Questions About Waterfront's Future
200 experts begin to form the Waterfront Platform for next year's candidates
Newslinks
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CREATING A WATERFRONT PLATFORM FOR CANDIDATES
| | In Sandy's Wake, MWA's General Assembly Draws 200 Experts to Discuss Practical Ideas for Urban Coastlines
Superstorm Sandy was no surprise to the people who gathered on November 14 at the Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance's General Assembly. Whether they were representatives of the shipping industry or from the recreational boating world, hailing from the Bronx or eastern Queens, they knew what havoc nature could wreak upon a coastal city. Sandy's wrath was tragic, but foreseen.
Just ask Ed Blakely, former Director of Recovery for the Parish of New Orleans, who had choice words of advice for the General Assembly-goers. "You'll reorganize the way you do space," he predicted, explaining that in the Big Easy, retail is often no longer set up on the ground floor. "These are called sacrifice spaces. You might go into a grocery store and go up to the third floor to shop because that's where it's safe." A fan of decentralized power and water systems, Mr. Blakely also urged the creation of a common database of essential information that anyone can easily access.
Mr. Blakely was joined at the panelists' table by Philip Orton, a research scientist at Stevens Institute of Technology, and Rob Pirani, vice president of the Regional Plan Association. Mr. Orton said scientists are scrambling to predict how soon before a similar storm could happen again and the likelihood of a worse storm. He warned that multi-billion infrastructure projects like giant storm surge barriers offer "big positives and potentially very big negatives. Massive infrastructure projects tend to have massive unforeseen consequences."
Mr. Pirani referred to the MWA's draft Ten-Point Platform for preparing for coastal flooding and sea level rise, and concluded, "It is a diverse harbor. It is not going to be easy. It is going to be expensive."
Seeking to tap the brain trust, MWA president/CEO Roland Lewis asked the assembly, "What practical steps should next year's candidates for elected office commit to regarding water-related issues? What strategies do New York City and the region need to embrace to prepare for coastal flooding, sea level rise and storm surges?"
Breaking into six groups reflecting MWA's six Task Forces -- Working Waterfront, Harbor Education, Water Mass Transit, Green Harbor, Aquatecture and Waterfront Recreation -- the audience began to discuss answers to the questions, coming at a Waterfront Platform for 2013 candidates from all angles.
 In the Working Waterfront group, moderated by Ed Kelly of the Maritime Association of the Port of New York and New Jersey (at left, Mr. Kelly is speaking with Henry Wan of Amna Construction and Hong Kong Dragon Boat Festival), Kate Zidar of the Newtown Creek Alliance urged streamlined permitting for bulkhead repair and environmental mitigation matched to the area. Mitigat ion rules may be "misapplied to an industrial water body," she said, describing the contaminated Creek's overflow into Zones A, B and C during the hurricane (read the Newtown Creek saga here). "We need the soft and hard edges; right now we've got neither. We need the wetlands and the bulkhead." Among others, Beryl Thurman from Staten Island's North Shore Waterfront Conservancy enthusiastically agreed with the need for a better defined mitigation procedure. Over at the Aquatecture crowd, Laura Starr of Starr Whitehouse Landscape Architects and Planners moderated a discussion about hard-edged (such as bulkheads) versus soft-edged (boulders and grasses) waterfronts. The story of New York State parks during the storm offered a pointed lesson. Chip Place, deputy general manager for the NY State Office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation, said Roberto Clemente State Park, on the Bronx side of the Harlem River, has expensive bulkheads along half its length that did not fare well during the storm. Gantry Plaza State Park on the East River, with its hard edge and buried electrical cables, also suffered storm damage. But Brooklyn's new East River State Park, the site of a 19th-century shipping dock, "survived remarkably well" because a more natural shoreline had been retained when the park was built earlier this year. "It's a low-tech park," Mr. Place said, explaining that the state had deliberately chosen to not replace the bulkhead that had washed away years earlier. "The water came in and then it went out. We also have solar lights there, which weren't affected." Among the recommendations from the Harbor Education group was the idea of a commons -- a place for people to meet. "Where do we go in an emergency? Where is information available?" said group's moderator Ann Fraioli, a New York Harbor School teacher. The Water Recreation group, moderated by Peggy Shepherd of WEACT for Environmental Justice, suggested that MWA communicate stronger, more unified messages to its member groups, and beef up its marketing and press outreach. From now until the end of November, MWA wants to hear your ideas for responding to coastal flooding and sea level rise. Read the MWA's After Sandy blog for the Ten Point Platform, and add your comments for proposed edits and additional suggestions. Join the conversation by clicking here. In December, MWA will post a draft Comprehensive Waterfront Platform based on the results of the General Assembly. |
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NEW JERSEY WATERWAYS IN BIG TROUBLE
| | Billions of Gallons of Sewage and Oil Flowed into Water for Weeks After Storm Passed
Within a few days after Hurricane Sandy blasted through the region, the NYC Department of Environmental Protection was back to treating 99% of NYC wastewater, even though 10 of the City's 14 treatment plants and more than 40 pumping stations had been damaged by the storm.
New Jersey waterways were not so fortunate. Damaged oil tanks along the Arthur Kill leaked hundreds of thousands of gallons of diesel fuel into the waterway. Middlesex County Utilities Authority's wastewater treatment system was severely damaged, with several pump stations left inoperable. But in what may be the worst situation, the Passaic Valley Sewerage Commission (PVSC) facility -- the nation's fifth largest wastewater treatment plant, based in Newark and serving 1.4 million customers -- shut down completely. For several days after the storm, untreated sewage flowed directly into Newark Bay at the rate of 240 million gallons a day. On November 16, partially treated wastewater was still flowing from the PVSC facility into the Bay at the same rate, with no update or prognosis for a return to normalcy on the facility's web site.
Over the past two weeks, the federal Environmental Protection Agency tested waters throughout the metropolitan region. Click here for details on levels of contamination.
A spokesperson for the Passaic Valley Sewerage Commission did not return a phone call from WaterWire before press time, but Larry Hajna from the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection did. Asked when the PVSC would be fully operational, Mr. Hajna said, "There's no timetable yet. They've got a lot of work still to do."
The NJ DEP's November 8 advisory to PVSC customers to restrict water usage remains in effect.
WaterWire asked Mr. Hajna about longterm impacts. "These are big estuaries," he said. "The material does break down and is dissipating. Ultimately, it goes to the ocean."
NY/NJ Baykeeper and Hackensack Riverkeeper have called for an investigation into the PVSC's disaster preparedness. The two groups asked, "Should the public have been informed about the risk of sewage spills before the storm even hit? What are the plans for better public outreach in the future?"
"We need to have a very transparent conversation about what happened," NY/NJ Baykeeper executive director Debbie Mans told WaterWire. "It was not just an information breakdown; it was a communication breakdown. There was a significant delay in notifying the public that there was raw sewage in the water and that is completely unacceptable."
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ON THE BRIGHT SIDE, SOLAR ONE TO THE RESCUE
| | Connecting Communities in Need with Solar-Generated Electricity
Many waterfront folks moved quickly to help those in need after superstorm Sandy devastated so much of the region's waterfront. A particularly heartwarming -- and handwarming -- story comes from Solar One, the nonprofit organization based on the East River, with programs in all five boroughs promoting urban sustainability and education.  After the hurricane swept through, Solar One quickly coordinated with SolarCity and Consolidated Solar to bring mobile solar generators to communities beginning to rebuild. The temporary electricity from the solar generators (which store power in batteries for times when the sun is not shining) is charging tools, warming up food and heating water for showers. "So far, we have installed five 10-kilowatt solar generators in Staten Island and the Rockaways," said Solar One executive director Chris Collins. "We'll be installing more in the coming days." "They're mobile, on carts," he explained. "They came in from Pennsylvania. Others are coming from Colorado." Solar generators provide clean, quiet power hubs that don't need refueling. Solar One is looking for volunteers to help install more generators; email volunteer@solar1.org. If you represent a community that could use a solar generator, click here. |
| MWA PARTNER SPOTLIGHT | |
Expanding every week, the Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance is more than a coalition; it's a force. We are ferry captains, shipping executives, park directors, scientists, sailors, paddlers, swimmers, teachers, urban planners, architects and more. Together, we advocate for the best possible waterfront in the best possible city, a waterfront that is clean and accessible to all, with a robust maritime workforce and efficient, affordable waterborne transportation. Join us! Contact Louis Kleinman at lkleinman@waterfrontalliance.org. Meet some Partners of the Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance: |
| WATERFRONT NEWSLINKS |
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After Gowanus Canal Floods Its Banks, Fears of What's Left Behind"Businesses along the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn fear toxic contamination may have tagged along with flood waters during Sandy's vicious storm surge..."WNYC, November 16, 2012 Hooked on the Bronx, Legally Manhattan's"When the construction of the Harlem River Ship Canal separated Marble Hill from the rest of Manhattan in 1895, the little neighborhood, perched on a high mound of Inwood marble, was suddenly surrounded by water as if by a moat. Two decades later, when Spuyten Duyvil Creek, to its north, was filled in, Marble Hill joined the mainland Bronx..."The New York Times, November 16, 2012 Three more die in Italy floods; Venice waters receding"Three people died when their car fell off a collapsed bridge on Tuesday, as flooding battered central Italy for a third straight day, forcing part of Italy's main north-south highway to close. Water levels were receding, however, in Venice, the lagoon city and Unesco world heritage site that at the weekend saw its sixth-worst flooding since records began in 1872..."Reuters, November 13, 2012 Sandy Stirs Toxic-Site Worry"Hurricane Sandy's environmental impact is still being assessed, but the worries for residents of New York and New Jersey are crystallized by one fact: Of the two states' 198 Superfund toxic-waste sites, 45 are within a half-mile of coastal areas vulnerable to storm surge..."The Wall Street Journal, November 11, 2012 A New Manhattan Project"...The problem is not just that smart people differ wildly about what to do; it's that the problem crosses multiple jurisdictions, that everything costs loads of money and that humans have short memories. The will to do anything ambitious tends to recede almost as fast as the tide surge. But this is no time for fatalism or forgetting..."The New York Times, November 11, 2012 Reconsidering Flood Insurance"In the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, homeowners and renters who have insurance are discovering what it covers - and what it doesn't - while those with minimal or no insurance may be recalculating their risks..."The New York Times, November 8, 2012
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