Click here for slideshow.

We’ve covered the controversial U.S. Concrete plant opening along Red Hook, Brooklyn’s scenic waterfront a couple of times before, but it’s better described with photos.  For some background, click here.  Click the photo to your left or here to see the photo slideshow.

This week marked the 40th anniversary of Earth Day. It also corresponds with Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s 3rd anniversary of PlaNYC. The mayor wants to green underutilized sidewalks and other spaces around the city. But what about the city’s current green spaces? Prospect Park is Brooklyn’s only forest. The man-made park is thriving, but it is under constant stress from pedestrian traffic. The natural habitat is home to over 200 species of birds, over 30,000 trees and other woodland mammals, which necessitates its perseverance. Besides its environmental features, the park is also aesthetically pleasing and provides fresh air and shade.

On Saturday, April 24 the Audubon Center at Prospect Park will celebrate Earth Day. The event will educate visitors on the origin of Earth Days and offer workshops on how to preserve the environment.

Below is a slide show, offering a visual perspective of the park and man’s toll on it. Be sure to take a look!

What would Earth Day be like without recycling? Well, it’d still be Earth Day, at least in Times Square. Companies such as Pepsi, Home Depot and the New York Post set up booths that offered passersby, free drinks, t-shirts, and keychains. But when recycling bins are scarce, and all you can find are trash cans, plastic is sure to fill up.

Not enough recycling on Earth Day

The clean up wasn’t very green either. I spoke with one of the Times Square cleaners waiting for the festivities to end and asked how they would separate the trash from the recycling. He just pointed to some green cans down the road. Then he said he couldn’t talk to the press. But I asked again if they were separating trash from recycling, he shook his head no.

Trash from Earth day not recycled, according to worker.

Pedestrians chilling out while traffic whizzes by. Photo: flickr/berk2804

Pull up a chair and enjoy the peaceful, serene …. dizzying lights of Times Square. Well, at least you get to pull up a chair. Mayor Michael Bloomberg is highlighting PlaNYC this Earth day – Thursday – from 11:00 – 2:00 p.m. The event will take place in the newly created pedestrian plazas in Times Square on Broadway between 45th and 46th streets, according to a press release from the New York City Department on Parks and recreation. As part of the celebration, the public plaza between 42nd and 43rd streets will host information booths on a variety of environmental issues.

Earth Day also marks the third anniversary of the release of PlaNYC, the City’s comprehensive long-term plan to make New York a greener, more sustainable city. The City will release its annual PlaNYC Progress Report on Earth Day, a publication required by a law Mayor Bloomberg signed to make sure PlaNYC will continue through future administrations.

In addition to the Times Square celebration, the City will be organizing a number of events during Earth Week, which takes place April 19-25.

Jenny Carel wasn’t going to pay Home Depot more than $60 for all the plants she needed for her garden this year. So, Carel, 40 a part-time teacher from Riverdale, used her ingenuity. She took some milk cartons, an old fish tank light and $3 worth of seeds she bought off line to start her own nursery garden.

A few weeks later the seedlings are a few inches tall and the hobby is a hit with her 11-year-old daughter, Sera. “It’s fun to see them grow,” she said. The two were at the newly established Bronx Hydro and Garden to buy a spray bottle and some extra seeds.

Carel’s gardening is one we learned about in grade school, but hydroponics – soilless gardening – is not just for green thumbs anymore. Specializing in this process, the store sells equipment for simple, cost-effective indoor gardening. The process has a few steps: water is infused with nutrients and then pumped through a system, which oxygenates the water; this is necessary for plants to grow and explains why stagnant water in a bucket just grows algae.

PlaNYC has initiatives on greening the city like MillionTreesNYC, reforesting parkland, and planting roadside gardens. But no rooftop gardens or hydroponics.  The city provides GreeNYC tips to encourage residents to be more environmentally conscious, by buying local produce, eating organic, and planting trees.

Aaron Morre, 27, opened the store last November and is opening another one in the Greenpoint, Brooklyn later this month.  Morre grew up on a farm in Orangeburg, South Carolina and moved to Brooklyn in 2001 to study Economics. He graduated from Brooklyn college in 2005. His store sells everything you need to start your own indoor garden.

Here’s some  audio of Mr. Morre, talking about his store.  ”This is the green economy….”

morre_1-2

Here’s a video of Aaron Edell of Bronx Hydro and Garden explaining some different kinds of hydroponics options.

Are you looking to give back to the community while making New York City a greener place to live? Well, you could donate and/or buy a tree.

As stated in previous posts, MillionTreesNYC is one of the mayor’s 127 PlaNYC 2030 initiatives to make New York City a greener and more livable place. To date, the city has planted 315,979 trees.

Below are the rates for donating a tree.

For more information check out the New York Restoration Project’s website.

Meadowmere and Warnerville, Queens Get New Sewers After 60 Years from explain the plan on Vimeo.

When it rains in Meadowmere and Warnerville, it pours.

After more than a century these two Queens communities wedged between John F. Kennedy International Airport and Long Island are finally getting a sewer system. But along with a $37.5 million pumping station, residents have gotten a flood of charges from the city: over $5,000 for to a licensed plumber plus $1,500 to $2,000 to the city to get hooked up.

The costs have highlighted the lack of a basic infrastructure for two neighborhoods closely tied to Jamaica Bay, where most residents work at the airport or as fishermen. And while toilets and drains empty out into septic systems or into the Bay itself, residents have been scrambling to get connected to the new system by early June or face fines from the Department of Environmental Protection. The new sewer system also fits into Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s goal to clean New York City’s waterways by the year 2030.

“It’s not like anyone is saying ‘we’re not going to hook up’,” said Larry Seaman, 66, who makes his living catching eels, crabs, and fish in the waters here. “We will hook up, just give us a way to pay for it.”

The original deadline of March 6 was pushed back, but some residents here were so desperate to avoid the $10,000 fine that they ended up paying a plumber nearly as much to connect their pipes to the city’s new sewer. Some neighbors have banded together to negotiate a lower price closer to $5,000, but an additional fee for a spur will be assessed on everyone’s taxes.

In the meantime, some residents have been paying for infrastructure they never had.

“There are 10 homeowners we know of so far who have been paying the sewer tax all along,” said Donovan Richards, chief of staff for Councilman James Sanders, Jr., who represents the area. “That’s $84 [per quarter] that they’ve been paying for who knows how long.”

Sanders’ office has been working with the DEP to lower the fees for those who have been paying the tax. The DEP would not return several calls for comment, but Richards said the agency would be lenient with those who miss the June deadline.

“They were the forgotten people, I think they were the last people in the city without a sewer,” Richards said of the Warnerville and Meadowmere residents in a phone interview. “It should have been done years ago, I mean come on — years ago.”

The plumbing problem in these Queens neighborhoods is not the only one in the country. Matt Robinson from Explain The Plan took a look areas from Connecticut to Florida that recently had to pay to get hooked up:

Matt Robinson, Uche Abanobi and Alana Casanova-Burgess contributed reporting to this post.

The Proteus Gowanus gallery resides in an artist-owned building along the Gowanus Canal, where it’s been since 2005. The gallery has an ongoing exhibit in which local artists show art culled from and inspired by the history and landscape of Gowanus.

Sasha Chavchavadze, founder and creative director of the gallery, says the Gowanus area has long been a community that attracts artists. They’ve always lived harmoniously with the local industries.

Audio: Sasha Chavchavadze voices her perspective how Superfund designation will impact the artists’ community along the Gowanus Canal

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Chavchavadez describes the community along the canal, where artists and small industry co-exist.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Chavchavadez doesn’t want rapid development in the area. She supports the EPA’s plan and believes it’ll give the community time to “regroup a little bit, and think how they want the area to change.”

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

She says the pollution hasn’t strongly affected her gallery.

Return to the Gowanus Superfund Project main page.

“What the community is all agreed on is that we’d like to see the area cleaned and revitalized,” said Craig Hammerman, manager of Brooklyn Community Board 6, which includes the Gowanus area. “I think the divergence of opinions tends to come when considering what the area should be revitalized for.”

Hammerman said the community board believes that the city and federal government will be able to work together to clean the Gowanus, and they encourage residents to learn what’s happening and give their opinions.

“Being in a position where the city and federal governments are fighting over who can do the best job to clean up your neighborhood is not a bad place to be,” he said.  “Now that the decision has been made, it frees up everyone to get moving on what they intend to do. Now everyone can roll up their sleeves and get to work on cleaning and revitalizing the area.”

People working and living around the canal have a variety of opinions.

Video: Marla Wonboy, resident

Marla Wonboy has been living by the Gowanus for a year. She attends some Gowanus Conservancy activities, but hasn’t been an activist for Gowanus issues.

Video: Ahmed Abdo, storeowner

Ahmed Abdo has a bodega by the Gowanus, next to a subway station and a popular bus stop. He’s happy about the cleanup, but he thinks it may take too long and worries how it’ll affect his business.

Video: Paul Santos, construction worker

Paul Santos works for Northeast Construction on the Department of Environmental Protection facility along the Gowanus. He says he doesn’t have a strong opinion about what’s happening.

Return to the Gowanus Superfund Project main page.

Currently, the EPA is in the “remedial investigation” stage of its clean up progress. This involves extensive research to determine who the responsible parties are, the extent of contamination at the site and the potential risks involved with a clean up. Walter Mugdan, the Region 2 Director of Emergency and Remedial Response Division for the Environmental Protection Agency, explained that in the Gowanus, this includes taking core samples of the mud from the bottom of the canal. Mugdan says the mud is “pretty unpleasant stuff.”

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

To retrieve the core samples, contractors take special tubes made from industrial plastic (the type of plastic used in space helmets and bullet resistant windows) that they use to pull out cylinders of mud from the contaminated ground. Then they can open the cores to examine the mud at different depths. Listen to Mugdan describe a core sample from the Gowanus:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

The remedial investigation should be complete by the end of the year. In the next step, the “feasibility study,” the EPA takes all of the information gathered during the remedial investigation and develops several possible clean up plans. Then the EPA will select the plan that they believe is the best option (known as the “proposed plan”) and present it to the public. The public has 60 to 90 days to comment. After the comment period, the EPA will thoroughly review all the feedback they received and develop a “responsiveness summary,” detailing how the public opinion is being incorporated into the plan. Then a final decision is made and documented in a “record of decision.”

Mugdan expects the record of decision to be unveiled by the middle of 2012. After that happens, the EPA can begin the design process, which Mugdan says is going to be difficult:

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Once a sufficient plan is developed, physical clean up will begin around the end of 2014. Without yet having a set plan, the EPA can not say for sure how long the actual clean up will take, but Mugdan estimates that it will take about five years.

Return to the Gowanus Superfund Project main page