With a surplus in city revenues, Mayor Michael Bloomberg is handing out goodies to a number of constituencies in his election-year budget. But for the parks department, it’s another year on a low-calorie diet.
Although in recent years New York City has increased its capital expenditures for renovating old parks and creating new ones, it spends less per capita on maintaining and operating parks than most major U.S. cities. In 2003, the city spent $32 per resident, compared to an average of $60 per resident in 36 major U.S. cities, according to the Center for Park Excellence at the Trust for Public Land.
Most observers agree that the parks department does a good job with limited resources. In addition, private funding has helped transform Central Park and others into green gems and continues to pay for the gardeners and other workers who keep them that way. But especially in the outer boroughs, many parks have worn grass and patchy plantings, locked or broken bathrooms, dusty and littered playing fields.
In its 2004 independent assessment of conditions at small neighborhood parks, The Report Card on Parks, the parks advocacy group New Yorkers for Parks gave almost a quarter of city parks a failing grade. It found that more than half the bathrooms were either closed or dirty and unsafe, 27 percent of the athletic fields were unacceptably maintained, and half of the sitting areas were littered, among other things.
The decline in funding over the last two decades has most affected the fulltime parks staff, which has decreased 60 percent in the last two decades. Most maintenance is now done by roving crews of temporary workers enrolled in a job-training program funded through the Human Resources Administration. Few parks have a staff person -- a "parkie" -- assigned to their care the way they once did, someone with a responsibility for that park and a relationship with its community. The department has also reduced the number of skilled workers, like gardeners, tree pruners, and plumbers. The 2005 budget, for example, funded for just 12 plumbers citywide -- one for every 53 bathrooms, 159 water fountains and 5 pools.
The Same Old Budget Game
Mayor Bloomberg’s proposed operating budget for parks this year is essentially the same as last year. Actual city funding is $196 million, down slightly from last year’s $201 million. The executive budget once again proposes eliminating the entire street tree pruning program, as well as $7.3 million for about 600 seasonal workers; the three previous budgets have done the same thing, though the City Council usually restores both items, at least in part.
"It’s the same song and dance we have every year," said Maura Lout, research director at New Yorkers for Parks. "The mayor cuts the budget with the understanding that the Council will restore it. It really prevents us from taking the step we need, which is enhanced resources for the parks department."
The budget adds some new funding, however, for staffing at the 54th Street Recreation Center and the new park at Fort Totten, as well as for fighting the Asian longhorn beetle. In addition to the $197 million in city operating funds, there are interagency transfers of $42 million, about the same as last year, for workers in the job training program; $20 million for staff overseeing capital projects; and $5 million in federal block grant funding.
A Promise Unfulfilled
During the 2001 election campaign, in response to grassroots lobbying organized by New Yorkers for Parks, Mayor Bloomberg and a number of City Council members pledged to increase parks funding to one percent of the city budget.
After September 11th and the fiscal difficulties that followed, funding for parks was cut, along with that for other city agencies. In the last couple of years, funding has returned to the levels of the 1990s, around half a percent.
But parks advocates are crying foul now that the mayor has a surplus that he is willing to spend. "While it’s a great budget for many city agencies, it’s not a great budget for parks. We’re waiting for a restoration and an increase after decades of cuts," said Lout of New Yorkers for Parks.
As the 2005 election approaches, park advocates have begun a new effort to get a commitment from candidates for greater park funding. In its Parks 1 campaign, New Yorkers for Parks is asking candidates again to pledge to work toward allocating one percent of the city budget to parks.
As a specific first step, it is asking them to support legislation allowing the parks department to keep the roughly $40 million it gets in revenue from concessions such as restaurants, golf courses, and hot dog stands, in addition to its regular city funding. "It’s very easy for candidates and elected officials to say they are pro-park, but it is very easy not to put any muscle behind it," said Justin Krebs, campaign director of Parks1.
Many other cities direct parks-generated revenue back to the parks. Some park supporters oppose the idea, however, warning that it would tempt the city to cut funding further and would result in greater commercialization of the parks.
Will advocates have more success this time in increasing resources for the parks? With other essential city services, like education and transportation, also in need of greater funding, it is easy for elected officials to continue to view parks as a luxury, far down on the list of priorities. The city has also turned increasingly to the private sector to take on the responsibility of caring for the parks. The cities with the best-maintained park systems often have some type of funding mechanism specifically for parks, unlike New York City, where park funding is at the mercy of the annual budget process and politics.
Yet the constituency for parks is getting larger, in tandem with the growing number of people contributing time and money to their local park. In April, 500 park and community garden supporters spent the day visiting the offices of City Council members. They came from all five boroughs to air concerns about their neighborhood parks and to ask for increased funding for parks.
More than half of the City Council members have signed the pledge, along with Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum and Queens Borough President Helen Marshall. So far, Mayor Bloomberg has not taken a position, although according to New York Metro, the free daily, his spokesman Jordan Barowitz said, "The Parks Department deserves every penny that the city can afford, but unless you identify a new source of revenue, that money from concessions is used to educate our children, pay our police officers and build affordable housing."
Anne Schwartz is a freelance writer specializing in environmental issues. Previously, she was the editor of the Audubon Activist, a news journal for environmental action published by the National Audubon Society, and an editor at The New York Botanical Garden.Â
How many trees are there on New York City streets?
That question will be answered this summer by some thousand volunteers in a project called "Trees Count." Aside from counting every tree, the volunteers will collect basic data on each tree's location and species; they will also use handheld computers donated by Hewlett Packard to measure the diameter of the trunk and the crown.
All this data will be entered into a common database, then run through an economic model to determine not just how much it would cost to replace each tree, but also to assess how much each individual tree is worth.
"No one has really placed a value yet on the urban forest," said Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe. "This will help us do that."
In a city that just earned yet another set of failing marks for air quality from the American Lung Association, parks managers are eager to quantify to the penny how New York City street trees improve the air and diminish energy consumption.
The first tree census in the city, conducted in 1995, came up with a total just under 500,000 trees.
Officials estimate that the number this time around will be about the same. This is true even in the face of a short-term reduction in the local tree population. Noting the recent discovery of an Asian longhorn beetle eggs, Parks Commissioner Benepe promised an "aggressive" response. "Any trees found to have insects will be chopped down, chipped, and the chips will be sent to the incinerator," he said.
Such promises reflect the management philosophy that, in an era of diminishing budget resources, it's better to amputate and be safe than waste precious time and resources developing a more nuanced approach. One reason for the tree census, notes Jennifer Greenfeld, director of the New York Tree Trust, is to give future resource managers a clearer picture of what corners of the city are doing well and what corners aren't.
"[A census] helps us figure out how to balance our resources, how to adjust our palette in terms of how we respond to different problems ," says Greenfeld. "This is the one thing that helps give us a snapshot so we can plan what to do."
Although the 1995 tree census took note of tree condition, this year's count will take more notes on the types of things that lead to the biggest maintenance headaches -- things like powerline and sidewalk interference and the tree guards which protect trees over the short term but can restrict growth over the long term. Losing larger, more established trees to such problems is especially painful from a management perspective, Greenfeld says, because larger trees provide exponentially more shade, oxygen and pollution-filtering power than their sapling replacements.
"A tree is probably the only investment that a city makes that increases over time," Greenfeld says. "Unlike a sewer line, which gets less useful the older it gets, you want to keep [a tree] in the ground as long as possible."
To help prove that point, New York Tree Trust will be relying on an economic model developed by the Center for Urban Forest Research, a laboratory at the University of California at Davis that is funded by the U.S. Forest Service. Dubbed STRATUM, the model estimates growth rates by species and location and then multiplies the resulting size estimates with biological data and economic estimates on the social cost of airborne pollution and energy production. The end result, says center director Greg McPherson, is a bottom line summary of each tree's ability to reduce carbon, pollution, and energy bills over time.
"It provides the other side of the equation which is that trees are an investment," says McPherson. "If you increase your investment, you can provide yourself more of a return over time."
McPherson's lab has analyzed census data from cities such as Berkeley, Calif., Minneapolis, and Bismarck, N.D. Estimates on the "return on investment" for each tree planting vary by city. In Berkeley, the return on every dollar spent was $1.37. In Bismarck, the return was $3.09 for every dollar spent.
New York has tried to assess its trees before, in a 2001 study that concluded that urban trees statewide had a compensatory value of $84 billion and a carbon storage value of $500 million. David Nowak, lead author of the 2001 study, says pricing models are popping up in court cases to assess the value of damaged trees or stolen timber and could lead to even more creative uses. Last year, for example, the Office of the New York Attorney General mandated $47,000 worth of tree planting in a January, 2004, settlement with four school bus companies accused of excessive idling, one of the first attempts by a government agency to include trees in the bargaining process on air pollution.
Nowak expects this trend to continue, noting that trees are a classic example of a benefit enjoyed by society as a whole coming at a cost only to the individual or agency that planted the tree. This is the exact opposite of air pollution, which comes at no cost to the factories or automobiles, etc. that produce it, but produce damage felt by society as a whole. Economists call the first example, the tree, a "positive externality," and the second, the pollution, a "negative externality." Both are "external" to the ordinary marketplace's ability to set a price. Assessing the damage or benefits often falls on state agencies.
"A lot of things we can't quantify yet, but some of the things we can," says Nowak.
The Trees Count project was launched with an Arbor Day tree planting ceremony outside the Little Sister of the Assumption Family Health Service in Spanish Harlem, a neighborhood currently experiencing the highest childhood asthma rates in the country. According to a 2003 study involving researchers from Columbia University and Harlem Hospital, a quarter of all children in east Harlem suffer from asthma, more than four times the national rate. Looking past the current tree census, both Benepe and Greenfeld point to Trees for Public Health, managed by the Hunts Point environmental group Greening for Breathing.
Trees for Public Health seeks to reduce local air pollution levels in a corner of the city plagued by automobile exhaust and has, to date, relied on a patchwork funding from city, state, and federal agencies. One way to guarantee a steady stream of funding, Benepe says, would be to confirm a direct causal link between money spent on trees and money saved at local asthma treatment centers thanks to declining admissions.
"We've gotten to the point where people understand anecdotally why urban trees are valuable," says Benepe. "Our next step is to quantify that value. For that we need the help of the scientific community."
The 2005 Trees Count project starts on June 1, 2005. Volunteers who would like to help out can register by calling 311 or visiting the city's "Trees Count" web page. The Parks Dept. is asking volunteers to donate at least 40 hours of their time, plus a three hour training session. The training sessions begin in the second weekend of May. Event sponsor Bank of America, meanwhile, is offering $1,000 to the adult New York City resident who comes closest to guessing the final street tree tally. The free entry form, which requires physical address and birthdate, is located here.
Forty years ago this week, Mayor Robert Wagner signed a bill establishing the landmarks law and forming the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission.
The legislation and new city agency were created in response to a growing concern about the loss of historically, culturally, and architecturally significant places like Pennsylvania Station, which was demolished in 1963. To date, the commission has designated 1,119 individual landmarks and 83 historic districts, totaling 23,000 buildings.
But some argue that the landmarks law is not living up to its promise and much more must be done to save the city’s historic places.
Some buildings are threatened by new development. Other structures are at risk because owners do not have the financial resources - or refuse to spend the money - needed to maintain them. Decisions about the future of other sites are stalled by local politics.
“While 40 years of landmark preservation is indeed cause for celebration, many preservationists are not in any mood to pop open the champagne,” Kate Wood of the group Landmarks West wrote in an article for Gotham Gazette.
Here are ten sites in New York City – buildings, houses, churces, a shipyard, and even a swimming pool – that preservation groups are trying to save for future generations of New Yorkers.
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In a small but significant step forward for both street trees and public safety, the city has begun a $3.4 million pilot program to fix sidewalks that have been damaged by tree roots, at no cost to the homeowner. The program is targeted to owners of one-, two-, and three-family houses.
Previously, the owner of the property next to the unsafe sidewalk would be issued a violation by the city Department of Transportation and was responsible for the repair. Although the parks department would take care of trimming the roots, the homeowner had to arrange for a contractor to remove the old sidewalk and put in a new one, at a cost of around $1,000.
"I have reams of letters from homeowners, some anguished and some angry, lamenting the unfairness of having to repair a sidewalk when the damage was caused by a publicly owned tree, in many cases planted by the city," said Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe. "It was creating a great deal of frustration and anger toward the city and trees."
Under the new Trees & Sidewalks Repair Program, all homeowners have to do is call 311. The parks department will come up with a solution to the safety problem that also protects the health of the tree. Potential repairs include expanding the pit, especially on lightly traveled sidewalks; slightly raising the level of the sidewalk to go over the roots; or strengthening the flags. Top priority will be given to sidewalks with the most severe damage, with a larger percentage of the pathway affected, and with the highest levels of pedestrian traffic. The transportation department will continue to conduct inspections and issue violations, but will notify the parks department when violations appear to be caused by trees.
Good For The Trees, Good For The Bottom Line
Although for years the city was reluctant to allocate money for fixing root-damaged sidewalks, over the long term, it could prove to be a smart investment. It should lead to safer sidewalks, fewer people falling, and a reduction in lawsuits against the city. Until last year, when the city passed a law making property owners liable for injuries that occur on sidewalks in front of their buildings, the city spent about $20 million a year on lawsuits by people who tripped and fell on sidewalks, according to Kate O’Brien Ahlers of the New York City Law Department. Although claims have dropped 30 to 40 percent since the passage of the new law, it does not cover owners of one-, two-, and three-family houses, to whom the sidewalk repair program is targeted.
The program is also expected to enhance the health of the urban forest, boosting its value both in economic terms and to the city’s quality of life. It costs $1.110 to replace a street tree and, with the worth of a street tree with a 3-foot-wide trunk roughly $10,000, every tree that thrives helps the bottom line. That does not include the real (if not easily quantifiable) value of trees in filtering pollutants, reducing energy costs, and raising real estate values, to list just a few of the benefits. For example, a study by U.S.D.A. scientist David J. Nowak estimated that in 2000, New York City’s street trees reduced 1,500 tons of pollutants at an associated value of $8 million.
Conditions are difficult to begin with for the city’s half million street trees, which live in a hotter, drier, and more dangerous environment than their park counterparts. Historically, the city has provided minimal funding for maintaining the trees, and only for pruning. The frequency of street tree pruning was increased in 1997, but funding for pruning is one of the first things to be cut when budgets are tight. The city depends on citizens and nonprofits like TreesNY for other essential care, such as watering, cultivating the soil, monitoring for disease and insects, and putting up tree guards .
By having the parks department oversee the repairs, the new program will make sure that they are done with greater sensitivity to the health of the tree. And homeowners dealing with cracked and raised sidewalks will view street trees as less of a nuisance.
The program was funded in part by the borough presidents of Queens, Staten Island, and the Bronx. "It is a program we would like to see work and become permanent," said Dan Andrews, speaking for Queens Borough President Helen Marshall, noting that Queens has the most street trees of any borough.
Judging from the number of requests for sidewalk repairs in the first two days after the program was announced -- nearly 1,500, half the number of root-trimming requests the department received in an entire year in the past — there is a huge pent-up demand.
"It’s one of the extremely gratifying common-sense things that we’ve all wanted to do for years," Benepe said. "It will do more to improve both the survival rates of street trees and homeowners’ relationship to street trees than anything else we could have done."
Anne Schwartz is a freelance writer specializing in environmental issues. Previously, she was the editor of the Audubon Activist, a news journal for environmental action published by the National Audubon Society, and an editor at The New York Botanical Garden.Â
Related In Community Gazettes: |
Tavi Fields, a 25-year-old rapper, found the city's alternate side parking regulations more than she could handle. "I was going through a hard period of time for a while, where I slept in for most of the day," Fields told the Daily News. While she stayed in bed, her Lexis remained on the wrong side of the street. The result: 90 tickets now totaling $10,433, making her, by the paper's reckoning, one of the top 10 parking scofflaws in the city.
Most New Yorkers manage to avoid such a dubious distinction, but for the people who own the 1.9 million cars registered in the city, parking borders on an obsession. Its rules have spawned at least one novel, a guidebook, sitcom episodes, and two companies dedicated to helping New Yorkers outsmart traffic enforcement officers.
Parking presents elected officials with a quandary. Many New Yorkers with cars view a free space to park as a God-given right. But other New Yorkers, pointing to pollution and congestion from automobiles, object to any move that encourages driving. The city's need for revenue from parking further complicates the picture, along with politicians' natural reluctance to attract the ire of voters who get tickets.
These issues arise again and again - in the controversies over parking at the West Side stadium and the proposed Nets arena in Brooklyn and the debates over the future of city neighborhoods. (See related stories on Flushing and Bay Ridge.) The latest imbroglio is an election year tiff over the use of parking meters on Sunday, which the mayor's critic dubbed "pay to pray."
Most New Yorkers would say the problem is too many cars chasing too few spaces. But some planners disagree. The problem, they say, is not that parking is too expensive, but that it is too cheap. And some say the problem is not that there are too few spaces but that there are too many.
Paying for space in a parking garage, George tells Elaine as they seek a space on an episode of Seinfeld, "is like going to a prostitute. Why should I pay when, if I apply myself, maybe I could get it for free?"
Many New Yorkers apparently agree, and so spend long periods of time driving, in concentric circles or zigzags, looking for parking.
Even the smartest among us do this silly chore. In a 2000 interview, Horst Stormer, a Nobel Prize winner in physics, described his formula for finding parking spaces by scooting ahead of rival drivers.
The average cruising time for a parking space in some New York neighborhoods approaches 14 minutes, according to a 1993 study. That's twice the time spent in San Francisco, where it is so hard to park that residents leave their cars on the sidewalk.
But cruising takes up more than time. Environmentalists cite a 1984 study that found drivers in one 15-block neighborhood in Los Angeles spent 100,000 hours cruising, wasting 47,000 gallons of fuel and producing 700 tons of carbon dioxide emissions in a single year.
New York's rules complicate the process. Moving the car from one side of the street to the other is not required in every city. And any single spot can have three sets of rules governing its use at various times.
Such parking regulations attempt to address a variety of needs, according to Michael Primeggia, the Department of Transportation's deputy commissioner for traffic operations. In most of the city, the main concern is street cleaning, which dictates the alternate side rules.
But in busier commercial areas, particularly in Manhattan, other considerations come into play, such as the need to accommodate traffic flow and allow for deliveries. "New York City is not so lucky that there can be one regulation that regulates the curb for the entire day," Primeggia said. And that leads to two or three signs - with different rules - for a single space.
Ironically, the city famed for its convoluted parking rules and parking headaches is the only American city where a majority of residents do not own cars. This gives rise to a chicken and egg debate. Do New Yorkers not own cars because it is so hard to park? Or is it so hard to park because New York remains a pedestrian and mass transit city that has not destroyed itself to accommodate the automobile?
The number of cars registered to New Yorkers has declined by about 5 percent since its peak in 2000. According to the 2000 Census, 54 percent of all New Yorkers -- and three out of four Manhattan residents -- do not own a vehicle.
But cars still clog Manhattan streets. Although the number of auto trips into Manhattan dropped after September 11, 2001, it has begun to grow again. Some experts predict it could reach 1 million vehicles a day.
A majority of people in Brooklyn and the Bronx do not have cars, but two out of every three Queens residents and four out of five Staten Islanders do.
By some measures (.pdf format) , New York is the second most congested - after Los Angeles - of America's largest cities. In 1990, the average speed of crosstown traffic in a car fell to 5.2 miles per hour. Brian Ketcham, a Brooklyn transportation consultant, estimated then that traffic cost the city nearly $30 billion a year in losses in employee productivity, accidents, air pollution, noise and roadway damage. And a 2004 study concludes that congestion cost the metropolitan area more than $7 billion in wasted time and fuel alone.
Many New Yorkers decide not to own a car at least because parking costs so much - particularly for drivers who get a lot of tickets. City drivers paid $537 million for parking violations in 2004. This came from some 10 million tickets, a 20 percent increase from 2003.
Primeggia says parking regulations are not designed to produce revenue or to confuse drivers. Any average citizen who reads English should be able to figure where and where not to park. When there is more than one sign applying to a space, the city puts the most restrictive sign on top. "All it takes is reading the signs in order and determining which sign is in effect," Primeggia said
But not everyone agrees. Louis Camporeale said he became aware of the faulty enforcement of traffic regulations in the 1980s. As a student, he would try to park at broken meters. "Three or four dollars in meter money was a couple of hours work," he recalled.
But sometimes the plan backfired, and he got a ticket -- an unfair ticket. (You can park at a broken meter -- but only for an hour.)
Such disputes led Camporeale to become an advocate for New York City parkers. He has written "The New York City Motorist's Guide to Parking" and runs a web site www.parkingpal.com with parking tips. "New Yorkers think they're so savvy, but when it comes to parking regulations, they're not," he said.
Glen Bolofsky, the author of the city's first alternate side parking calendar, now runs a business www.parkingticket.com that fights people's tickets - for a fee. Its successful challenges arise from confusing signs, mistakes on the ticket itself and other gaffes by the city. The company, which also operates in Boston, San Francisco, the District of Columbia and Philadelphia, claims that it won dismissals or reductions on 75 percent of the tickets it challenged last year.
"The rules and regulation are pretty much stacked against the average person," Bolofsky said. "The city goes out of its way to create a situation to intimidate and bully people."
Although the city consistently denies setting quotas for parking agents, Bolofsky disagrees. "The city budget dictates what the revenue [from parking tickets] is going to be," he said.
People risk tickets to park on the street, though, because lots and garages cost so much - and the fees seem likely to rise even higher.
A reserved space in a garage in midtown cost $496 in 2004, the highest rate in the country, according to a recent survey. This has prompted some developers to offer parking condos where people purchase a space for tens of thousands of dollars and then pay a monthly fee.
But, despite this, lots are closing as New York's real estate boom makes land too expensive to park on. The city owns lots, but when the land becomes valuable, sells them for other uses. (See related story on Flushing.)
The same thing is happening with private lots. Broker Anne De Marzo told the New York Times that she has sold five parking lots and two garages in the Hudson Yards area with 20 more deals in the works. And Sean Sweeney, director of the civic group SoHo Alliance said he counted 2,000 parking spaces that had been lost in his area. Owners say they can sell their property for $350 for each "buildable" square foot.
In Calvin Trillin's novel about parking - "Tepper Isn't Going Out" –fictional Mayor Frank "Il Duce" Ducavelli sees his poll numbers rise after he goes after the "scofflaws in striped pants" - Ukrainian diplomats who did not pay their parking fees. Trillin obviously drew his inspiration from Mayor Rudy Giuliani's attacks on United Nations diplomats who parked illegally and used diplomatic immunity to avoid paying their tickets. While the problem has eased, New Yorkers still hold a special animosity for foreigners who park freely and illegally, and politicians continue to use that sentiment to their advantage.
Similarly, because alternate side parking rules have few fans among voters, City Council has added to the list of days when rules are suspended, aiming the dispensations at various religions and ethnic groups. In 2002, for example, the council voted unanimously to suspend rules on Asian Lunar New Year, Purim and Ash Wednesday, overriding the mayor's veto.
This year's political parking dispute concerns the use of meters on Sundays -- something the city has done in recognition, it says, of the fact that stores now stay open on Sunday. The move also brings in about $7 million a year.
But a Bay Ridge minister complained that parishioners were ducking out during services to feed the meters. In response, City Councilmembers Vincent Gentile and Hiram Monserrate introduced a bill that would ban metered parking on Sunday. (See related story)
Other Democrats picked up the cause. "There shouldn't be a tax on worshipping," mayoral candidate Fernando Ferrer said. "People shouldn't have to pay to pray."
The city has done a done a few things on parking that have met with general approval, particularly the use of multiple space meters. Rather than feed coins into a metal meter on a post, motorists purchase a ticket from a machine and then leave it on their dashboard. Cars can then park more tightly. The system also enables the city to charge different prices at different times or discourage long stays.
Currently, Primeggia said, many of the meters charge $2 for one hour but $9 for three hours to spur turnover. "We're encouraging them to use it as long as they need it, but when they're done leave," he said.
The city also addresses parking in zoning decisions. Residents often cite increased parking difficulties as a hallmark of rapidly developing - or overdeveloped - neighborhoods. So, on Staten Island, for example, the city has increased requirements for parking to accompany new buildings. Of course, more space for parking can mean less land for other uses, including lawns and gardens.
Concerns about parking also enter into one of the year's hottest political controversies: the proposed Jets stadium on the Far West Side. The extension of the No. 7 subway line aims to make the proposed West Side football stadium friendly to transit users and discourage automobile use. The Jets anticipate 70 percent of people attending games will arrive by mass transit. This would require parking for 7,000 cars.
And an anti stadium group, the New York Association for Better Choices, sees that number as unrealistic. It predicts that each Jets game would attract 16,000 cars and 100 buses, requiring 70 acres of parking lots and garages.
For the short term, the city has said it plans to allow approximately 1,500 new spaces near the railyards. Eventually, it says, thousands of new parking spaces would be provided to accommodate the residential and commercial development of the surrounding area.
Parking is also a concern for the Nets arena in Brooklyn, which, like the Jets Stadium, aims to be accessible by mass transit. The arena plans call for 3,000 parking spaces but critics say this will not be enough. And, they charge, an already congested area will grow more crowded as thousands of Nets fans cruise the streets looking for parking.
Parking is such a problem for new projects that developers want even racecar fans to get out of their cars. The proposed NASCAR track on Staten Island would accommodate about 95,000 people, but the plan only calls for parking for 8,400 cars. International Speedway Corp. hopes fans will park at some 16 off-site lots and take shuttle buses to the track.
Even though parking is a cherished commodity in New York, the city gives it away. A 2002 survey found that only 24 percent of the almost 30,000 curbside parking spaces in Manhattan south of 59th Street had meters.
Donald Shoup, a professor at University of California Los Angeles, argues in his new book "The High Cost of Free Parking" that free parking creates many costs, helping to explain "extreme auto dependence, rapid urban sprawl and extravagant energy use." Just charging $1 an hour for those unmetered Manhattan spaces, he said, would generate $250 million a year.
"People are paying a very high cost for housing and people even go homeless and cars are parking for free," he said.
Shoup believes the city should set rates for on-street parking high enough so that about 15 percent of the spaces are usually unoccupied. In some areas of London, this is eight pounds -- about $15 -- an hour.
To make such a sharp increase in rates politically palatable, Shoup proposes the money go to local community agencies to fund neighborhood improvements. "Nobody ever wants to pay for parking, so you have to create someone on the other side of the meter who wants the money," he said.
Some critics say such policies are unfair to lower income people. And while this is less true in New York City than other places, businesses worry (.pdf format) that high priced parking will keep people from driving to their establishments and spending money.
Some cities, though, have taken more drastic measures to stop parking. Copenhagen for example has a policy to reduce parking by about two percent a year.
That would be fine with Kit Hodge, campaign director of Transportation Alternatives, as long as people take transit, bike or walk instead. "Our aim is to discourage parking," she said.
Organizations
New York City Department of Transportation
Alternate side parking, other parking regulations and how to pay a ticket online.
Parking Pal
Information and tips designed to help drivers park in New York City
Transportation Alternatives
An advocacy groups that seeks to reduce automobile use. Its web site includes information on car and bicycle parking.
Resources
Colliers Parking Rate Survey (in pdf format)
A survey of how much it costs to park in 55 North American cities.
Gridlock Sam
Web site run by former New York City Traffic Commissioner Sam Schwartz with information on parking, driving and congestion in the city.
parkingticket.com
Company that will fight your parking ticket - for a fee.
2004 Urban Mobility Study
The Texas Transportation Institute's study of mobility and traffic congestion on freeways and major streets in 85 cities.
Articles
The Autonomist Manifesto (Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Road)
(New York Times Magazine)
A Brief History of Parking: The Life and After-life of Paving the Planet
(Architecture Magazine)
The Dynamics of On-Street Parking in Large Central Cities
(Rudin Center for Transportation Policy and Management, NYU)
Fewer Cars (Same Traffic)
(Gotham Gazette)
The High Cost of Free Parking
(Donald Shoup)
The site includes the book's first chapter, articles on the book and comments by the author.
High Costs Drive Car Owners Crazy
(Daily News)
NYC Parking Policy is Backwards and Dangerous
(Transporation Alternatives magazine)
No Parking. You're Welcome
(New York Times)
The Overdevelopment Debate
(Gotham Gazette)
Parking Space and Public Spaces: Why Parking Can Destroy Communities and How to Find a Place for It
(Project for Public Spaces)
The Savvy Parker
(New York Chapter, American Automobile Associatin)
Shakedown: Sometimes It's the Little Things that Drive Your Over the Edge
"Tepper Isn't Going Out" by Calvin Trillin
(Salon)
Discusses the novel about parking in New York
Ticketing Blitz?
(Gotham Gazette)
Call it a characteristic display of Big Apple chutzpah. Last month, city and state attorneys scored a $1.1 billion legal victory against out-of-state polluter Ohio Edison for violating the federal Clean Air Act, which regulates pollutants such as sulfur dioxide and nitrous oxide. But now, the New York State Office of the Attorney General and New York City Corporation Counsel, along with half a dozen other governments in the Northeast and West Coast, are going after carbon dioxide.
Carbon dioxide is currently unregulated by the federal Environmental Protection Agency. The chemical, CO2, is a natural byproduct of fossil fuel combustion. Though benign from a chemical safety standpoint, its ability to absorb and retain heat has led many scientists and governments around the world to attribute a recent rise in global mean temperatures to unchecked industrial and automotive exhaust.
Many business groups and even a few scientists challenge this so-called "greenhouse effect" theory, but evidence of rising carbon dioxide in the earth's atmosphere is incontrovertible. A study of atmospheric concentrations at the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii, the longest continuous study on record, reported an 18.8 percent increase in the mean concentration of carbon dioxide between 1958 and 2003.
With the Bush Administration currently distancing itself from the Kyoto Protocol, the recently-enacted treaty forcing developed nations to reduce "greenhouse gas" emissions, state and city governments with financial and political stake in climate stability see the legal system as the best way to reduce U.S. emissions.
"I think if we want to see progressive, responsible environmental policy, it's going to have to come from the state and local governments,'" says Judith Enck, policy advisor to New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. "If you get the West Coast and the Northeast teaming up, sooner or later you get a national global warming policy even if the federal government won't act."
Bush's Clear Skies Act Ignores Carbon Dioxide
Last month, just about the same time Ohio Edison was agreeing to a court-mandated installation of smokestack-scrubbers at its largest coal-burning power plant, the Bush Administration's efforts to spare other power companies the same indignation were stalling out in Congress.
Dubbed the Clear Skies Act, the Bush air pollution plan would abandon a decades-old policy of forcing power companies to clean their facilities whenever they expand or upgrade production -- a policy known as "new source review" by insiders -- in favor of a market-oriented policy in which clean companies earn pollution credits which they can then sell to dirtier companies as a monetary reward for compliance, This policy is known as "cap and trade."
According to the Bush administration, this market-driven system would reduce sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxide, and mercury emissions by as much as 70 percent over the next two decades while at the same time reducing the number of costly lawsuits. Opponents, however, see major flaws: During the first decade of the plan, or at least until 2012, the so-called Bush "cap" would actually be lenient enough to relieve power companies from the compliance duties already required under new source review. More importantly, however, the Bush plan makes no mention of carbon dioxide whatsoever. Although Bush promised to regulate during the 2000 election campaign, his administration voided the promise less than 60 days into his first term, citing recessionary concerns.
Looking At 19th Century Law To Get Around Bush In The 21st
Since then, Democratic-voting coastal states such as New York, Massachusetts and California, and even swing states such as Iowa, have been looking for alternate ways to remedy the rising cost of severe weather storms and lost wetlands. Environmental lawyers have found their remedy not in the federal case law built up since the Air Pollution Control Act of 1955 but in the common law that governed most environmental disputes in the days of limited federal authority.
David Doniger, policy director for the Natural Resources Defense Council, says the 19th century nuisance laws that once allowed cities such as New York to ban slaughterhouses, rendering plants and other unpopular businesses and to regulate their activity across jurisdictional lines offer an opportunity to go after fixed-point carbon dioxide producers. Doniger cites, in particular, State of Georgia v. Tennessee Copper, a 1907 case that worked its way all the way up to the Supreme Court. In that case, the state of Georgia asserted its legal right to limit the tree-killing sulphur dioxide emanating from a copper smelter operating in Tennessee. In 1915, the Supreme Court sided with Georgia, setting up the modern framework for interstate environmental regulation.
"This is old, hallowed stuff," says Doniger of the 1907 case. "A lot of it was put aside or put on pause during the last few decades because most kinds of pollution are now addressed by the Clean Air Act."
Most but not all. As noted previously in this topic page, the Bush administration's undisguised antipathy to the decades-old new source review policy has already created a vacuum of leadership which many states and cities are rushing to fill. That carbon dioxide remains off the federal enforcement agenda only adds to the shifting legal momentum.
"It's ironic," observes Frank O'Donnell, president of the non-profit monitoring group Clean Air Watch. "Historically more liberal groups sought to make sure the federal government had primacy in matters of this sort. Since the Bush administration has in effect dropped the ball, however, it is now up to state attorneys general to clean up the environment."
Last summer, eight states, including New York, together with New York City and the Natural Resources Defense Council, filed lawsuits in the Southern District of New York against five power companies which, added together, account for 10 percent of the country's carbon dioxide emissions. The list includes Ohio-based utilities American Electric Power and Cinergy, Atlanta-based Southern Company, Minneapolis-based Xcel Energy, and the federally-owned Tennessee Valley Authority. The since-consolidated lawsuit demands that defendants reduce their carbon dioxide emissions.
Pat Hemlepp, spokesman for American Electric Power, says his company is already reducing its carbon dioxide emissions voluntarily.
"We're the leader in our sector on carbon [gas reduction] efforts, which is why, frankly, we were quite surprised to be one of the companies named in the suit," says Hemlepp.
Then again, American Electric Power is also the country's largest consumer of coal and a strong supporter of the Bush administration reasoning that any national carbon dioxide standards take into account growing industrial competition from countries such as India and China, a Kyoto treaty signatory that, under the treaty terms, won't have to curb its emissions until the next decade.
An Environmental Scopes Trial?
Economic issues aside, the current case pushes the carbon dioxide debate out of Congress, where the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee is currently locked in a 9-9 stalemate on the Clear Skies Act thanks to moderate Rhode Island Republican Lincoln Chaffee and Vermont Independent Jim Jeffords, and into the courts. Green Car Congress, a blog that tracks environmental issues, has already likened the case to Tennessee v. John Scopes, the sensational 1925 trial in which attorneys debated the scientific validity of Darwin's theory evolution.
In a statement issued at the time of last summer's filing, Michael Cardozo, head of the New York City legal department, described the city's participation as response to global warming concerns and "part of the Bloomberg Administration's commitment to maintaining a clean and sustainable city."
Speaking after last month's court victory, Judith Enck of the Attorney General's Office sees things in even more dramatic terms. Like O'Donnell, she sees ironic payback for a Republican party that, during its own time as a minority power, sought to transfer federal authority on issues such as environmental regulation back to the states.
"When [conservatives] were designing the new federalism, they weren't banking on an aggressive attorneys general," Enck says. "The federal government can assert its power over much more territory and more jurisdictions, but an aggressive, focused attorney general can accomplish more than a lumbering federal bureaucracy."
TRACKING CITY CARBON MONOXIDE DETECTOR USAGE
While New York officials focus on carbon dioxide, Boris Riabov, a sophomore at the Bronx High School of Science, has been keeping tabs on its more dangerous cousin: carbon monoxide.
Based on data from a recently collected school assignment, Riabov estimates that nearly a third of Manhattan residents have yet to install -- or have their landlords install -- carbon monoxide detectors.
Riabov, 16, created the survey for a class called Science Instrumentation and Problem Solving (SIPS). As noted in a December 2003 column, carbon monoxide detector sales have historically been tragedy-driven. People read grisly stories such as the October, 2004 suffocation deaths of an Albanian family in its Staten Island home due to a blocked exhaust vent, and go out and buy detectors. A city law enacted last November seeks to break that pattern, however, mandating the purchase and installation for all rented units.
Taking inspiration from that law, Riabov created an anonymous questionnaire which he circulated at various public libraries in and around Washington Heights. The questionnaire asks people to list carbon monoxide's effects and to report the number of detectors in their apartment or house. Although 93 percent of the survey's 70 respondents knew about carbon monoxide and almost every returned questionnaire listed at least one negative effect caused by the gas, 30 percent of respondents reported no carbon monoxide detectors.
"That was most surprising to me," says Riabov. "I also found that ten percent of homes with children didn't have a detector, and one of the facts about carbon monoxide is that it affects children quicker than adults."
Less surprising was the statistic showing that 44 percent of respondents reported new detectors in their homes since November 1, 2004, a sign that the law, while not reaching everyone, has certainly affected a significant number of people. Riabov says he hopes to use this finding as a foundation for a more ambitious study, documenting code compliance later this year.
"There are a couple contests I'd like to enter," he says. "If you get approved, they give you a grant to get started. I'll have to wait and see if they give me a grant."
Riabov completed his survey just days before the latest news story involving the odorless, colorless gas firefighters and parametics call the "silent killer." On March 31, police in the Douglaston section of Queens discovered the bodies of a hearing-impaired husband and wife. The medical examiner has yet to determine the cause of death, but police officials speaking to the Associated Press believe the couple left their car running in the garage and suffocated from the fumes after failing to hear their alarm go off. Â
The parks department has quietly shelved a fully funded and planned $1.2 million Staten Island greenway that local residents have worked for many years to get built. Borough President James P. Molinaro, who wields tremendous political power on the island and whose support Mayor Michael Bloomberg needs for reelection, is blocking the project because of concerns that it would limit future road-building options.
The route, which goes through residential neighborhoods, would provide a recreational corridor between the waterfront and the island’s wooded interior Greenbelt, and would also link to a greenway system being pieced together in the borough and throughout the city.
The planned path, called the Amundsen Trailway, mostly follows a wooded strip of land that was set aside by Robert Moses for the construction of the Willowbrook Parkway, which was never built. Three studies conducted over the last two decades determined that building the Willowbrook and another proposed highway, the Richmond Parkway, would not alleviate traffic problems in the borough. The rights-of-way for the two unbuilt parkways make a large "X" that intersects in the heart of the Greenbelt.
The land is still mapped for the roadways, however. Local civic and environmental groups have been trying to get the state legislature to "demap" the rights-of-way and turn them over to the parks department, but these efforts have been opposed by Borough President Molinaro.
Although the Amundsen Trailway has been in the works for years and received all the necessary funding and approvals, Molinaro has put a moratorium on construction in the right-of-way until traffic concerns are resolved. "Right now we’re being asked to hold off until this is looked at one more time," said Thomas A. Paulo, parks department Staten Island borough commissioner. "In any part of the city, it’s very difficult to create a new right-of-way. Before we move forward on having a new use, it’s good to take a look at it." The borough president declined to be interviewed for this story.
Trailway advocates say that the three studies are still valid. "The zoning and land use is what it is. The street use is what it is. Development patterns are what they are. It’s the same as in 1994, 1988, and 1981 [when the studies were conducted]," said John Rooney, chair of the Amundsen Trailway committee of the Richmondtown & Clarke Avenue Civic Association. He said that the huge burst of development the island has experienced is coming from a totally different area. "The predominate direction of traffic demand is opposite from the Willowbrook Parkway corridor."
A LONG ROAD
For decades, residents of the area have envisioned a loop where people could run, stroll or bicycle between two of the island’s well-loved open spaces, the seashore at Great Kills and the hilly woods of the Greenbelt, where it is hard to believe you are in New York City. Where there is now a muddy, uneven footpath through seemingly abandoned land — the kind of place people tend to dump garbage — there would be a properly surfaced and drained bicycle and pedestrian pathway, marked by signs.
Trailway advocates also envision how the route might coordinate with the city Department of Environmental Protection’s Bluebelt storm water drainage system. The area has many streams and wetlands and is prone to flooding. The Bluebelt system preserves and enhances these wet areas to channel, collect, and filter storm water flows, saving the city billions of dollars while preserving open space and wildlife habitat. One recently completed Bluebelt project was finalized to coordinate with the planned pathway.
After decades of effort by residents and the creation of a detailed conceptual plan by the Richmondtown & Clarke Avenue Civic Association, in 1991 the Staten Island Greenbelt Master Plan included the Amundsen route as part of a bicycle and pedestrian trail system in the Greenbelt parks. The trail is also included in the Department of City Planning’s citywide greenway plan (In PDF Format) and former Borough President Molinari’s Staten Island bikeway plan.
The state allocated federal transportation funding covering 80 percent of the trail’s construction and the city approved its 20 percent contribution. In 2001, the parks department released detailed drawings and specifications; by 2003 all the required reviews were completed and permits obtained. It was to be the first section of the Greenbelt trail system built.
Instead, the parks department now plans to construct another portion of the Greenbelt trail system first, a loop circling La Tourette Park. A new section is being added to complete the loop, using funding originally allocated to the Amundsen Trailway. "We are eager to get any portion of this now, because right now it is very difficult to do any kind of biking on the road in Staten Island anymore," said Borough Commissioner Paulo.
Questions have been raised, however, about the feasibility of the additional section because it would go through steep terrain unsuitable for bicycling, as well as wetlands. The new trail also does not provide the long-desired recreational link between the Greenbelt and the waterfront.
Neighborhood residents who have spent years cleaning up the right-of-way and trying to make the trail a reality are discouraged, but have not given up their dream. Chuck Perry is a retired teacher who lives across the street from the right of way and has long been active in the effort. He said, "Look at communities like in Long Island — they have these amenities. This is recreation for the average family, for the average citizen."
Anne Schwartz is a freelance writer specializing in environmental issues. Previously, she was the editor of the Audubon Activist, a news journal for environmental action published by the National Audubon Society, and an editor at The New York Botanical Garden.Â
In the summer of 2003, a little more than a full century after the publication of Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness," Basil Seggos and fellow members of the local watchdog group Riverkeeper made their own trip up one of the world's scariest waterways.
Where Conrad chose Africa's Congo River as his exotic setting, the Riverkeeper team chose a destination closer to home: Newtown Creek, the industrial waterway separating Greenpoint and Long Island City. Long known as a dumping site for industrial polluters, the creek had evaded cleanup thanks largely to its remote, secluded nature.
"We had to take a row boat to get into the east branch," says Seggos, noting the presence of a bridge that effectively blocked passage for the 36-foot boat the organization usually uses when inspecting local waterways.
What the Riverkeeper inspectors found when they got to the other side of that bridge confirmed their worst suspicions. Seggos says there was a "huge white plume" of sediment pouring into the waterway from an underwater drainpipe. It wasn't too hard guessing the source of the plume. Immediately adjacent to the spot where the sediment hit the water was a cement plant, Quality Concrete, and subsequent testing proved the sediment to be high in calcium, an indicator of the limestone aggregate used to make concrete.
"These guys obviously had no cheap ability on site to hook into the city sewer lines," Seggos speculates, noting that 80 percent of the businesses along Newtown Creek operate with no city-provided sewer service. "Rather than hook up a treatment system which is what these kinds of companies should do, they were dumping into an old storm line and sending it to the creek for disposal."
Citing state law which forbids the dumping of untreated industrial waste into New York waterways, Riverkeeper filed notice of its intent to sue. The organization held off on filing the actual lawsuit for the winter, however, when Quality Concrete representatives indicated a willingness to clean up the site. When spring 2004 came and went with no observed cleanup activity, however, the group chose an alternate strategy: It invited Kings County District Attorney Charles Hynes, Greenpoint Councilmember David Yassky and other notables to climb aboard the patrol boat and see the waterway himself. Again, the boat couldn't make it all the way up the creek, but what Hynes saw was enough.
"He was appalled by the conditions," recalls Seggos. "We passed the case on to him, and he ran with it."
That was last summer. This January, the Kings County District Attorney announced the indictment of Quality Concrete, now doing business as Maspeth Concrete Loading, and its chief executive officer, Constantine Quadrozzi, on 22 felony counts and 20 misdemeanor counts of unlawful sewage discharge. "This indictment sends a message that we will not tolerate these actions," said Hynes in a Jan. 2005 statement to the press.
Although the defendant company is based in Maspeth, Queens, just over the borough line, Richard Farrell, an assistant district attorney who is helping prosecute the case, says the office feels it has the authority to go after the company. First of all, the waterway impacted borders Kings County. As a second reason, he cites "the 500 yard rule" in that any courts usually give both county governments the ability to prosecute anything that occurs within 500 yards of the county line.
Brian Gardner, Quadrozzi's attorney, was unavailable for comment for this article, but in a January statement to the Daily News predicted an out-of-court settlement. "Once we sit down with the DA's office, we expect [the charges] to be fully resolved in our favor and dismissed," Gardner told the newspaper.
Even if both sides find a mutually suitable resolution, Farrell sees Quality Concrete as only the first step in what is sure to be a decades-long effort to clean up a creek that has been an industrial haven since the mid-19th century. Larger problems, most notably a 52 acre ExxonMobil site that contains the remnants of a 17 million gallon oil discharge, promise an even bigger legal fight. Still, the bridge has been crossed, both literally and figuratively, and those on the enforcement side appear willing to take on fresh opponents.
"There are other pollution situations being looked at," says Farrell. "I would not call the Quadrozzi situation the most egregious situation out on the creek."
Diesel Deaths
New York smokers who have to take their cigarette breaks on the cold sidewalk have a new reason to complain. According to a report issued by the Clean Air Task Force last month, truck and bus-borne diesel exhaust can be just as deadly, if not more so, than the second hand smoke that once filled city offices, bars and restaurants.
Titled "An Analysis of Diesel Pollution and Public Health in America," the report pegs the local death rate due to diesel soot at 2,729. That's nearly triple the death rate of the next closest metropolitan area, Los Angeles, which loses 918 people a year to diesel-related deaths. When the report broke down the statistics on a per capita basis, the only metropolitan regions to edge the Big Apple were oil-production centers such as Beaumont, Tex. and Baton Rouge, La.
As a point of comparison, the American Lung Association estimates that second hand cigarette smoke causes 3,000 lung cancer deaths and 35,000 heart disease deaths each year. Local stats are unavailable, but a simple breakdown based on a New York City metropolitan population size of 20 million results in 2,500 local deaths due to second hand smoke.
Peter Iwanowicz, director of environmental health for the American Lung Association of New York and a local spokesperson for the Clean Air Task Force, says the report's primary purpose is to dramatize the lingering health hazards caused by a form of air pollution source most people tend to ignore.
"This is the first time an entity has put together a report that uses the EPA's own modeling database," says Iwanowicz. "I think while most people understand that diesel exhaust is bad for you, but what is most startling is how dramatically it points out the risk."
Also startling is the regional disparity. Iwanowicz credits California for imposing tougher pollution standards on the businesses that generate diesel exhaust. Aside from a few high profile settlements, New York in general and New York City in particular remain a place where many companies still get away with aging equipment and excessive idling, he says.
"What we're calling for is a more aggressive plan of action," Iwanowicz says, noting that the EPA's current plan to force transportation companies to employ cleaner-burning engines in new vehicles doesn't go into effect for another two years. The plan leaves it up to local governments to regulate the retrofitting of older, dirtier engines which the task force estimates could take up to 30 years to eliminate from the nation's roadways.
Allen Schaeffer, executive director of the Diesel Technology Forum, disputes that 30 year estimate, and notes that the study used to estimate exhaust particulate volume dates back to the mid-1990s and thus fails to take into account pollution-limiting technologies implemented over the last decade. At the same time, however, he supports the report's call for more aggressive enforcement of anti-idling laws and the establishment of funding programs to underwrite an industry-wide engine retrofitting program.
"We want people to do retrofitting," says Schaeffer. "We want them buying technology. This isn't your classic industry vs. environmental group story. I happen to think we can get a lot more done working together than communicating by press release."
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"THE GATES"
Is it "the first great public art event of the 21st century" (Michael Kimmelman's review in the New York Times) or something resembling a construction site or car wash (New York Daily News)? "An opportunity for self-examination and transcendence," (letter to the New York Times or a work of art "of joy and beauty that [has] no purpose whatsoever" (the artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude in the Gotham Gazette) ?
Whether it is art or a "colorful spectacle," as former Parks Commissioner Henry Stern described it in an essay posted on his New York Civic site, the Central Park installation, "The Gates," is a celebration of the park itself.
During the quarter-century since the artists first proposed "The Gates" (three mayors vetoed it), the park itself was beautifully restored. On February 13, when the fabric panels were unfurled on orange gates winding through the wintry landscape, the park was ready. As New York Times columnist Joyce Purnick wrote, "If there really is a time for everything, this is the time for 'The Gates.' Spend a moment in the park and it's apparent. The installation has transformed the park into a public party."
It has also been a bonanza for the city, which has a special web site for the event. People have come from all over the world to see Christo and Jeanne-Claude's latest work. Before the installation, the city predicted it would generate an estimated $80 million in business and $2.5 million in tax revenue.
As with previous Christo installations, the visitors become part of the experience of the work. In this way, the event is true to Olmsted's democratic vision of the park as a place where people of all social classes come to enjoy themselves, and reminds us how much the city needs such public spaces. The parks department estimated that one million people came to the park on the first four days, 450,000 on the first Sunday alone - far more than the typical crowd of 65,000 in February or even of 250,000 on a balmy spring Sunday. And that inevitably raises the question, if all these people can come to the park for "The Gates," why wouldn't the city allow half that number to gather last August to exercise their right of free speech, another long-cherished function of the city's public space? (It is true, though, that hardly a visitor to "The Gates" strayed onto the grass.)
The other essential part of the installation, of course, is Central Park itself. Walking through the corridors of gates under panels snapping like flags in the wind, or looking from an elevated vantage at the serpentine orange-lined paths, the viewer inevitably looks more closely at the artistry and natural beauty of the park. For two weeks, at least, all eyes are focused on the city's great work of landscape art and one of the most significant public spaces in the world.
VAN CORTLANDT PARK UPDATE
The city has begun clearing the site in Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx slated for the construction of a water filtration plant, even as several lawsuits to stop the plant are working their way through the courts.
After a decade-long fight over building the plant in the park, state and city elected officials approved the use of parkland for the facility last year in exchange for $240 million of additional funding for Bronx parks. The city is building the plant to fulfill a federal requirement to filter the 10 percent of the city's water that comes from the Croton watershed.
The plant is to be built underground beneath the current driving range of the Mosholu Golf Course in the park's southeast corner, along Jerome Avenue. The city has said it would replace the driving range and clubhouse on top of the completed facility, returning all but two acres to public use.
Neighborhood residents and park advocates bitterly fought the plant. They continue to maintain that an industrial facility, with chemicals trucked in and sludge trucked out, does not belong in public parkland next to a densely populated community and that there is a better site available in an industrial park on city-owned land in Eastview, in Westchester County. They cite increased traffic, dust, noise, and loss of the green space closest to residential areas during the six to eight years of construction, and doubt that the city will really allow the public back in that part of the park because of security concerns.
The city preferred the Bronx location because of engineering, security, and cost considerations and a desire to keep essential city infrastructure within its borders. Park officials and most Bronx politicians were in favor of using the park because of the unprecedented amount of funding promised for park projects in the borough. Labor unions vociferously supported putting the plant in the park to keep jobs in the city, although there is no written requirement that a percentage of the jobs go to Bronx or city residents.
Monitoring the Construction
Now that site preparation has started, neighborhood groups remain deeply distrustful that the city agency in charge of the project, the city Department of Environmental Protection, will make sure its contractors provide the full mitigation and protections promised in the environmental impact statement. They already have concerns that construction work, including cutting down 40 huge old oak trees and pounding pilings into bedrock, has begun ahead of schedule and before noise barriers, dust control, wetland protections, and traffic controls have been put in place.
City Department of Environmental Protection Spokesman Charles Sturcken said that the work so far was just to provide a staging area for the roadwork. Susan Amron, deputy chief of the environmental law division of the city law department, said that work on the fence and the sound barrier was stopped by a temporary restraining order that was in effect (though was lifted on February 4) because of the litigation. "The fact that it hasn't happened yet doesn't mean it is not going to happen in the first phase," she said.
Residents are also concerned that the required facility monitoring committee has not yet been set up, so the community has no idea of what aspects of the construction are being monitored - for example, truck emissions - or how it is being done. Sturcken said that the agency has contacted the affected community boards and is in the process of organizing the committee, which must meet at least four times a year. Community members are also unhappy that the office set up near the construction site to provide information and take complaints is open only during working hours, and that people must visit in person to make inquiries. They would also like to see a list of complaints posted on the agency's web site, along with their resolution. Sturcken said that the office "will be more community friendly once the project gets going." He said that people could phone in complaints to 311 and call the agency's public affairs office if they need more information.
The community groups also feel that the agency must do something to reduce the impact of dust and truck exhaust on people living near the site. "The city is spending $240 million on parks, but spending nothing on people who live across the street from the site for air conditioners so they don't have to open their windows in the summertime," said Lyn Pyle, a member of the environmental justice committee of the COVE, a local after-school and teen program.
The Legal Battle
In a final attempt to block the plant, four different lawsuits have been filed.
--Bronx Environmental Health and Justice, a community group, charges that the city's decision to put the facility in the park instead of Eastview has a disparate impact on low-income, minority populations. The agency's final environmental impact statement determined that, with the mitigation measures it detailed, there would be no adverse impact.
The group maintains that construction at Van Cortlandt, which requires digging a 9-acre, 80-foot-deep hole and removing 162,000 truckloads of rock and dirt, would create far more pollution than an aboveground building at Eastview and would affect a minority population 10 times larger than in the area around the industrial site in Westchester. There are 3,000 residents within the affected area at Eastview, compared with 26,000 residents, most of them minorities, within a half-mile radius of the park. "The Environmental Impact Statement says that particulate matter will increase by a factor of four at Van Cortlandt Park," said Ed Lloyd, law professor at Columbia Law School's Environmental Law Clinic, which is providing legal representation for the group. "The city admits there will be an increase in asthma death rates because of that. There are enormous health effects at Van Cortlandt that don't exist at Eastview."
Lloyd said, "There's an alternative site for this plant that we think is environmentally, economically, and from an environmental justice perspective, the more appropriate site where this should go. The city decision is not supported by the factual analysis that they themselves put in the Environmental Impacts Statement."
-- Friends of Van Cortlandt Park is suing the city on the grounds that it did not properly rezone the parkland for industrial use through the city's public land review process (ULURP). The city maintained that it did not have to conduct the review process because it did so in 1999 when it attempted to site the plant without state legislative approval, but last year, after the impact statement was released, it issued a "Mayoral Override Memo" of the zoning. The Friends lawsuit was dismissed by the lower court, but the group is considering an appeal.
-- A lawsuit by the Croton Watershed Clean Water Coalition charges that the city did not consider an alternate technology called microfiltration, which uses a membrane with tiny pores. A facility employing this technology, they say, would be smaller, less expensive to build and operate, require fewer chemicals, and produce no sludge. The city, however, said that using the still developing membrane technology would be riskier and also more expensive because additional treatment would be needed to eliminate color, odor, and minerals found in the Croton water. The Croton coalition is now in the process of filing an appeal after its suit was dismissed by the lower court.
--The Town of Eastchester has also sued. It alleges that the environmental impact statement did not take what is called a "hard look" at the impacts on the town, where a small pumping station near schools and residences would have to be significantly expanded if the plant is built in Van Cortlandt Park.
For More Information
Department of Environmental Protection Croton Filtration Plan
Website of community opponents to the filtration plant
Past articles in Gotham Gazette about the filtration plant
February 2, 2005 Community Gazette: Work Stopped at Filtration Plant
August 2004 $243 Million for Bronx Parkland? Who Will Decide?
July 2004 The Filtration Plant in Van Cortlandt Park
Anne Schwartz is a freelance writer specializing in environmental issues. Previously, she was the editor of the Audubon Activist, a news journal for environmental action published by the National Audubon Society, and an editor at The New York Botanical Garden.
Though he campaigned vigorously for the national Republican ticket, New York Governor George Pataki now seems bent on distancing himself from a White House that is often seen as anti-environment.
The governor's proposed budget boosts the state's Environmental Protection Fund by 20 percent, to $150 million. Pataki is also looking to offer expanded tax credits for "green buildings" to foster cleaner, more efficient energy usage here in the city. The governor's office plans as well to expand by 70 the number of state staffers at the Department of Environmental Conservation, shoring up an overwhelmed Superfund/Brownfields program in the process. To underwrite the additional salary costs, the governor is proposing that developers who seek to build in or near protected wetlands pay an additional permit-processing fee.
For the Environmental Advocates of New York, a watchdog group whose July, 2004 report, "Endangered Agency," decried the Department of Environmental Conservation's prolonged record of staffing cuts, it was a welcome turnaround. Robert Moore, the group's executive director, says he and his colleagues had met repeatedly with the governor's office, suggesting the wetlands fee as a way to finance the department’s expansion without a statewide tax.
"Before, we were basically subsidizing the destruction of wetlands," says Moore. "Developers were getting permits free of charge regardless of how much [Department of Environmental Conservation] staff time went into evaluating those permits."
The governor's budget comes on the heels of major state announcements in the way of renewable energy and emissions. In September the New York State Public Service Commission set a 24 percent renewable portfolio standard, meaning that at least 24 percent of the state's energy demand must be supplied via renewable energy sources by 2013. On January 11, the governor and Attorney General Eliot Spitzer teamed together to announce a trio of legal settlements which stand to reduce dramatically the amount of airborne pollution entering New York state while at the same time forcing polluters to pay for the clean up of dirty power plants at a time when the federal government has adopted a more lax approach to power plant regulation.
Add it all up, says Moore, and you get a pretty clear picture of a politician willing to alienate a few pro-business conservatives at home in exchange for a few green-voting Republicans outside the state..
"You have two Republican governors who have really broken with the [Bush] administration on the environment," Moore says. "Both have done very proactive things, especially when it comes to energy. Both are looking for ways to stand out."
In journalism the reflex move when faced with a giant story is to look for the local angle. In the case of the recent tsunami coverage, most New York journalism has focused on local relief efforts and the immigrant communities affected by the disaster. A few, however, have gone for the more visceral approach, speculating on what it would take to trigger a similar event here on the east coast.
The New York Post documented the "mega-tsunami" phenomenon that has some scientists concerned about the U.S. east coast. At first glance, this seems like a typical case of the Post grabbing at the most sensational storyline it can find. Upon further examination, however, "mega-tsunamis" are a legitimate phenomenon that, while unlikely in the near future, offer a useful reminder that New York City's proximity to the ocean can be both a blessing and curse.
In 1958, an earthquake-triggered landslide in Alaska's narrow Lituya Bay generated a tsunami wave more than 1,500 feet high. Survivor accounts likened it to an underwater atomic bomb test and ever since, scientists have been forced to raise the upper limit of worst-case tsunami scenarios. As documented in a 2000, BBC special geologists have since discovered credible signs of similar mammoth displacement waves hitting Hawaii and portions of the Bahamas.
That last discovery is what proves so unsettling from a New York perspective. According to BBC report, volcanologists at the Benfield Greig Hazard Research Centre in London see the Canary Islands as the potential source of a major wave train that battered the Bahamas roughly 100,000 years ago. In an effort to determine how long until the next catastrophic event, they have turned their attention to Cumbre Vieja, a volcano on the island of La Palma. Cumbre Vieja last erupted in 1949, an event that, while benign, managed to speed the separation of the mountain's eastern and western halves. Volcanologists estimate that the western half slipped four feet during the eruption and is set to tumble off into the Atlantic Ocean anywhere between now and the next 100,000 years. Computerized modeling of the wave generated by a complete breakaway of the western half of Cumbre Vieja showed an initial wave height of 650 meters moving quickly across the Atlantic. How large that wave would be once it got to America is hard to say -- as is the number of eruptions it would take to cause such an event.
"We simply don't know," says Benfield Greig volcanologist Bill McGuire in the BBC special. "But put it this way: If I was living in Miami or New York and I heard that the Cumbre Vieja was erupting, I'd be keeping a very close eye on the news."
Pondering such worst case scenarios is grim stuff. Even grimmer, however, is the realization that New York City has neither the infrastructure nor cultural memory to deal with even a moderate-level natural disaster requiring a speedy evacuation of coastlines. As noted a few months back, New York has experienced flooding and fast-rising ocean levels in the past. It also looks to be losing a few millimeters to the sea each decade. While our city has done much to guard against terrorist risk, we have done very little to safeguard ourselves against hurricanes, floods and other environmental events that might demand coordinated evacuation and recovery.
Recently, delegates from 50 nations gathered in Kobe, Japan for the United Nations World Conference on Disaster Reduction to discuss this very problem. Using the South Asian tsunami as a backdrop, the conference quickly focused in on the unmeasured disaster risk presented by "megacities" -- metropolitan regions with populations in the ten million-plus range. Factoring in population size, property values, and overall disaster history, the German insurance giant Munich Re recently gave New York City a risk index ranking higher than 43 out of the world's 50 largest cities. The only cities to rank higher were cities with a history either of recurring earthquakes, such as Tokyo, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Osaka, or of hurricanes, such as Miami.
"Perhaps the most frightening prospect would be to have a truly megadisaster in a megacity," said UN Director of Disaster Relief Jan Egelund, a conference attendee. "Then we could have not only a tsunami-style casualty rate as we have seen late last year, but we could see one hundred times that in a worst case."
Egelund focused most of his concern on fast-growing Third World cities, but the notion that natural disasters have become a global issue, not just a local one, is the resonating message coming out of December's catastrophe in South Asia.
Take a deep breath in New York City, and chances are you are filling your lungs with particles of pollution from the tailpipe of a diesel truck.
Tailpipe pollution is the biggest local threat to the city’s air quality – over 80 percent of the cancer risk from air pollution in New York City comes from a transportation-related source. Diesel exhaust is especially dangerous, spewing a toxic stew of more than 40 cancer-causing compounds into the air. New Yorkers suffer from some of the highest asthma rates in the country (up to 25 percent of school age children in some neighborhoods in Harlem have been diagnosed with asthma), and diesel pollution is a well-known asthma trigger.
New York is not alone in struggling with this challenge. Across the country, about 170 million Americans – half the U.S. population – live in places that fail to meet the federal Environmental Protection Agency's basic healthy air standards for smog and soot.
The good news is that cost-effective solutions exist that can cut sources of air pollution substantially. New York has already begun to adopt some of those solutions, but there is a great deal more that government agencies, business leaders and even citizens can do.
There are three basic ways that New York City can cut pollution from the many truck and other diesel engines that flood the city with bad air.
Diesel engines live long lives. Some, like those used in construction and commercial marine vessels are used for decades and emit more soot pollution than cars and trucks combined. School buses present a special challenge, with kids inside exposed to unusually high levels of soot pollution.
But pollution from these old engines can be substantially cut in two ways -- the installation of new parts, such as filters, which are called retrofits; and the use of the cleanest grade of diesel fuel.
Right now, the cleanest grade of diesel (ultra-low sulfur diesel, with a sulfur content of 15 parts per million, or ppm, compared to regular diesel with a sulfur content of 500 to 3000 parts per million), is available in the New York market ahead of much of the rest of the country. Tailpipe retrofits, the best of which require use of the cleanest fuel, can cost only a few thousand dollars -- a small fraction of the cost of a large construction vehicle.
New York has begun to take steps to adopt these technologies. Last year, New York City became the first major city in the U.S. to enact legislation (in pdf format) requiring all companies that receive city contracts for public construction projects to use ultra-low sulfur diesel fuel and "best available" retrofits. The city can use its purchasing power to help bring these technologies to this market at the best price.
There is legislation before the city council now that would expand this commitment to all city fleets, from sanitation trucks to school buses. If enacted, that legislation would make New York a national leader in cutting diesel pollution. Every major construction site and every diesel fleet in the public and private sectors should make the same commitment.
The Environmental Protection Agency has set standards that will require new diesel engines to be much cleaner. Yet, many diesel engines stay in use for decades and won't be replaced by vehicles with cleaner engines for many years. The EPA estimates that the full health benefits of its new standards will not be fully realized until the year 2030. A child born today might not be breathing the cleaner air until after she finishes graduate school.
Another council bill would, if enacted and signed by the mayor, commit New York public fleets to buy the cleanest possible vehicle available for its intended use. That means speeding the transition to the most fuel-efficient vehicles available, including hybrids and alternative fuels like compressed natural gas or, over time, hydrogen.
Private fleets can make a big difference too. Last year, FedEx introduced into New York City a new generation of hybrid delivery trucks, developed in partnership with Environmental Defense (the national non-profit environmental organization where I am New York regional director). The ten trucks travel 57 percent farther on a gallon of fuel and emit 96 percent less soot than a regular FedEx delivery truck. We believe that every fleet can begin now to take advantage of cleaner vehicle technologies.
Clean technologies are great, but they are not always enough. The number of trucks on our streets is growing dramatically. In fact, the transportation sector is the fastest-growing source of greenhouse gases in New York, and the miles these trucks travel are projected to increase substantially over time. Every year, for example, the trucks that pick up our garbage travel about eight million miles a year (300 times around the earth!) on Manhattan streets alone.
A recent report entitled Investing In Mobility (in pdf format) shows how, by shifting the majority of waste transport to barge and rail, truck traffic can be cut in half. The mayor’s new solid waste policy takes important steps in this direction. But for waterfront neighborhoods to accept the necessary infrastructure to transfer garbage onto barges, basic ideas about how to design municipal facilities must change. Attractive facilities can be built that eliminate queuing, get trucks off city streets and cut diesel pollution.
It is time also to look creatively at using incentives to cut traffic in our neighborhoods. London adopted a remarkable congestion-pricing plan that has cut traffic congestion in its downtown core by about 30 percent. Hudson River crossings in New York City have shaved peak travel volumes by about seven percent with a modest congestion pricing plan. San Diego is using pricing to help pay for new forms of transit, like bus rapid transit, that are flexible and cost-effective. These incentives work just like off-peak phone discounts – travel is cheaper at off-peak times. New technologies make it possible to introduce these pricing incentives here without tollbooths and in ways that are suited to local business needs.
In short, New York City needs a comprehensive plan to attack pollution from tailpipes. Both the public and private sectors can help expand the market for the cleanest possible technologies. Infrastructure can be built to minimize dependence on trucks and maximize incentives to make clean transport choices. By making these choices, the city can meet minimal clean air standards and allow New Yorkers to breathe easy.
Andy Darrell is the New York regional director of Environmental Defense