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Invasion of New York


a rundown of New York's invasive species
Gotham Gazette image by Ya-Hsuan Huang

It's not your typical type of tourism.

But plants and insects end up paying unintended visits to New York City just like any other traveler.

There's one difference, though: These pesky species end up staying.

Grounding their roots, literally, in our soil, invasive species come from far and wide, via barge or souvenir-stuffed suitcases, in what horticulturists and biologists across the city call a serious threat to our habitat. Deceiving to the common eye, these foreign born pests and plants raise significant challenges for the city's Department of Parks and Recreation: monitoring, controlling and even eradicating top the list.

Though the city welcomes visitors from far and ride (foreign tourism, according to the Bloomberg administration, is what is fueling our economy right now), advocates and the parks department have another message for the relentless Asian Longhorned Beetle or the slimy, practically amphibious Snakehead Fish.

Keep Out!

A City of Immigrants Sees Immigrating Species

The city is no stranger to immigration -- we are, after all, a Mecca of diversity and transcontinental culture. But our parks may not be as welcoming as Ellis Island.

For centuries, New York has been inundated by foreign-born plants and wildlife. Even creatures we now consider common -- like our subway or sewer rat -- are invasive species. We may have adapted to some of them -- whether we wanted to or not -- but other more contemporary wildlife pose a serious threat to the sanctity of our natural flora and fauna, say city scientists.

To them, fighting or controlling invasive species isn't a choice, but a necessity.

"The issue of invasive species is second only to habitat loss as a threat to plants and animals worldwide," said Steven Clements, senior scientist at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. "It's almost as big a threat as deforestations."

 

To the untrained eye or the casual park-goer, that may seem hard to believe.

But the effects of invasive species are expansive, from killing off native plant and wildlife to threatening our infrastructure and waterways.

common reedClick here for more on the Common Reed

Take the purple loosestrife. First introduced in New York City in the 1800s, the tall, weed like plant has attractive flowers that can coat wetlands in a sea of violet. That purple stalk, however, kills off all adjacent plant life. Its ability to grow fast and tall makes the survival of neighboring species practically impossible.

And when native flora fades, the entire habitat and food chain can be thrown into flux and uncertainty. Birds may no longer be able to feed on the area's bugs. Insects are eradicated that had relied on the native plant life. And the cycle goes on.

"Different species have different roles in the functioning of the habitat," said Susan Elbin, the director of conservation at the New York City Audubon. "So when you cut down the number of players you may be eliminating an important function that happened in that system that you don’t even know about."

dutch elm beetleClick here for more on Dutch Elm

There is also Dutch Elm, which attacks some of our forest population in Central Park, or the phragmites -- a so-called gluttonous reed found in our marshes known to consume and kick out other wildlife. These and more (Check out our biology cards linked under the images) can unsettle any wild habitat.

A Public Nuisance

Other animals may not throw off the balance, per say, in our widely dispersed, natural habitats. Instead, they threaten our man-made infrastructure --- from power lines to our sewer systems.

The zebra mussel is half-buried at the bottom of the Hudson River. Though it also threatens native-born mussel species, the zebra mussel, originally from Russia, takes up residence in the city's water treatment and sewer pipes, clogging them up and contaminating the system. One study from the federal General Accountability Office said the zebra mussel accounts for $137 billion a year in economic losses and other costs annually nationwide.

quaker parrotsClick here for more on the Quaker Parrot

Less slimy, but of potentially equal threat to our infrastructure, are the parrots of Brooklyn, which came fluttering in through Kennedy airport. The birds, known as Quaker parrots or monk parakeets, are thought to have originated in Argentina and escaped from a cargo container at the airport in the 1960s or '70s and then intermarried with escapees from local pet shops and homes. While groups settled throughput the metro area, most have taken up residence in Brooklyn. Since they are from southern Argentina, which has a temperate climate, they do well here.

"They are successful Brooklynites, in that they are adaptable, eat a wide variety of foods and like to talk," Eleanor Miele, a professor at Brooklyn College, where many parrots hang out, told the Washington Post.

The birds, though, have attracted the ire of Con Edison and other electric companies for building huge nest for their colonies on light poles. In Connecticut, a power company, United Illuminated, is seeking permission to kill the birds, while in Florida researchers have proposed mixing contraceptives in with bird seed to limit the parrot population.

While there were efforts to wipe out the New York colonies, Con Ed in general has taken a more moderate stand than some other utilities. It, for example, tried to dismantle the huge nests -- only to see the parrots build again -- and has created alternative platforms. More recently, New York's parrots have faced another threat: Poachers have captured many of the birds to sell them. While this may have decreased their numbers, many remain.

A Long Trip

As species cause damage and irritate our utility companies as well as our wildlife, one may wonder how they got here in the first place?

asian longhorn beetleClick here for more on the Asian Longhorn Beetle

Most commonly, said advocates, would be through international shipping and travel. Most of these dangerous species, like the longhorned beetle or the West Nile Virus, have hitchhiked here that way. West Nile, originally found here in 1999 and has since resulted in 159 cases and 23 deaths, is thought to have come here via a passenger through John F Kennedy International Airport, perhaps in a traveling mosquito or in a person who was already infected. It had been confirmed before 1999 in Asia, Africa and Europe.

The Longhorned Beetle too made its way across the Pacific via wood packing material from China (See related story).

Because these species come in through New York's ports, much of the regulation to control and monitor cargo is out of the city and the state's jurisdiction. As international trade increases, officials do not see invasive species slowing down.

"Henry Hudson I'm sure brought his share of invasive species," said Steve Sanford, director of the office of invasive species coordination at the state Department of Environmental Conservation. "The rate of invasion is so fast because of globalization," he added. Since 2004, said Sanford, about 15 new species have invaded New York.

While much of port regulation is out of state and city hands, New York, with several other states, recently won a court decision requiring the Environmental Protection Agency define regulations for ballast water -- or the water released from the underbelly of the ship once it reaches its destination -- by the end of September. That water is known to harbor foreign species, like the zebra mussel.

Other legislation outlining how much that water would have to be treated before release is pending in Washington.

Beyond controlling our ports and international travel hubs, it comes down to monitoring and controlling on the ground level, said city and state officials.

Crowding Out

There is a reason why they call them invasive. Like modern-day warfare, these species invade, lay claim to the habitat, take on natural wildlife and push them out.

Sometimes it takes innovative responses -- such as the National Park Service's policy of bringing in goats to eat away invasive species on Staten Island.

To take back control elsewhere, it often takes manpower -- city parks department workers making their way through the city's forests to weed out, excuse the pun, these foreign plants. Mike Feller, the chief naturalist for the natural resources group in the city's parks department, said they have been identifying and mapping foreign species throughout the five boroughs for decades. It wasn't until recently, however, that they received the funding that enables his team to go in and root up foreign plants to replace them with natural ones.

Years ago, he was not so optimistic. Feller recalled visiting Riverdale Park in the Bronx where the Porcelainberry, a rapidly growing vine from Asia, had taken over tree trunks 50 feet into the air, invading the canopy for acre after acre. Now, he said, it's practically gone.

"I remember looking at it and saying, 'This is hopeless,'" said Feller. But, he added, "You really can ravel things back."

PlaNYC 2030, Feller said, is one way he sees his department raising awareness and funding. The Bloomberg administration's million trees initiative, he said, is one way the city can cut down foreign flora and bring back natural plant life. Even with this infusion of attention on the city's ecosystem, Feller said much of the control over invasive species is not within the city's policy purview, but the state and in Washington.

On the state level, attention to invasive species is on the rise. After a task force investigated the prevalence of invasive species in New York State in 2004, a division of the state Department of Conservation, which Sanford heads, was formed to oversee the control of invasive species statewide. That monitoring is rolling out right now, said Sanford.

 

Prayer or Violation? The City Council's Invocation


All eyes focused on the Rev. Joseph Tolton as he stood at the head of the City Council chamber and took over the microphone on a recent Wednesday just before the council passed a series of bills beefing up oversight of city construction.

"We pray God that wisdom will guide these women and men as they convene to legislate what will optimize the resources of this great city," said Tolton. "We pray God that mercy will guide these women and men as they convene to legislative in the interest of creating laws that are just and equitable."

After another two minutes of similar pleas, the reverend said: "And those who agree, say 'Amen.'"

Mere moments later that response reverberated across the chamber; It appeared that most members answered in the affirmative. Councilmember Vincent Ignizio made the sign of the cross as he took his seat.

Tolton was leading the City Council in a routine tradition: the invocation or prayer that precedes every official meeting of the body. Similar to the rituals of Congress and many other legislative bodies across the nation, stated meetings of the New York City Council open with a prayer, usually presented by a different religious leader every meeting.

Recently, an overwhelming percentage of those leaders have been of Jewish or Christian faith.

Rarely questioned, the invocation is just one example of how non-secular influences can trickle into the City Council’s policies, procedures and rituals. Some say this particular practice should be banned, while others argue it inspires members to respect one another, but without offering an endorsement of any particular denomination.

Separation or Not?

From Washington to Albany to City Hall, interpreting the separation of church and state can be tricky. Should the city fund faith-based groups? Should the council have an opening prayer before its meeting?

All of this has sparked a fluctuating debate across the city.

It’s really all about interpretation –- one that can be extremely ambiguous and ambivalent no matter how many decades it’s discussed, according to Douglas Muzzio, professor in the School of Public Affairs at Baruch College.

Even after the country adopted the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment (the foundation of the separation of church and state which says, “Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of religion”), our early political leaders continued to OK state sanctioned religion. At one point, Muzzio said, there were religious qualifications for office.

Obviously, these policies were discarded long ago. But, Muzzio added, the council’s funding of religious groups and its own invocation prior to meetings can fall in this tricky category.

For the most part, the city has accepted certain restrictions to deal with this. A Supreme Court decision from 1983 affirmed the right for legislative bodies to host prayers before they conduct business, but more recent court opinions require these prayers be non-sectarian. The use of Jesus, under a recent decision, would violate the First Amendment.

To address this, pastors who have performed invocations at the council said they are urged to be general and to refrain from specific religious references.

Elsewhere, the city has established guidelines for the funding of non-secular groups. Funding cannot go to any missionary or conversion work but only community-based services.

Even with these guidelines, sensitivity remains.

A Legislative Prayer

According to a City Council spokesperson, the council has not received any complaints on its invocation practice. They offer all council members an opportunity to bring in a religious leader from their districts, and members do not have to wait longer than a month to get their pastor, rabbi or imam on the list.

Despite offering the opportunity, for the most part invocations are done by those of monotheistic faiths, specifically Christian or Jewish leaders. Though it is the city's third most popular religion, Islamic leaders have not been seen conducting an invocation at City Hall in more than a year.

Hindu or Buddhist leaders are rarely seen, if ever, at the front of the council chamber.

Because all religions may not be represented, Alex Luchenitser, senior litigation counsel for Americans United for Separation of Church and State, said those left out could feel disenfranchised. His group argues for banning invocations nationwide.

“When you have a government body opening its meetings with a prayer that sends a message to the members of the community that the government endorses religion,” said Luchenitser. “It sends a message to members of the community that don't believe in God that they are second class citizens.”

While Luchenitser sees it as divisive, some city religious and political leaders see it as “unifying and comforting.”

“People should not fear a few moments of reflection,” Councilmember Jimmy Oddo, who is a product of 18 years of Catholic school, said. “If they are so put off by it, they can excuse themselves and take a walk around the building.”

At least one member, Councilmember Simcha Felder, who is an Orthodox Jew, attempted to ban the invocation under a previous speaker, but was unsuccessful. He called it “very dangerous” and said he would still support doing away with the ritual.

“It doesn’t belong there,” Felder said. “I don’t see the purpose.”

In response to Felder, Shirley Limongi of the New York City Council press office released this statement: "Invocations are a longstanding tradition in legislative bodies across the country, just as they are for our colleagues in the U.S. House of Representatives, U.S. Senate, the State Senate, and Assembly legislatures."

Religious leaders don’t see the invocation as sanctioning any religion.

“I very much value the constitutional safeguard for the separation of church and state. I also recognize it was intended to protect the individual from the imposition of religion by the state,” said Rabbi Joseph Potasnik, the vice president of the New York Board of Rabbis. “The offering of an invocation in no way offends that standard, because it’s not saying that the state is speaking religiously for any individual.”

Offering general comments and thoughts, like Potasnik did earlier this year at the City Council, causes no harm, he said.

General comments aside, some religious leaders do think it’s important to ensure all religions are represented during the ceremonies.

“If you are going to take the initiative to invite a clergy to come or a minister to come and do the invocation, let's be diligent enough that over the course of four years make sure as many religions are incorporated,” said the Rev. Mitchell Taylor of the Center of Hope International. Taylor has performed several invocations at the council, including one earlier this year.

Funding Religious Groups

The invocation is not the only City Council practice that brings the body closer to endorsing religion.

More recently, the council’s funding of nonprofit groups with religious affiliations for community programming has raised questions. Most council members say they see nothing wrong with doling out funds to groups or private schools that are affiliated with some faith. They argue these groups do good work.

Oddo, for instance, has funded private Catholic elementary schools, the Jewish Community Council, Young Israel and the Council of Jewish Organizations – just to name a few.

“Lots of people from various communities, atheists too, have been served by these groups,” Oddo said.

Recently, the city’s Law Department has taken a stricter interpretation when approving appropriations for private organizations slated to receive capital funding.

One group was experiencing difficultly receiving their funding for a new treatment facility after the city raised questions about Alcoholics Anonymous meetings that independently took place there. The meetings called the group's religious affiliation into question.

The Law Department says every agency vets each appropriation to a private organization to make sure the funding does not violate the constitution’s Establishment Clause.  

Lost in the PDFs: Getting City Data


 

NY Map
NYC.gov's new tech-offering, New York CityMap, helps New Yorkers to find basic services like firehouses, libraries, subway stations, senior centers, museums, and even Wi-Fi hotspots around a particular address.

Whatever else it does or does not do to keep construction safe in New York City, the Department of Buildings offers New Yorkers concerned about the projects in their midst a wealth of information. Simply typing in an address produces an array of material about the location, including certificate of occupancy, landmark status, number of complaints against the site and facts about its boilers and elevators.

This kind of sharing of information would seem to be exactly what Mayor Michael Bloomberg expects of agencies in his administration. Bloomberg has frequently stated he wants to use technology to make New York City's government more open. "More than 500 different measurements from 45 city agencies [are] all available with a few clicks of the mouse," he said in his 2008 State of the City address. "Good government is about transparency and accountability. We are doing everything we can to make them both permanent."

Meanwhile, the City Council has attempted to write online information sharing into law. In 2003, City Councilmember Gale Brewer, chair of the technology committee, authored a bill requiring that all city documents submitted to the Department of Records and Information Services be posted to the city's Web site within 10 days. The bill, Local Law 11, was the first legislation in the country to require a city government to use the Internet to provide access to official documents.

Providing this kind of access to government documents and information has been one of the important democratizing accomplishments of the Internet. New York City has been a leader in this area, but we are falling behind as a lack of standards and uneven performance across different agencies have left us with a confusing jumble of formats and numbers.

Five years after its passage, we are starting to see the limitations of Local Law 11. With no method for enforcement, compliance has been spotty. A survey of the Web sites of agencies suggests they are following Bloomberg's directive unevenly. Along with this, changes in technology have created new opportunities to make online information more accessible and useful. It might be time for an upgrade.

Opening the Government

The city puts out a lot of information that residents can use to monitor the performance of local government - so much information that, unless you know exactly what you're looking for, you will quickly drown in it.

As required by the City Charter, the mayor produces a report card for city services, called the Mayor's Management Report or MMR. Each mayor has done the report in his own style. Bloomberg's approach has been to trim it down to a list of indicators with totals or percentages, highlighting positive shifts and leaving negative one's unaddressed.

The mayor's Office of Operations has undertaken impressive efforts to craft a more user-friendly presentation for the information in the report. With its My Neighborhood Statistics Web site, visitors can sort the information by community board, or police precinct.

A separate mapping tool, NYCityMap allows New Yorkers to find basic services like firehouses, libraries, subway stations, senior centers, museums, and even Wi-Fi hotspots around a particular address.

Unfortunately, these tools present data in formats that are difficult to convert into other formats, limiting their usefulness. So, for example, if you want to sort the neighborhood statistics into council districts so you know who to complain to, you're out of luck. The map could allow you to merge it with other maps, an increasingly common online process known as a mashup. That could help apartment hunters, pizza hunters or anyone searching for information that you might want to see in a context of what city services are available.

Look But Don't Touch

The most common format across the city's Web portal is the PDF, which takes information and turns it into a two-dimensional document that cannot be manipulated or transformed into other kinds of data. An online PDF is definitely an improvement over going to the records department to get a printed copy of a document, but that's about it. Free PDF readers allow users to search within each document, but combining data from multiple documents has to be done manually.

For example, not only did the Office of Management and Budget publish the New York City's 2009 capital budget more than a week after the 10-day deadline mandated by Local Law 11, but when it did post the spending plan online it was as a 421-page PDF document.

Receiving the city budget as a PDF means that even the deftest programmer has to reverse engineer it to find such timely data such as which council members had requested what items.

Along with the mayor's budget every year, the Office of Management and Budget publishes an accompanying message filled with budget analysis. This too is a PDF, making it difficult to examine expenditures across departments or in some way other than how the mayor has presented the information. For example, the format provides no easy way to tally the expenditures on health programs not under the department of health. Getting that kind of information would require expensive data entry. If the city provided its budget in any number of more accessible formats, that data entry wouldn't be necessary.

In contrast, the state comptroller manages a Website called Open Book New York that provides easy access to New York State's financial information. It allows New Yorkers to search for individual state expenses across 113 agencies.

Ironically, the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications is using inadequate technology for sharing its information, including 311 call center data.

Community boards, for example, have wanted information on noise complaints, The department of information technology is required by law to provide the boards with complaint data, but the Local Law 47 reports on 311 calls come in PDFs, which make it difficult to analyze trends in noise complaints or neighbors calling in construction violations.

"I've been working with the Community Boards endlessly to get them the 311 data in some form that they can manipulate. So far, we only have PDFs," Brewer said.

Some individual city departments have gone further with sharing information online. Along with data on individual sites, the Department of Buildings makes its weekly reports available in spreadsheets that can be searched and filtered for specific data and information.

The Department of Finance allows site users to subscribe to individual RSS feeds. RSS feeds provide automatic update notifications to other Web sites or applications so users get an alert in their inbox or web browser whenever there is new information. Combined with XML, a Web language that helps facilitate Web site data sharing, users can stay in constant contact with Web sites they subscribe to. New Yorkers who subscribe to the Department of Finance's Web site can receive data feeds with information on property, business taxes, or parking and vehicle news.

Importantly, XML feeds also allow people with sight or other impairments to access information through text readers and other helpful technologies. Publishing information as a PDF shuts that community out from their government.

Looking at Crime

The police department's data, on the other hand, is difficult to interpret. The department's weekly Comp Stat report breaks citywide data into seven broad categories and is only available to the public as a PDF. The department provides the information by precinct, but city residents cannot search for crime statistics by their ZIP code, neighborhood or even borough. Additionally, this link for "Department Statistics" was down at the time of researching for this article. The department did not respond to requests for comment.

Law enforcement agencies in other cities are much more forthcoming. The police department in Charlotte, N.C., for example, provides statistics for police calls requesting service by neighborhood, ZIP code and district, sorting the information in more than 20 different categories.

EveryBlock.com, which compiles information from agencies of several cities and presents it in a friendly format, has been trying to provide New York City residents with detailed information about crime. To get the statistics for New York, EveryBlock's "people person," Daniel O'Neil, has had to make phone calls and develop relationships.

In Chicago, where EveryBlock got its start, residents wanting to know what crimes have occurred in their area simply type in their address or neighborhood and receive a list of reported offenses. Clicking on the crime brings more information, including a locator map. This comes directly from the police department's records. By contrast, all the New York Every Block site offers is a weekly compendium of crimes by precinct, with no details on the reports and no indication of where in the precinct the alleged offense occurred.

While EveryBlock has not been able to persuade New York City's police department to make that information accessible, EveryBlock does provide access to New York restaurant inspections and building violations. The information is much more accessible on EveryBlock where anyone can search for violations in a particular ZIP code or by the name of a facility.

O'Neil says it is absurd that city agencies leave it to third party projects like his to provide information access. "It's unethical for cities to say that some external service is going to be essential to displaying city service requests," he said.

Making records accessible is not just a matter of honest government, O'Neil said; it's a matter of being cost effective. "The city spends an enormous amount of time and energy and human resources and technical resources to create reports that are practically worthless," he explained.

Opening the Information Portal

There are mechanisms intended to address this. The Commission on Public Information and Communication was created by the 1989 charter revision and is chaired by the public advocate. It is supposed to "make the administration more transparent to the citizens it serves and would encourage the public to become more actively involved in government," as Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum said in a 2003 statement on the revival of the commission. Unfortunately, this revival never happened. The last meeting, of the commission according to the public advocate's Website was in September 2007.

"There are existing structures to handle this issue, but they've never functioned," said Thomas Lowenhaupt, who is promoting a .nyc top-level domain (the ending of a web address) to better connect people to information about the city.

The mayor continues to make improvements in its information-sharing practices, launching a Citywide Performance Reporting system earlier this year. The data for CPR are drawn from hundreds of indicators from agencies citywide, updated monthly. As Nicholas Sbordone from the information technology department explained, this "lets users really drill down into each indicator and compare trends across the past five fiscal years."

Some experts have questioned the indicators the administration has chosen to list. The Bloomberg administration could go further by adopting the best practices from other cities and using open standards across all agencies. That would help residents conduct their own analysis or convert it into the format that works best for them. And it would streamline City Council's job of oversight.

For its part, City Council could update Local Law 11, or at least be more vigilant in seeing that all agencies comply. "The office of operations needs to be involved in pursuing agencies that don't go on the web as they should," says Brewer. "I don't think you can fine agencies, but you have to have some carrot internally."

For now, though, we'll have to keep searching.

Joshua Breitbart and Kristofer Rios run the Digital Expansion Initiative at People's Production House.



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