On a bright sweaty weekday in mid-July, some of the suits making a morning commute on the N train were bathing suits.
No day in a cubicle for these subway riders. For the nearly 1,200 workers who sit in the sand and are charged with overseeing New Yorkers' aquatic safety, lifeguarding can be the ideal summer employment.
"At the pool you see the same people every day," said Coney Island lifeguard Mike Zuska, a 20-year-old student at Kingsborough College who also lifeguards there every semester. "Here you get tan, you get paid better, and there are tons of women."
In recent years, a shortage of lifeguards on city beaches has led to sands dotted with red flags -- the disappointing symbol that a beach is off limits for swimming. This year, though, city officials say they are far closer to reaching their recruitment and employment goals of filling 1,200 positions. Thanks to greater public outreach and a salary boost, the city's sands, some say, are staffed better than ever before.
In the wake of this week's drownings, though, that optimism may hit rough waters.
In the eyes of Chad Cantelmo, 22, and his buddy Zuska, who were perched on their iconic orange pedestal on a recent day, working life doesn't get much better then being paid to sit in the sun and watch the surf.
This summer there are about 1,140 lifeguards on duty at New York City public beaches and pools, according to parks department Deputy Commissioner Liam Kavanagh. Most are between 17 and 23 years old, although there is also a cadre of people in their 30s and 40s who return each summer, Kavanagh said. The minimum age for lifeguards in the city is 16.
Thanks to a recent pay increase, first-year lifeguards are getting a minimum of $12.55 an hour -- up from $11.72 an hour last years -- which has made the jobs more appealing than in previous years.
A report from New Yorkers for Parks last year urged the city to double the lifeguard wage on an experimental basis to ensure that every section of city beach would be under the eye of a city lifeguard. Sheelah Feinberg, director of government and external relations for the group, identified lifeguard recruitment and staffing as the ultimate priority for beach safety.
Though the city did increase salaries, it did not adopt the group's proposal. The standard city lifeguard wage had been $10.08 an hour for several years, less than what public lifeguards received in many other parts of the country. The current wage is competitive. For example, lifeguards at Jones Beach, a state park not far from the city's borders only make a penny an hour more than city guards, according to New Yorkers for Parks.
The wage increase came only after the parks department consistently faced complaints about beach safety following drownings. The city saw its first drowning of the summer last week, when a 16-year-old girl was lost in a rip tide off of Rockaway Beach. A spokesperson from the parks department said Rockaway Beach was "fully staffed" at the time of the incident, and, in general, that waterfront has been "close to" fully staffed so far this season.
In addition to the 16-year-old's death, two presumed drownings occurred on Coney Island and off of the federally-overseen Jacob Riis Park in Queens on Saturday. These drownings could spark further scrutiny of the city's lifeguard program. Reports attribute the presumed deaths -- neither body has been recovered yet -- to strong rip currents.
In 2007, there was one drowning -- a decrease from four in 2005, the highest number in a decade.
In return for that pay, lifeguards have to fulfill a number of requirements. "Are you whistle worthy?" the Department of Parks and Recreation asks in its 2008 lifeguard recruitment campaign.
The qualifying test for aspiring lifeguards to enter the municipal lifeguard training program requires applicants to swim 50 yards in 35 seconds or less. Once in the program, lifeguards must get in shape, learn skills, including CPR, and face more challenging tests.
Such requirements keep some jobseekers away. Most work programs area delgued with applicants. The city's Summer Youth Employment Program, for example, had to turn away more than 50,000 of the 93,750 teens who applied last year.
In contrast, the city cannot fill all of its vacancies for lifeguards. It has taken amajor effort for the parks department to build up a strong lifeguard force, which still falls short of the annual goal of 1,200 summer hires.
New York children do not always have the same opportunities to learn to swim as those who grow up in non-urban areas, making it harder to find teens in New York City with the skills to pass the lifeguard tests.
Many New York kids have access to pools, but that doesn't mean they are up to the task. "I had to practice really hard to pass the [initial] test," Cantelmo said.
Zuska, who was on the swim team all four years he attended Abraham Lincoln High School, still found he had to put in plenty of extra practice to pass that challenging first exam.
New Yorkers for Parks have pressed for better training and swimming classes for adolescents, so they can grow into great city lifeguards. So far, the group has not heard back from the department on its training proposals.
Despite such obstacles, the city's lifguarding troops have been steadily growing, according to New Yorkers for Parks. In 2001, 898 lifeguards patrolled the sands. That increased to 1,008 in 2005.
"It [the lifeguard roster] has been building gradually in the last few years," said Kavanagh. "The more [lifeguards] you start with, the more you have because many return."
Kavanagh said the department sent materials to every high school, created online campaigns, placed ads in papers and expanded the number of places where people can take the initial test for the municipal lifeguard training program. "We have a pretty good network in the public school system," Kavanagh said. "We've been going to pools, speaking to coaches, speaking to competitive swimmers."
The parks department doesn't fill its beaches just by fishing in the pool of New York City teens, though. The lifeguard recruitment page of the department's Web site features a special "International Lifeguards" section as well as a section titled "Living and Working in New York City."
Cantelmo said he has noticed a number of lifeguards from Poland-- two on Coney Island that day alone--but that they do not necessarily return to city beaches year after year.
According to Kavanagh, there are fewer foreign lifeguards this year than there have been in the past: Nine joined this year in addition to the more than 20 from previous years who returned.
For some New Yorkers, a daily commute to the city's shore by public transportation is only slightly less of a schlep than coming all the way from Europe. While most lifeguards seem to live near the beach where they work, Kavanagh said some lifeguards feel working at a beach, rather than a pool, is worth the long commute because beach season is longer and they like the atmosphere.
The New York City lifeguard shortage has made headlines every summer in recent years, but New Yorkers may have to find something else to criticize other than under-supervised beaches this summer.
This doesn't mean, however, that red flags won't occasionally mark a section of the city's 14 miles of public beach off-limits for swimming.
"We don't have full compliments every day because people have days off or can't work," Kavanagh said. He also pointed out that sometimes swimming is not worth the risk. "Places with rough areas, like there are in Rockaway, can be dangerous even for lifeguards sometimes. We're not going to endanger anyone's safety."
From falafel and hot dogs from street vendors to farfalle and chorizo from fine restaurants, New York offers abundant food choices.
Residents, though, have few options when it comes to how to dispose of what is left over from all that food. As eagerly as New Yorkers eat, they dispose of food waste-about two pounds per household per day. One million tons of food from New York City is carted off to landfills every year.
Finding space for the waste in already overflowing landfills poses one problem. Pollution is another. While the roughly 30 percent of residential waste made up of discarded food slowly rots in landfills, it releases methane, a greenhouse gas estimated to have a warming effect 23 times that of carbon dioxide.
Across the country, cities looking to reduce waste and pollution have turned to composting. In the process they have developed a valuable resource for area parks, gardens and farm.
Gardeners often refer to compost as black gold. Though the name might sound like something out of the Pirates of the Caribbean, compost offers very real benefits. The mineral-rich product of decomposed organic waste, it helps restore soil nutrients, prevent erosion and compaction, and conserve water.
Backyard composting, in which residents combine yard waste with food waste themselves to create compost at home or in community gardens, is the cheapest way to manage organic waste. Many New Yorkers, though, do not have backyards.
To enable people in more densely populated areas to compost, larger composting facilities in or near cities to can process food waste and other organic matter. Municipalities can organize food waste collection or permanent drop-off sites. The resulting product can be sold to nearby farmers or used in lieu of expensive fertilizers in public parks.
Composting municipal organic byproducts instead of putting them in a landfill can save local governments from $9 to $38 per ton, according to a 2000 paper written at the University of Wisconsin. This could mount up, given that food and yard waste accounts for almost 30 percent of New York City's almost 3 million tons of garbage a year.
Intentional composting is nothing new. References to it have been found as far back as the Roman era, and George Washington's diaries revealed him as an avid composter.
Today cities across the country are following in his footsteps. Seattle provides curbside compost collection to over 90 percent of its residents. Residents of King County, which includes Seattle and the surrounding area, can put food waste, food soiled papers and yard waste into organic waste bins which they put out with their other sorted recycling to be collected and taken to large composting facilities. Even meat, fish, poultry, bones and pizza boxes too saucy for the paper bin can go with the organic waste; almost everything but pet waste and fryer grease is welcome. The finished product enriches the soil of local farms, gardens and parks. Seattle's food scrap recycling program will become mandatory for all single family homes in April 2009.
The effort is paying off. The city diverts 44 percent of its total waste stream to recycling and composting programs. Seattle hopes to divert 72 percent by 2025.
While Seattle's program is just beginning to reap rewards, San Francisco's programs, which began in 1996, contribute to the city's 69 percent total recycling rate, the highest in the nation. Like Seattle, San Francisco provides curbside pickup of food waste and organic matter. The city provides small green trash containers to collect organic waste indoors. The material then goes to a green curbside bin. The city even subsidizes compostable liner bags to help hesitant residents get started. Local businesses and restaurants also participate: Almost 2,000 enterprises contribute to San Francisco's composting efforts. The nitrogen-rich finished compost is sold to vineyards in nearby counties.
San Francisco should meet its goal of a 75 percent recycling rate by 2010, due in large part to their composting efforts.
Los Angeles plans to launch a 10,000 family curbside compost pilot program later this year. It hopes to eventually expand to all residents. From Cambridge, Mass., where businesses participate in food waste recycling collection, through Omaha, Neb., which produces and sells its own compost called "Oma-Gro," compost initiatives are catching on.
New York City has had a compost program since 1993, when the NYC Compost Project was founded by the New York City Department of Sanitation. With the project's support, staff members of the city's botanical gardens and the Lower East Side Ecology Center encourage residential and institutional composting. They hold demonstrations and classes in every borough, and operate a "rotline"-a composting hotline residents can call for help and advice. The projects workers provides information at community events, operate compost drop-off locations and offers residents can take finished compost to take back to their gardens. They also provide technical assistance to the dozens of community gardens that offer community compost programs.
Aurelia Kaelin was collecting compost for the Lower East Side Ecology Center at Union Square on a Wednesday morning. "Oh, they show up," she said of Manhattan composters, explaining that she has regulars from all over the island. Most people who collect food waste regularly in their apartments come bearing compost about twice a week, although she added, "We always have a lot more the few weeks after Earth Day."
New York has several other small food and organic waste management programs in effect. The correctional facilities at Riker's Island operate a composting program that handles much of the 30 t0 40 tons of food waste produced daily by kitchens that feed the 20,000 inmates. A compost facility created in 1996 processes the waste into compost, which is used for landscaping and inmate gardening projects.
Every fall and winter, New York's Department of Sanitation collects discarded Christmas trees and fall leaves in certain city districts to be turned into mulch. The "Leave it on the Lawn" education programs encourage residents to leave grass clippings on the ground where they can serve as natural fertilizer instead of bagging them for the landfills. The city also operates two yard waste compost facilities, which process a combined 72,000 cubic yards of yard waste each year.
The vast majority of New York's organic waste still ends up in the trash can, though.
PlaNYC 2030, New York City's sustainability blueprint, makes no mention of compost beyond the collection of yard waste. Currently, New York has no plans for its tons of food waste.
The Department of Sanitation has said they do not think a plan would be successful and point to previous pilot programs as evidence. The city's largest curbside food scrap collection pilot was conducted in 1991 in Brooklyn's Park Slope. Just under 4,000 residents were asked to separate organic matter from other trash and recyclables. The following year, 600 Starrett City residents were added to the pilot.
Many residents were reluctant to participate, citing concerns about odor, vermin, and rodents. Not enough organic waste was collected to outweigh the cost of adding additional trucks, according to the department, and the program was terminated.
As the budget tightens, cost will continue to be an issue. The Department of Sanitation reports that it is less expensive to truck food waste to landfills than to compost it. In its most recent study, conducted in 2004, the department found that while 50 percent of the waste is organic and compostable, only yard trimmings -- making up just 4.2 percent -- could be collected and composted cost effectively on a citywide scale.
To make composting cost-effective, the city would need to construct centralized state-of-the-art composting facilities and establish efficient collection methods and routes. A public education campaign would have to convince skeptical New Yorkers to overcome fears of smell and vermin and realize that composting is environmentally sound, clean and economical.
Many New Yorkers have already gotten that message. According to a report by Consumers Union, nearly one third of New Yorkers, or 930,000 households, have backyards. Of these, 70 percent have agreed that backyard composting should be considered a waste management tool. Even if only 10 percent of these households diverted just half of their food waste a week, the city could save well over $4 million in collection and disposal costs annually.
For New Yorkers without backyards, there are other options. Food waste can be brought to the NYC Compost Project collection sites as well as many community gardens. For a map of these, go here. Independent volunteers at Fort Greene Park's Greenmarket estimate that they collect 800 to 1,000 pounds of food waste every Saturday. The Lower East Side Ecology Center fills over 20 55-gallon bins a week through their collections at the Union Square Greenmarket on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays and Saturdays.
Committed apartment dwellers can try their hand at indoor vermicomposting. Red wrigglers, which munch through their weight in organic waste every day or two, turn food scraps into high-quality compost quickly, working away in discreet bins that are free of odor.
Other alternatives exist as well. Despite various assurances, Chris Mosier was uncomfortable with hosting worms through vermicomposting and worried about the smell if she saved rotting food in her small Midtown apartment. Now, she collects organic waste in the freezer and drops it off in Union Square with the NYC Compost project. To Mosier and others like her, composting represents a key part of a "green" lifestyle
"I feel it's great that New Yorkers recycle," she said. "The next step is composting, and it's easier than we think."
Waste management in the city is a highly complex issue. To manage your household waste and the city's tons of trash, play Gotham Gazette's Garbage Game.
To learn more about how you can compost or take part in the city's composting programs, go to:
The New York City Compost Project
Wasted Food (a blog)
Check out Gotham Gazette's Calendar of NYC Events for listings of local composting workshops and events.
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The City Council approved three additional construction safety items last week in an effort to improve conditions at works sites across the city.
The legislation, which includes clamping down on "housekeeping" violations, was announced as part of a package of proposals from Mayor Michael Bloomberg and the City Council following several fatal accidents this year.
In addition to the constriction proposals, the council approved legislation to overhaul the city's Environmental Control Board to make its adjudication process easier and more user friendly.
Two devastating crane accidents and the chief inspector's subsequent arrest sparked increased public outrage this year over the Department of Buildings, a city agency with a long history of dysfunction.
In response, the council and the administration announced more than a dozen proposals to further revamp the way the buildings department does business. Several passed in June, and last week the council added three more bills to the record. All were approved unanimously.
The first (Intro 763-A) classifies "housekeeping violations" -- which can cover anything from loose materials to tripping hazards -- as immediately hazardous. This designation would create stricter penalties for work sites that tend to be sloppy and require they be fixed promptly. Sites that do not comply with the legislation, which was sponsored by Councilmember Annabel Palma, could face a penalty of $5,000.
The council also approved legislation (Intro 687) requiring the annual inspection of structurally compromised buildings. Buildings recently involved in a fire or that have been threatened structurally by other means will have to be inspected by a professional engineer annually. Inspections must continue annually, according to the bill, until the building is found to be in sound condition.
The bill's sponsor, Councilmember Melissa Mark Viverito, said it would assist the city in "red flagging" buildings for further inspection.
In addition, the council approved legislation (Intro 793) requiring the more stringent inspection of retaining walls.
Three years ago, a retaining wall spilled onto Riverside Drive and Henry Hudson Parkway in Upper Manhattan causing millions of dollars in damages and bringing the neighborhood to a standstill. An investigation in 2007 revealed the adjacent property owners had not kept up with maintenance and knew the wall was at risk of collapsing.
Under this legislation, retaining walls must be inspected at least every five years, and private property owners will be responsible for monitoring their conditions. The Buildings Department must also monitor any repairs that are completed.
For Harry Feitelson of Big City Automotive the city's Environmental Control Board was more than a nuisance. It was a detriment to his business.
Feitelson was asked to pay multiple fines for the same violation or issued inaccurate tickets. He said he was given a ticket for failing to complete a boiler inspection in a building without a boiler.
All of this, he added, was one aspect of a labyrinthine process at the Environmental Control Board -- the city's regulatory body overseeing quality of life issues, like sanitation violations.
"I don't think you can be in small business in New York City and not deal with the bureaucracy of the ECB," Feitelson said.
Last week, the City Council unanimously approved legislation (Intro 777), sponsored by Councilmember James Gennaro, revamping the board. In addition to limiting the number of times a hearing can be adjourned, the legislation also requires translation services be provided to those accused of a violation.
The legislation also attempts to streamline the process by transferring jurisdiction over the board from the Department of Environmental Protection to the Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings. The council is also requiring that the board implement technological improvements to allow for online adjudication and electronic case scheduling .
"One of the things you hear is, 'I have to take a day off from work,'" said Council Speaker Christine Quinn. "If you're a small business owner, that's money out of your pocket.'"
After a community campaign against oversized buildings, the City Council approved a zoning revision for Carroll Gardens in Brooklyn to restrict building height. The revision gave the neighborhood a narrow street designation, which limits the height of buildings. The neighborhood had had a wide street designation due to its deep front yards.
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