Just an inch of rain fell last month. The stock market tanked. Tax revenues are down and the budget is reeling. Power outages threaten. People can't bear to throw out their formerly recyclable glass and plastic.

At least there are still the parks.

For New Yorkers enduring the summer in the city -- by choice or not -- the parks are truly essential. They are both refuge and entertainment. Of course, the parks have had their share of bad news, too, with six percent less funding next year for maintenance and programs, and warnings of an additional reduction of 7.5 percent. This further shrinks a budget that was never restored from the last fiscal downturn. More funding cuts could deprive us of safe, clean and green parks just when we need them the most.

But for now, the parks still offer dozens of ways to escape the city's oppressive heat, noise, and smells without venturing on the Long Island Expressway. They also provide some of the best summer fun in town -- mostly for free. Here is just a sample of some of the things you can do in the dog days and nights of August.

Go fishing in the Harlem Meer, the lake at the northeast end of Central Park. Bamboo poles are available at the nearby Dana Discovery Center. (Fishing is also permitted at several other water bodies in the park.) Or take a history, design or ecology tour of the park run by the Central Park Conservancy.

Bring your little ones to a Forest Fairytales storytelling hour at High Rock Park in Staten Island on four days in August (718-667-7475). The City Parks Foundation also sponsors the Summer Fun recreation program for children at a number of parks and playgrounds (212-360-8290 for locations), as well as free tennis classes for kids.

You can almost imagine yourself in the country when you walk through the newly restored ravine in Brooklyn's Prospect Park. The ravine is open from 1 to 5 p.m. on weekends, with guided tours at 3 p.m. And at the park's new Audubon Center you can learn to bird watch on weekend mornings, or glide through the park's waterways in a canopied electric boat.

Learn about the outdoors -- even at night -- at one of the city's ten nature centers, run by the Urban Park Rangers. You don't have to leave the five boroughs to go hiking, birding, canoeing, or stargazing.

For serious cooling, there are the city's 14 beaches and 53 outdoor pools -- all free (for now, at least). Some pools have early morning and evening lap hours for adults.

Too hot to cook dinner? Can't bear returning to your stifling apartment after a day at work? Bring a blanket, invite some friends, and have a picnic in the park.

Stay for the entertainment. Something is going on at a park almost every night of the week. Movies are screened on Mondays in Bryant Park in Manhattan. Wednesdays at Union Square until August 21, there are readings from children's books from 5 to 6, and dance performances from 6 to 7. Learn ballroom dancing outdoors on Thursdays from 6 to 6:45 at the plaza of the Dana Nature Discovery Center in Central Park, and then dance to live music from 7 to 8:30. Or go to RockNRollerblade, a roller disco party with free skate rentals, a disc jockey, and roller dance performances, from 6:30 to 9:30 at a different park each Thursday in August. Jazzmobile's summer concert series brings jazz performers to Marcus Garvey Park in Harlem from 6 to 9 p.m. on Fridays. Bring a blanket and picnic and listen to music Sundays at 4 to 6 at the Harlem Meer Performance Festival in Central Park. And on several nights of the week at Forest Park in Queens, there is theater, dance, or music.

For more information on park events and facilities, check the web sites of: the Parks department, Central Park Conservancy, Bryant Park, the Staten Island Greenbelt Conservancy, and Prospect Park Alliance.

There are also events at the Hudson River Park and the various locations of Gateway National Recreation Area.

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.

New York City has the largest municipal park system in the country -- some 28,000 acres, including parks and playgrounds, as well as tennis courts, ballfields, beaches, pools, recreation centers, and natural areas. A city agency, the Department of Parks and Recreation, runs this green realm. The department even has jurisdiction over the stadiums and the botanical gardens, although it doesn't operate them. It would seem that the state has little to do with parks in the city.

But every borough has at least one state park or preserve, and the state has been adding to its city holdings in recent years. City funding for parks has shrunk over the last few decades; New York City spends just half a percent of its budget on parks, less per capita than most major cities in the country. At the same time, the state has taken on an increasingly important role in protecting natural areas and creating new parkland in the city. So how much money the state spends on open space and parks -- and where it chooses to spend it -- has a significant impact on the green space and recreation available to city residents.

Money for state purchases of open space, both for the city and upstate, has come mostly from two sources. The 1996 Clean Water/Clean Air Bond Act included about $150 million for open space and parks. That money has all been spent. The other source is the Environmental Protection Fund, a dedicated trust set up in 1993 that receives revenue from the state real estate transfer tax and is supposed to be spent only on environmental projects, including land acquisition and parks. The state has been appropriating about $125 million from the fund every year.

The New York City Environmental Justice Alliance analyzed how Bond Act and Environmental Protection Fund money was spent from 1996 to 2000 for all environmental programs, including open space. New York City received 23 percent of the funds available, even though the city has 40 percent of the state's population and contributes 44 percent of the revenue statewide from the real estate transfer tax.

ON-THE-GROUND RESULTS

Although the city receives a disproportionately small share of the state's open space money, state funding has been crucial in protecting some of the few remaining natural areas in the city as well as in acquiring land and creating parks along the waterfront. In some cases, the acquisitions have been added to the state's park system, operated by the Department of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation, or become nature preserves under the aegis of the Department of Environmental Conservation. The ambitious new Hudson River and Brooklyn Bridge parks are being built by a trust or development corporation run jointly by the state and city. The city has also benefited from a smaller matching grants program in which nonprofits or municipalities apply for grants for land acquisition, park improvement and renovation, wetlands restoration and other park-related projects.

The lion's share of state money for New York City parks has gone to the two large waterfront parks now being developed. The state has committed half of the $300 million cost of building the Hudson River Park, with annual appropriations of around $15 million to $20 million. Governor Pataki and Mayor Michael Bloomberg recently signed a memorandum of understanding in which the state pledged $85 million and the city $65 million toward the creation of the Brooklyn Bridge Park. To avoid burdening the state and city with future maintenance costs, both parks include commercial developments -- 30 percent in the Hudson River Park, no more than 20 percent in the Brooklyn Bridge Park -- that are expected to cover their upkeep.

The state has also made smaller but significant land purchases. In late 1999, the state began the process of buying scenic Mount Loretto on Staten Island from the Archdiocese of New York for $25 million. One of the last remaining natural areas in the city, with woods, meadows, wetlands, and shore, it is now a state nature preserve. In August 2000, the state announced the purchase of two city blocks at the former Eastern District Terminal along the waterfront in Williamsburg. The land is to become a state park in a community that has had very little access to the water or open space. The purchase agreement (which, like Mt. Loretto and other acquisitions, was brokered by the Trust for Public Land), involves a partnership with New York University. The school is to develop and maintain athletic fields and a waterfront esplanade. The fields will be available to the community when not in use by the university. This July, the state acquired a tiny but key piece of land within Soundview Park along the Bronx River, where efforts are under way to create a greenway corridor.

SHORTCHANGING THE INNER CITY

State funding over the last decade will soon make a dramatic improvement in the lives of city residents who live near the new waterfront projects. But it has had far less impact on low-income minority neighborhoods -- the areas with the lowest ratios of open space per resident.

The state Open Space Plan, which guides the state's land purchases, has been criticized for neglecting the needs of urban areas. In the plan's most recent revision, urban open space advocates have made headway in increasing the priority of under-served areas, but the recommendations have yet to be realized.

There are several reasons for insufficient funding of New York City's open space needs. According to Dave Lutz, director of the Neighborhood Open Space Coalition, a New York city non-profit, there is a consensus in Albany, in cluding among New York City lawmakers, for protecting natural areas in the Adirondacks and the wilder areas of the state. But there is no such agreement about the importance of making green space available to city residents. "The upstate people need to begin to understand the needs of the people who live in New York City," said Lutz.

Another reason, according to John Stouffer, legislative director of the Atlantic chapter of the Sierra Club, is that the pot of money for all of the state's needs is too small. "In New York we are misers when it comes to spending on open space protection and parks," he said. Stouffer noted that New York state ranks dead last of all 50 states in total environmental spending, as a percentage of the state budget and per capita, according to U.S. Census data analyzed by the Institute for Southern Studies. New Jersey, a state roughly one-seventh the size of New York with less than half its population, provided $115 million this year for open space programs, including urban parks. New York plans to spend about $40 million.

Many environmental groups credit Governor Pataki with putting a priority on open space acquisition, and hundreds of thousands of acres have been protected during his years in office. Yet he has been very conservative fiscally, and has not always matched his rhetoric with funding.

Last year, the governor refused to approve the annual appropriation from the Environmental Protection Fund (even though there was plenty of money in the fund) because of a disagreement with the legislature about how to spend that money. In this year's budget (2002-2003), the governor and legislature agreed to appropriate $125 million per year for two years (which is less than the $135 million appropriated in 2000 and the $150 million originally proposed for last year). But Governor Pataki also orchestrated an agreement to "lend" $235 million that had accumulated in the environmental fund to the general fund to help balance the state's budget. That leaves the environmental fund with just over $100 million in cash to cover this year's $250 million in appropriations. Lawmakers acted on the assumption that the money would come in by the time the state needed it and promised to repay the "loan" if the fund ran short. However, there are no guarantees or deadline for repayment.

It is not at all clear how New York City will meet the needs of its under-served neighborhoods for open space and recreation, or even the cost of maintaining its existing parks equitably in all parts of the city. The state and the city are facing enormous revenue shortfalls. Creative legislative solutions on the state level are unlikely given the dysfunctional system in Albany.

A number of people involved in park and environmental issues have expressed the view that -- given he low priority of parks in the city budget and the limit on money available from the state -- funding will have to come from some sort of new city tax. The new tax would be dedicated solely to the purchase and upkeep of parks.

All over the country, voters have been approving such proposals, including sales and property tax surcharges. According to Christopher Wells, director of the conservation finance program for the Trust for Public Land's Mid-Atlantic region, 90 percent of such ballot proposals have passed. A number of New York State counties and several municipalities have dedicated property tax surcharges to parks or raised money specifically for parks through bond issues. Here again, however, Albany has a role. If New York City were to propose a tax dedicated to the support of parks, the state would have to approve it.

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.

They are the Hamptons for New Yorkers without a summer house. On sweltering days, hundreds of thousands of people find cool, watery relief at the city's public beaches and pools, from Orchard Beach in the Bronx to Brooklyn's Sunset Pool.

But with 14 miles of beaches and 53 outdoor pools, many of which have been renovated in recent years, there are not enough aquatic facilities in the city to meet the demand. New York City has the lowest number of public pools per capita of the 25 major U.S. cities surveyed in Inside City Parks, a study published in 2000 by urban parks consultant Peter Harnik. New York City has .7 pools (including its playground mini-pools) per 100,000 residents, compared with Chicago's 3.3 and Boston's 5.7. Many New York City neighborhoods lack a swimming spot, and people don't tend to visit pools outside their neighborhood - although pools are generally located in the poorer neighborhoods where they are most needed. During peak times, people often wait more than an hour to gain admittance, and even though the parks department limits the number of bathers at any one time, the water can be as packed as the sidewalks of midtown. A shortage of lifeguards sometimes forces the parks department to close sections of the larger pools, resulting in more crowded water -- and lots of complaints.

The city's first public pools were floating baths -- decks around a pool with a slatted bottom -- placed in the Harlem and Hudson Rivers between 1870 and 1910. These and indoor public bathhouses were built as an antidote to the unsanitary conditions in the tenements. In 1910, the Health Department closed down the floating baths because the rivers were too polluted. Five were retrofitted to hold fresh water and operated until 1935, when Robert Moses began building pools on land with funding from the federal Works Progress Administration. Moses opened 11 enormous and beautifully ornamented pools in the summer of 1936, setting the standard for public pools in the city. Ten of these are still in use today, including Astoria Pool, where Olympic trials were conducted in 1936 and 1964. Most of the existing city pools were built from the 1930s through the 1960s.

Today New York City has 33 large outdoor pools (10 Olympic-sized), some paired with wading pools, as well as 20 mini pools in neighborhood playgrounds. During the nine-week summer season, the city's public outdoor pools are used intensively. Last year, they logged 1.1 million visits, slightly fewer than previous years because it was a cool summer.

Swimming pools are expensive to build, maintain, and operate. Budgetary restraints have worked against increasing the number of pools in New York City.

Cities with more extensive aquatic facilities spend far more money per capita on parks and recreation than New York City, according to the information compiled in Inside City Parks. Chicago, with a dedicated source of park revenue, spends $108 per resident on parks compared to the $41 spent in New York City. It has more than 100 indoor and outdoor pools as well as 24 miles of lakefront beaches for a population of 2.7 million, less than half that of New York. Cincinnati, a city of just 350,000 people, has 47 pools. Cincinnati's recreation commission spends $83 per resident; it has a separate Park Board that spends $41 per resident.

WHERE HAVE ALL THE LIFEGUARDS GONE?

There is a shortage of lifeguards all over the country, which has been attributed to various factors, including fewer qualified swimmers and the preference of high school and college students for summer jobs in the fields where they hope to work. In spite of an aggressive recruiting campaign, including visiting every public school and recruiting lifeguards from overseas, the parks department has not yet met its goal of hiring 1200 lifeguards. Over the past five years the department has been able to hire only 950 lifeguards, on average, each year, according to Liam Kavanagh, deputy commissioner for operations. In New York City, a decline in swimming programs in public schools -- both swim instruction and competitive swim teams -- has reduced the number of teens with the superior aquatic and lifesaving skills needed to pass the rigorous lifeguard test.

In recent years, the parks department has offered free swim instruction in the public pools. "We are trying to develop the next generation of swimmers," Kavanagh said. Last year, upwards of 6,000 children participated in the summer "Learn to Swim" program, and 2,000 children took classes during the school year at the recreation center indoor pools. Three years ago, the department also began organizing competitive swim teams for kids ages 6 to 18. There are 12 swim teams in the five boroughs. Kavanagh said that the department would be meeting soon with the Board of Education to try to partner with the public schools in training swimmers who could eventually become lifeguards.

Providing extensive swim instruction and working with the schools has proved successful in Chicago, which has not had a problem staffing its pools, according to Chicago Parks District spokesperson Angelynne Amores. Last year, the district started a paid sports internship program in the high schools, in which students learn to lifeguard as well as to work in other sports. More than 50 graduates of the program became lifeguards. The Park District also finds lifeguards by working closely with the police and fire departments and marine units, says Amores, offering spots to "seasoned lifeguards" -- older, experienced lifeguards whose regular jobs have flexible hours.

POOLS FOR THE FUTURE

New York City would benefit tremendously if swimming facilities were available in all of its neighborhoods. Even for those who can afford a membership in a "Y" or a private health club, swimming is not an easy sport to pursue in this city. Lap lanes are crowded, and parents wait for hours to sign their children up for limited swim classes. But for recreation and exercise -- especially in the summer -- swimming is many peoples' sport of choice.

It is unlikely that there will be a major new initiative to build swimming pools any time soon. One project in the works is an Olympic-sized indoor pool in Flushing Meadows-Corona Park. In Greenpoint, the community seems to have reached a consensus on how to renovate McCarren Park pool, which has been closed for 18 years in part because of lack of agreement about how to restore it. This plan could well be postponed because of the city's financial problems, but Commissioner Kavanagh said, "It remains one of our top priorities." If the city is chosen to host the 2012 Olympics -- a long shot, at best -- the plan calls for tearing down Astoria Pool and building three new pools in a more accessible part of the park. After the Olympics, the new pool is envisioned as a "premier aquatic center" for the city within a traditional landscaped park space.

Another idea that sounds far-fetched but may turn out to be a cost-effective way to increase swimming options for New Yorkers is an effort to revive the concept of floating pools. Ann Buttenwieser, an urban planner and author of a history of New York City's waterfront, has been pursuing this goal for more than 20 years, with support from the Municipal Art Society and the Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance. The Neptune Foundation, which Buttenwieser established to build floating pools, now has architectural and engineering plans for a prototype pool on a barge, has raised the $2 million needed to build it, and is negotiating to locate it off the Hoboken, New Jersey, waterfront.

According to the project's architect, Jonathan Kirschenfeld, the floating pool would be 81 by 50 feet and have all amenities -- locker room, showers, bathrooms, a terrace where parents can sit and watch their kids (and enjoy the waterfront views) -- as well as self-contained electrical, waste treatment and water systems. It could move from community to community, or arrive seasonally and depart when it is not in use. Kent Bartwick, president of the Municipal Art Society, says, "Our belief is that once one or two got going, other communities would want to do it."

And those who don't want to wait for floating pools -- and have the skills and stamina -- can brave the rivers and harbor, which are much cleaner than they used to be, except after a rainstorm when there are sewage overflows. The Manhattan Island Foundation sponsors marathon swims every summer. There are seven races this year, from a half-mile "Cove to Cove Swim" off Battery Park City to a 28.5-mile marathon around the island of Manhattan.

POOL AND BEACH INFORMATION

The outdoor pools open for the summer on June 29, with public swimming hours from 11-7 daily. (Beaches opened Memorial Day.) Many pools offer lap swim, hours for seniors, and swimming classes in the early morning or evening. Admission is free. There are also 10 indoor pools in city recreation centers, which are open year-round. For information, call the Aquatics Hotline at 718-699-4219.

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.

COMMUNITY GARDEN NEGOTIATIONS
Mayor Michael Bloomberg and New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer are in discussions to settle a lawsuit filed by the attorney general that has been blocking the city from developing community gardens on city-owned land. Mayor Bloomberg has made it a priority to settle the lawsuits left over from the Giuliani administration. The city's legal position may have been strengthened in April when a State Supreme Court judge ruled against a related lawsuit by the Green Guerillas, the garden advocacy organization. Observers expect that there will be a resolution soon.

About 400 community gardens could be affected. Many of them are in Harlem, the South Bronx, East New York, Bedford-Stuyvesant, and Brownsville, as well as other low-income, minority neighborhoods lacking green and recreational space.

The Giuliani administration was in the process of turning over the garden lots for both market-rate and subsidized housing. In 1999, just as the city was about to auction off 114 gardens, two non-profit organizations, the Trust for Public Land and the New York Restoration Project (Bette Midler's group), raised the money and bought them. Soon afterward, an injunction granted in a lawsuit filed by the Attorney General temporarily kept the bulldozers out of the remaining unprotected gardens. (Cabo Rojo Garden in the Bronx, which was recently destroyed, technically was not covered by the injunction.)

Lawyers for the mayor and attorney general will not comment on the discussions. It is expected that there will a compromise that saves some gardens while allowing others to be developed. An article on the web site of the Brooklyn Alliance of Neighborhood Gardens (BANG) reports that one proposal under discussion would involve designating a number of gardens for development and transferring the rest to a land trust.

Joseph Pupello, president of the New York Restoration Project, said, "Our goal is the preservation and stewardship of open space in communities that are severely under-served for green space. We're set up as a land trust, we're in it for the long haul, and we are open to taking land into the trust." A spokeswoman for the Trust for Public Land, Susan Clark, said that the trust would also like the opportunity to add more gardens to the land trust it is establishing to oversee the gardens it purchased in 1999.

Community garden advocates would like to see the settlement include the involvement of communities and the consideration of an area's open space and housing needs. "The way to work this out is to create some rational planning standards that would allow community gardens to make a case for their garden," said Steve Frillman, executive director of the Green Guerillas.

Civic and greening groups are working to quickly pass legislation in City Council to require a public process for determining the fate of a garden, hoping to encourage the mayor and attorney general to consider this approach in their negotiations. In the past, similar legislation has stalled in spite of wide grassroots support. The groups - New Yorkers for Parks, the Municipal Arts Society and the League of Conservation Voters - have been lining up support among council members. Mike Klein, deputy director of New Yorkers for Parks, believes there is a better chance of passing the legislation now because of the current "climate of seriousness on solving the problem."

AUDUBON IN THE PARK
An Audubon Center for environmental education opened in Prospect Park this spring, opening a window into nature for the six million people who visit the Brooklyn park each year.

For city kids (and adults as well), a park is one of the only places they can learn about nature first hand. New York City parks harbor a surprising abundance of wild animals and plants, and provide temporary stopovers for migratory birds. In Prospect Park, the wildlife population has increased since the park's interior woodland - Brooklyn's last forest - was restored. More than 200 different bird species were spotted in the park last year.

The Prospect Park Audubon Center, operating in the newly restored 1905 Beaux Arts-style Boathouse, is the first urban Audubon center in the country. It offers exhibits, hands-on indoor activities, bird watching and nature walks as well as programs for school classes developed with educators from nearby School District 17. The center also plans to enlist school groups and park visitors in gathering data for environmental research, like the upcoming July 4th butterfly count. The project is a joint effort of the non-profit Prospect Park Alliance, a public/private partnership that operates and raises funds for the park, and Audubon New York, the New York State branch of the National Audubon Society.

There are other opportunities in all five boroughs to learn about nature in the parks. The New York City Department of Parks and Recreation operates a dozen nature centers with weekend events and school programs run by the department's urban park rangers.

BRIDGE PARK PROMISE KEPT
When the realization sunk in that the World Trade Center attack also was a huge hit to the city and state budgets, Brooklyn Bridge Park proponents feared that promised funding for an ambitious new park along the downtown Brooklyn waterfront would vanish. But on May 2, Governor George Pataki and Mayor Michael Bloomberg held to their promises, signing a memorandum of understanding setting guidelines for creating and running the park and pledging $150 million for its construction. The agreement signaled a new era of city-state cooperation and gave the green light to a project that Brooklyn residents have been working toward for 15 years.

In the memorandum, the governor and mayor agreed that the master plan created through a public planning process by the Downtown Brooklyn Waterfront Local Development Corporation would guide the park's development. They specified that 80 percent of the land would be protected "in perpetuity" as parkland, and that the city and state-owned section of the park will be "developed and operated as a unified and seamless park." A subsidiary of the Empire State Development Corporation was set up to oversee the process. In addition to committing $85 million in state funds and $65 million in city funds, the state and city affirmed that revenues from any commercial activities in the park would be used for the maintenance and operation of the park.

The next step is to refine the plan and begin an environmental impact statement. But park advocates hope to expand interim uses of part of the site, including one of the piers. The Brooklyn Bridge Park Coalition sponsors a summer film festival in the Empire-Fulton Ferry State Park, which will become part of the larger park. The city plans to finish a playground and park this summer along the DUMBO waterfront at the foot of Main Street.

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.

Frustrated with the continued low level of public funding for parks in good times and bad, park advocates saw a rare opportunity last year to elect representatives who understood the importance of green space and recreation. The day they looked forward to was September 11, 2001; that was primary day in New York. A coalition called Parks 2001, made up of groups connected to sports, law enforcement, real estate, environmental and community gardens, persuaded most of the candidates, including Michael Bloomberg, to support its goals, including doubling the money allocated to the parks department to one percent of the city's budget.

These hopes were dashed after the destruction of the World Trade Center, and its devastating effect on the city's economy. The budget for parks was cut six percent, and Mayor Bloomberg has asked the parks department (and every other city agency) to shave an additional 7.5 percent from their expenses. There was also a reduction in the four-year capital budget for 2002-2005, which put on hold, perhaps indefinitely, a number of smaller park renovation projects that were already in the works.

Parks Department Commissioner Adrian Benepe testified at a City Council budg et hearing that his number one priority is maintaining safe and clean parks. But New York City's spending on parks and recreation was already among the lowest of 55 major cities in the country. This year's budget cuts and the anticipated fiscal problems over the next few years could reverse recent improvements, unless other ways to support the parks can be found.

This financial blow to the parks comes at a time when the parks are more important than ever to New Yorkers. The candlelight vigils and memorial concerts connected to the anniversary of September 11 are mostly happening -- where else? -- in a large park in each borough: Central Park, Van Cortlandt Park, Flushing Meadows Park, Prospect Park, and Snug Harbor.

The city's public green spaces, from Central Park to the neighborhood community garden, played an essential role in the aftermath of the terror attack on the World Trade Center. On those sunny late summer days, people instinctively sought out natural environments in which to ponder the unfathomable loss. New Yorkers also rediscovered the social function of parks, where strangers can talk to one another, neighbors meet, and community is forged. Along the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, in Union Square, and in parks and gardens throughout the city, people left improvised shrines of flowers, flags, candles, photos, and poems. Undoubtedly, this September 11 people will again find their way to the parks.

Gardens, trees, and parks have also been the focus of efforts to remember those who were killed. Last spring, swaths of daffodils bloomed as symbols of remembrance and renewal alongside schools, libraries, firehouses, and highways and in parks. Lynden Miller, co-chair of New Yorkers for Parks, and Adrian Benepe, then Manhattan parks commissioner, came up with the idea for the daffodil planting independently of each other. Hans van Waardenburg of B&K Bulbs in Holland, the city of Rotterdam, and others donated bulbs. The Parks department and a number of park groups worked together to organize ten thousand volunteers to plant the bulbs, which will spread and bloom year after year.

To individuals and communities throughout the metropolitan area, planting trees and flowers has seemed the most fitting memorial. Even small acts of creation - a tree here, a hillside of flowers there -- breathe life into a city that has suffered a terrible loss. Some are at sites where people witnessed the fall of the towers, like a grove planned for a park in Hoboken a mile from Ground Zero. Others are to memorialize members of the community who died.

The Living Memorial Project of the U.S. Forest Service is cataloging these memorials. It now posts 40 projects descriptions on its website and expects to have 100 by the end of the fall.

Sites For Beginners:

• Neighborhood Open Space Coalition's Treebranch Network -- Among the areas covered by this longtime advocate for New York City open space are greenways, community gardens, parks, the waterfront, and Gateway National Park. Subscribe here free to the electronic version of Urban Outdoors Bulletin, an excellent source of news about parks and related issues.
• NYC Department of Parks and Recreation -- It's easy to look up any park location, facility, program, or event at this site. You can also take a "virtual tour" (actually, more words than pictures) of several important parks in each borough, or design your own park by playing the NYC planner game. The "Daily Plant," circulated within the department, offers an inside look at park programs and events. Various park permits and applications, including a request for a street tree, can be printed and submitted through the site.
• OASIS -- An interactive site that lets you view NYC land use maps or aerial photos by borough, neighborhood, community board, or zip code, then zoom in on details like parks, community gardens, or vacant lots and obtain zoning and ownership information. There are some inaccuracies, but users can help update the information.
• Partnership for Parks -- A joint initiative of the City Parks Foundation and the NYC parks department. Under "What We Do," there is information about the Bronx River and other projects, citywide volunteer events, small grants programs, and many other efforts that help communities support and build constituencies for their parks.
• Trust for Public Land -- This national open space group has increased its focus on urban areas in recent years. It has helped save community gardens and negotiated the purchase of several new state parks in the city recently. The site provides frequently updated information on the trust's projects and open space issues nationwide. Look under "Research Room" for urban land conservation and federal and state funding.
• Urban Parks online -- An electronic toolbox for people working on city parks issues, from the Urban Parks Institute (part of the Project for Public Spaces, a NYC non-profit that aims to build community life through public spaces). The site brings together ideas from all over for creating, funding, and maintaining urban parks, and highlights park places and park news from around the country.

Other Recommendations:

• Americans for Our Heritage and Recreation -- AHR is dedicated to strengthening the federal Land and Water Conservation Fund, an important source of funding for urban parks and recreation. The site also has links to the House and Senate web sites, and a listing of all the projects, by state and by county, that have received money from the fund.
• Brooklyn Alliance of Neighborhood Gardens -- Information on community garden issues, but not recently updated.
• Brooklyn Botanic Garden -- Visiting this site is the next best thing to visiting the garden: Exhaustive but well organized, it offers virtual tours and everything you would ever want to know about the garden, as well as gardening information and access to the resource center and library.
• Brooklyn Bridge Park Development Corporation -- The organization that is creating the Brooklyn Bridge Park posts the park's master plan, as well as an overview of the planning process and a trove of background material.
• Brooklyn Bridge Park Coalition -- More information from a coalition of community groups that is working to create a Brooklyn waterfront park. The list of links is an excellent resource.
• Car-Free Central Park Campaign -- This site for a campaign by the pedestrian and bicyclist advocate Transportation Alternatives lays out arguments for banning cars from Central Park's loop drive and provides the latest news on the issue.
• Central Park Conservancy -- The official web site of Central Park, with news, events, tours, programs, and more.
• Green Guerillas -- An organizer of grassroots activism to protect community gardens, this group also offers generous hands-on help: plants, supplies, advice, and volunteers.
• GreenThumb -- New York City's GreenThumb program has been supporting community gardens for more than 20 years with information, technical assistance, materials, and funding. Check the site for grants, events, information, and links to gardening organization and individual community garden web sites.
• More Gardens! Coalition -- This organization is active in the efforts to protect community gardens.
• New York City Audubon -- Focuses on the city's wilder open spaces: Look here for wetlands and wildlife habitat protection, volunteering, and, of course, birding.
• New York City Environmental Justice Alliance -- A network of grassroots groups working for healthier environments in low-income areas and in communities of color. Its Open Space Equity Campaign helps community-based groups with land use planning, organizing and advocacy to green their neighborhoods. Download a draft of its Green Cities proposal for a state urban environmental investment program.
• New York Restoration Project -- A lively site from Bette Midler's group, which has been restoring parks in upper Manhattan and has helped save community gardens.
• Prospect Park Alliance -- Park visitors can look here for park history, destinations, and recreation information.
• Take a walk, New York -- Sign up here for free one-hour guided walks in some of the city's great and far-flung parks and greenways, sponsored by the New York City Department of Health and the Neighborhood Open Space Coalition.
• Waterfront Park Coalition -- A project of the New York Conservation Education Fund, the coalition has created an inventory of waterfront park opportunities, assists local groups, and develops funding strategies.

WHITNEY IN CENTRAL PARK
The Whitney Museum's Biennial this spring includes five large-scale artworks by contemporary New York artists commissioned for specific sites in Central Park. This is the first time the park has been part of a major museum exhibit, and also the first time the Whitney Biennial has exhibited art in an outdoor public space. The installations, organized by the Public Art Fund, include a fifty-foot-high leafless tree made of stainless steel near a stand of magnificent American elms, and an ephemeral series of splashes beneath Bow Bridge that appear to be caused by something being dropped into the water.

"Central Park has had a long history of displaying public art on both a permanent and temporary basis," said Rick Lepkowski, spokesman for the Central Park Conservancy, the nonprofit organization that manages the park. There are traditional statues like the Angel of the Waters at Bethesda Fountain, the only sculpture commissioned during the original design of Central Park. The Public Art Fund sponsors rotating exhibits of contemporary sculpture at the Doris C. Freedman Plaza on Fifth Avenue at 60th Street, and temporary individual pieces have been displayed occasionally in other parts of the park.

Although the exhibition in Central Park was arranged before Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg took office, it could be a harbinger of more ambitious public art to come during his administration. At the press conference announcing the opening of the Whitney Biennial in Central Park, Mayor Bloomberg indicated that he would be open to reconsidering a proposal made in 1981 by the artist Christo and his wife Jeanne-Claude for a work covering the entire landscape of Central Park. At the time, the Parks department rejected the installation, called "The Gates," partly because of the crowds it would draw. The concept, which can be viewed on a web site devoted to the artists, involves framing the park's pathways with a series of fifteen-foot-high metal gates. Suspended from each gate would be a free-hanging, golden-colored woven panel meant to wave in the wind toward the next gate. Mayor Bloomberg, who was a board member of the Central Park Conservancy at the time, had argued strongly in favor of the Christo project.

BEETLE THREAT
A much less welcome arrival in Central Park this year is the Asian long-horned beetle. In January, during a survey of the park, the U.S. Department of Agriculture discovered the imported pest in two trees in the Hallett Nature Sanctuary, a fenced-off grove of trees in the southeast corner of the park. The Asian long-horned beetle first appeared in New York City in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, in 1996. It has since infiltrated trees in other parts of Brooklyn, in Bayside and Flushing, Queens, and in several locations in Manhattan. The parks department is working with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets to determine whether the beetle has infected additional trees in the park. The agencies are also injecting Central Park trees with the pesticide imidacloprid to test whether it can prevent the spread of the beetle. But as of now, the only sure way to kill the beetle and its eggs and to stop it from moving to other trees is to cut down, chip, and burn infested trees. So far, the city has had to destroy about 3,500 infested street, park, and backyard trees. The parks department recently received a state forestry grant of $200,000 to replace trees all over the city that had to be felled because of the beetle.

The one- to one-and-a-half-inch beetle is shiny black with white spots, and long, black-and-white banded antennae. It chews depressions in the bark of trees to lay its eggs. Once hatched, the larvae tunnel into a tree's interior to feed, killing the tree. Characteristic signs of the beetle are pencil- or dime-sized holes in upper tree trunks; piles of sawdust at the base of the tree or where branches meet the trunk; and dark stains from sap seeping out of the holes. The insect has a preference for maples, but will lay its eggs in many other types of hardwood trees. To report beetle sightings, call 1-877-stop-alb. For more information, check the USDA web site.

THE PARK WITHOUT CARS?
While the city is adding art to Central Park, some people would like to see another element subtracted: the automobile. Car-Free Central Park, a campaign of Transportation Alternatives, an advocate for pedestrians and cyclists, is calling for a ban on car traffic on the park's loop drive. (This would not affect the four sunken east-west transverse roads, which Olmsted and Vaux designed to minimize the impact of traffic.) The group's immediate goal is a three-month summer moratorium, to see how traffic patterns and park use would be affected. The new Speaker of the City Council, Gifford Miller, is on record as supporting the eviction of cars from Central Park, but Mayor Michael Bloomberg has said, "not in your or my lifetime." Campaign leaders aim to gather 100,000 signatures in a petition drive, which they hope will convince the mayor to change his mind.

FIRST BUDGET HEARING
The Parks and Recreation committee of the New York City Council held a hearing March 19 on the parks department budget, the first step in the council's consideration of Mayor Bloomberg's proposed cuts to the city's 2003 budget. The mayor has called for across-the-board cuts of 13 percent to most city agencies, with additional "contingency" reductions of 7.5 percent.

The hearing was the first held by the newly created stand-alone council committee on parks and recreation. Committee chairman Joseph Addabbo, Jr., led off the session saying that this "affects real people," and that the loss of funding would have an impact on the safety and condition of the parks. "If you want to see a community go down the tubes," he said, "just neglect the parks."

Noting the seriousness of the city's current deficit, the new parks commissioner, Adrian Benepe, told the committee, "It is not enough to say you must increase the budget of an agency without identifying where it will come from." Later testimony from representatives of civic and park groups called for restoring the money the mayor proposed to cut from the parks budget. Among those speaking was former parks commissioner Henry Stern. He said the city should give the revenue from park concessions to the parks budget instead of the city's general fund, reminding the committee that most council members and the mayor had promised to do this during the election.

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.

In one of his last major appointments, Mayor Bloomberg chose a parks department insider, Adrian Benepe, for his commissioner of the Department of Parks and Recreation. Benepe, who has been the Manhattan borough parks commissioner since 1996, first worked for the department during the summer as a teenager. Later, he began his career in the city's first class of urban park rangers, and has since held a broad range of positions at the department -- director of art and antiquities, director of natural resources, operations coordinator, and head of public information. He has also worked at the Municipal Art Society and the New York Botanical Garden.

Benepe is taking over from long-time parks commissioner Henry Stern at a challenging time. The parks department has less than half the fulltime staff it had 15 years ago to maintain 1,700 parks, playgrounds and recreation centers; its operating budget was never restored when the city's finances improved over the last decade. Nevertheless, Commissioner Stern was able to improve conditions in many parks. He made the department more efficient, found a way to use capital funds for maintenance, and raised money for the parks through a controversial policy of charging fees to private groups to use the parks for events. Several thousand part-time workers also supplemented the department's fulltime staff as part of a federally subsidized program to help welfare recipients enter the job market. Many parks are cleaner, safer, and better-appreciated by the public than they have been in years. This was made clear when New Yorkers spontaneously gathered in parks all over the city after September 11.

During last year's election campaign, a coalition of civic groups and park supporters called Parks 2001 secured promises from most of the candidates to increase public funding for parks and to distribute that funding more equitably throughout the five boroughs. But now the city is projecting a $4 billion budget deficit for the next fiscal year, and the parks department, like all city agencies, is instead being asked to make additional cuts. Mayor Michael Bloomberg's proposed budget would reduce parks operating funds by 13 percent and would halve capital funding, which the department uses for smaller maintenance jobs as well as renovations and new projects. The city is also reevaluating the assignment of welfare workers to the parks department. The loss of funding and workers threatens to return the city to the era of dirty and dangerous parks.

To help offset the loss of public funding, Mayor Bloomberg has said that he will ask the private sector to do more. Parks already receive a great deal of financial and volunteer support from nonprofits and individuals. The papers recently reported that Commissioner Benepe is considering having corporations sponsor the maintenance of park facilities in exchange for naming rights. Benepe said that naming rights would be appropriate only in some circumstances, for example, athletic fields, and that the city would pass up opportunities that would over-commercialize the parks. "We are not selling off our parks to the highest bidder. We would rather go without than do something that is inappropriate," he told the New York Times.

New Yorkers for Parks, a new independent advocacy organization formed by the merger of the 100-year-old Parks Council with Parks 2001, supports the idea, as long as there is oversight of where the money goes and how facilities or parks are named, said spokeswoman Rowena Daly. "There needs to be a task force or plan so that the money benefits all five boroughs and every single neighborhood."

Greenways

In his State of the City address, Mayor Bloomberg announced that the city would complete a longstanding plan for a recreational path circling Manhattan. "The success of the Hudson River Park demonstrates the need to make our entire waterfront accessible to walkers and cyclists," he said.

The mayor put his promise for a waterfront greenway in the category of "our livelihood, jobs, and development." This suggests that he will take a broader approach to economic development, and that he understands that investing in parks and recreation is a key factor in making the city a great place to live and do business in the 21st century. His focus on greenways is also pragmatic, because federal funding is available for 80 percent of greenway construction through the TEA-21 legislation that promotes alternate transportation. This is a project that can be done even in bad times.

All over the country, greenways - hybrids of parks, non-motorized travel routes, and recreation trails - have become increasingly popular. They claim a little space from an urban and suburban streetscape ruled by the car (or SUV) and truck. These landscaped pavements provide a safe, relaxing, and aesthetically pleasing way for people to get exercise or to get somewhere on foot or bicycle. Greenways also have the potential to reduce traffic congestion, air pollution, and gas consumption, and to encourage active recreation, all of which benefit the health of a city's citizens and its economy.

A prototype for this type of corridor is in Seattle, where more than a million people a year (three-quarters on bicycles) use the 25-mile Burke-Gilman Trail for both commuting and recreation. Studies have shown that real estate values have increased in areas accessible to the trail, and that the trail also spurred commercial and residential development. Other successful greenways are featured on Urban Parks online, a web site from the Project for Public Spaces, including Chicago's lakeside string of parks and Florida's 47-mile Pinellas Trail. It is easy to imagine how greenways, along with new parks, housing, and businesses, could transform the edge of Manhattan, which already has the built-in allure of great views and proximity to the water.

New York City has had a Greenway Plan for all five boroughs since 1993. The Department of City Planning created it from proposals developed earlier by the Neighborhood Open Space Coalition, the Bronx borough president, and others. The proposed greenway runs 350 miles and has links to the East Coast Greenway, which will go from Maine to Florida. About 75 miles are complete, with another 80 in the works. According to David Lutz, director of the open space coalition, the Giuliani administration deserves credit for initiating the plan and moving it along. But until now, no mayor has actively promoted the concept, the way, for example, Mayor Giuliani promoted baseball stadiums. "For 15 years, we've been working on greenways in New York City," says Lutz. "All of a sudden it's no longer some wild-eyed idea."

Soon people should be able to bike, skate, and jog along much of the West Side as the Hudson River Park is completed and parks are linked all the way to the George Washington Bridge. But there are still numerous obstacles to closing the loop around northern Manhattan and down the East Side. And local volunteer groups have been pushing for the completion of paths planned along the downtown Brooklyn waterfront, the Bronx River, and elsewhere in the outer boroughs. One of the things the city could do right away is to review how city-owned waterfront property is used. Right now the city is parking cars, washing buses, and storing road salt on prime waterfront land. New York City Councilmember David Yassky, who heads the council's waterfront committee, plans to introduce legislation requiring the city to inventory its waterfront lots annually and to determine whether the use of each site is related to the waterfront.

New Yorkers are already voting for the concept of greenways with their feet. They are out in force, with cycles, scooters, skates, and strollers, the minute a new section of the Hudson River Park opens. To paraphrase the mantra of the greenway movement: "If you build it, Mayor Bloomberg, we will come."

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.

With a new mayoral administration and a new New York City Council, there may be some changes in how the city addresses the parks system. Mayor Michael Bloomberg has been slow in naming a new commissioner for the parks department, but the City Council has already taken action by forming a separate committee for the oversight of parks and recreation. The new committee will be chaired by Joseph Addabbo, Jr., of Queens, who is considered a strong supporter of parks. Park advocates had been lobbying for this change. Previously, parks issues were addressed through a committee that also covered cultural affairs, libraries, and inter-group relations.

Although both Mayor Bloomberg and new New York City Council Speaker Gifford Miller mentioned the importance of parks in their inaugural speeches and supported increased funding for parks during the campaign, it remains to be seen how the city's budget problems will affect park and recreation services. The parks department operating budget has declined 40 percent since 1986, although the capital budget was increased in recent years.

Now there is uncertainty about whether the parks department will lose the labor provided by thousands of former welfare recipients under a subsidized seasonal jobs program. The New York Times reported that just before the end of the Giuliani administration, the former human resources commissioner notified the parks department that he was shifting 3,500 former welfare recipients working for the parks department at union wages to a private temp employment agency paying a lower hourly wage. It is unclear whether they will be making this lower wage at the parks department, or whether they will be now working elsewhere.

About 200 of these parks workers whose assignment ends in February could be the first to be affected. Human Resources Administration spokeswoman Deborah Sproles said, however, that that no action has been taken so far, and that the change was being considered only as one option in an overall reassessment of the program. She says the city is looking at the program in the light of funding issues and of finding the right balance between private and public sector jobs. Yes, it is possible that the workers may not be reassigned to the parks department, she said. "The question is what is best for the workers -- that's going to drive what the final program looks like."

The welfare workers are paid mostly through a federal program and not from the parks department budget. During the past eight years, the parks department has come to depend heavily upon these workers to clean and maintain the parks as the number of regular parks employees has been cut. Parks department positions dropped from more than 4,000 in 1991 to about 1,900 now. A November 1, 2000 report by the Independent Budget Office looked at the contribution welfare workers made in improving park conditions at a time when the parks department lost more than half its staff. Mayor Michael Bloomberg's request to city agencies to cut their budgets by 20 percent is likely to further reduce the parks department's work force.

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.

Parks commissioner Henry Stern will not be asked to stay on in the Bloomberg administration, it was recently reported in several New York newspapers. The eccentric parks chief, who calls everyone in his department by a "park" name and often brings his golden retriever, Boomer, along with him on official business, has led the department for almost 15 years under two mayors. There have been a number of controversies during his tenure, including a racial discrimination lawsuit by black and Hispanic employees and inquiries into the setting and spending of fees charged for private organizations to use the parks. The commissioner also has been criticized for acquiescing to Mayor Rudy Giuliani's yearly pruning of the parks operating budget, leaving the department with less than half the staff it had in the mid-1980s. But Stern also expanded park acreage and initiated many capital projects. He thought up the Greenstreets program, which planted 800 traffic triangles and street medians. Although parks in less affluent areas were largely bypassed, his creative funding and staffing strategies have helped to make many of the city's parks more beautiful and well-used than they have been in decades. At a recent parks event, Stern said that he will continue to work on behalf of parks, and hinted that he will be freer to speak his mind.

The next parks commissioner will inherit a department with a greatly reduced budget and a shortage of staff, especially skilled workers like gardeners and plumbers. During the election, a broad-based coalition of grassroots, civic, and business groups advocated for increasing parks funding to one percent of the budget (from its current .04 percent) and setting maintenance standards that would be applied equally to parks in all parts of the city. Mayor-elect Mike Bloomberg and many newly elected city council members supported the goals of the campaign. But now economists are comparing the city's budget problems to the fiscal crisis of the 1970s. To make up for a $1 billion shortfall in this year's budget, Mayor Guiliani has proposed across-the-board budget reductions, including $4.6 million from parks. Next year's deficit is predicted to be $3.6 billion. "If everyone takes a cut, it's hard to argue that [parks] shouldn't take a cut," says Mike Klein, deputy director of the Parks Council. "But we want to remind people that the parks took a cut even when others did not."

In spite of the grim budget outlook, Klein is optimistic about Bloomberg's approach to parks because of the mayor-elect's experience as a board member of the Central Parks Conservancy. "We look for him to have very high standards for the parks system," Klein said. "We think Bloomberg has a terrific respect for how gorgeous and terrific public space can be, and look forward to working with him on expanding his standard of excellence throughout the city."

UNFINISHED BUSINESS FROM THE GIULIANI ERA

Community gardens
For years, tenacious community gardeners have been skirmishing with an equally tenacious Mayor Giuliani over the city's plan to sell to developers hundreds of city-owned vacant lots that were cleaned and greened by neighborhood groups. In his campaign literature, Mayor-elect Bloomberg said the city should work with community and civic groups to evaluate all community gardens; he also called for the establishment of a trust for parcels appropriate for garden use. Community garden advocates say they are waiting to see how these general ideas will translate into official policy. As of now, an injunction granted in a lawsuit by New York State Attorney General Elliot Spitzer is preventing the city from going through with any sales of community garden lots. The Bloomberg administration will have to decide whether to continue fighting the lawsuit or to negotiate with the attorney general.

Ball fields or woods?
A conflict in Staten Island over the fate of a natural area will also be carried over into the new administration. A local environmental group, Protectors of Pine Oak Woods, is suing to stop the city from building soccer and baseball fields and basketball and tennis courts in eastern Bloomingdale Park, a forested city park originally set aside for its natural values and for flood control. New York State Attorney General Elliot Spitzer and New York City Audubon have filed amicus briefs in support of the lawsuit. For now, construction is on hold while the lawsuits make their way through the system. The Staten Island political establishment is eager to build the fields, responding to pressure from sports groups and parents for playing space in the rapidly developing southern part of the island. The conservation groups want the fields placed at other, less environmentally sensitive sites. They also say that that it doesn't make sense to put ball fields on wet, hilly land - the fields would be costly to build and maintain, and could end up flooded and useless like fields built on damp ground elsewhere in the city. If they are right, the Bloomberg administration could end up with an expensive boondoggle. A study commissioned by the parks department found that constructing fields in Bloomingdale Park would cost four times as much as building the same fields at three alternative sites. The parks department originally opposed the plan, but was silenced by Mayor Giuliani.

Ferry Point Park
A plan for a new golf course on city parkland that was pushed through by the Giuliani administration may come back to haunt Mayor-elect Bloomberg. Environmental concerns continue to surface at the Bronx site, the 220-acre eastern section of Ferry Point Park. The park was formerly a municipal garbage dump located over wetlands along the East River. The city granted Ferry Point Partners, a private developer, a 35-year concession to construct and run the 18-hole professional-level golf course.

The Ferry Point landfill operated and closed before strict regulations governing the disposal of garbage went into effect, at a time when hazardous waste frequently found its way into municipal dumps. An environmental assessment conducted by a consultant to the developer found high levels of toxic chemicals, including PCBs, arsenic, and lead, in soil borings at the site. It also detected methane gas, which is produced by decomposing garbage and is explosive at high concentrations. But the parks department determined that the findings did not warrant a more thorough environmental impact statem ent. The state Department of Environmental Conservation, which is monitoring the project, gave its approval.

Even as trucks haul in rubble to cover the landfill and bulldozers reshape the terrain, two environmental groups and residents of a nearby housing project are suing to force the city and state to conduct a more comprehensive environmental review. To begin with, they say, the assessment never looked into the history of the landfill, and what was dumped there. They also suspect that toxic contamination is more extensive than the developer's assessment concluded because several potential routes for seepage of chemicals from the site were not investigated. Rainwater percolating through layers of garbage typically leaches contaminants into the groundwater, yet at Ferry Point there are no monitoring wells to detect what chemicals might be going into the groundwater or the East River. Also not looked into was the possibility that water could be entering the old dump from wetlands or springs underneath. Although test wells are checking methane levels, they are not measuring volatile organic compounds and other carcinogenic substances that tend to migrate along with the methane. Methane readings, however, have been dangerously high in several places. To deal with this unforeseen problem, Ferry Point Partners and the Department of Environmental Conservation are constructing blocks-long, gravel-filled venting trenches near the edges of the park. One trench is in a public park across from the housing project.

Most of the local politicians and the community board support the plan, which they see as a win-win proposition. The developer is underwriting the construction (throwing into the bargain a new community park and a waterfront promenade), and will pay the city an annual fee or a percentage of the golf course revenues if that is higher. But because the city indemnified the developer against "all losses, damages, costs, expenses or liabilities" stemming from preexisting environmental contamination, the city could be stuck with a hefty bill from environmental cleanups or lawsuits.

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.

The state just released a draft revision of its Open Space Conservation Plan. The plan, which is updated every three years, lists sites that are priorities for the state to acquire and protect. In the past, the state's open space program has been criticized for neglecting low-income minority areas, particularly in New York City.

The draft plan shows some improvement in addressing the need for parks in the inner city, according to New York City open space advocates. But at the same time, opportunities for acquiring open space - in the city as well as upstate - are in jeopardy because the governor and legislature failed to agree on appropriating funds for land acquisition in this year's budget.

The state's open space program has two major sources of funding: the Clean Water/Clean Air Bond Act passed in 1996, and the Environmental Protection Fund, a dedicated trust whose revenues come mostly from the state real estate transfer tax. For open space as well as other environmental programs, New York City has not received funding proportional to its population or tax contributions. Although New York City has 40 percent of the state's population and city transactions account for 44 percent of statewide revenue from the real estate transfer tax, it received just 23 percent of Bond Act/Environmental Protection funds between 1996 and 2000, according to a report by the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance.

Communities of color, which tend to have the lowest amount of parkland per capita as well as the largest number of environmental burdens, have benefited the least. The lion's share of state land acquisition funds spent in New York City went to Staten Island, which has the most open space in the city. Additional money has been committed to the Hudson River and Brooklyn Bridge parks, which border more affluent areas.

The revised plan has taken a few small steps toward rectifying this inequity. It clarifies the definition of what constitutes an "under-served neighborhood," a designation that was supposed to be among the criteria used for selecting sites on the priority list. Several new inner-city projects were added to the list, but many others were not. The plan also recommends setting up a process for evaluating and protecting community gardens as open space and for transferring potential parkland between government agencies. A public workshop and hearing on the plan will be held in Long Island City on November 15. Comments may also be sent by mail or through the Department of Environmental Conservation web site through November 30.

As for funding, open space money from the Bond Act is nearly spent. In late October, Governor Pataki and the legislature deadlocked on how to spend the $150 million in the Environmental Protection Fund, and as a result, no money was appropriated for its various programs, including land acquisition. And now there is talk that the governor intends to raid the fund, though it would go about as far towards closing the state's expected several multi-billion-dollar shortfall as a child's piggy bank would in paying the rent. A state budget department spokesman said he did not have any information on this possibility.

Flowering memorial

Volunteers are planting more than a million daffodil bulbs in public spaces throughout the city in the memory of those lost in the World Trade Center attack and as a symbol of the city's renewal. When spring comes, year after year, a host of golden daffodils will bloom in the city's parks, community gardens, along its highways, and in front of firehouses, police stations, schools, and libraries. The Parks department and a number of citywide and local parks groups have organized more than 7,000 people to plant bulbs at 300 sites. Several companies as well as the City of Rotterdam and the Port Authority have donated bulbs, tools, and supplies. Planting will continue through November 18. For more information, see the web site of Partnership for Parks or call (212) 360-1357.

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.