On Earth Day, April 22, 2010, PlaNYC turned three. Mayor Michael Bloomberg celebrated the birthday of his wide-sweeping plan to reduce carbon emissions by 2030 with festivities in Times Square. Pepsi was there to show off its new recycling machines. Office Depot made an appearance to display its double-flush toilets and hand out gift bags. We stopped in at two of the more PlaNYC-related booths: the Parks’ Department table to talk about the MillionTrees NYC initiative, and the booth for Transportation Alternatives, an advocacy group that promotes low-impact modes of getting around town.
We brought back the following reports for you, which touch on some of the more successful elements of PlaNYC, and some that might need improvement. Continue Reading
The proposed site for “Gowanus Village,” which was accepted into the State’s Brownfield Cleanup Program in 2004.
When Mayor Michael Bloomberg put together PlaNYC in 2007, he made brownfields one of the three overarching themes of his land use initiatives. But what is a brownfield, and what can brownfields do to help make New York a “greener” city?
A brownfield is an abandoned or underused industrial site available to be used or developed. Often, contamination from a previous use has left these buildings and properties polluted. “Brownfield” is a bit of a misnomer: these sites range from old auto body shops and pharmaceutical plants to factories and generating stations. In Brooklyn, dozens of these site dot the neighborhoods, particularly areas along the waterfront once home to heavy industry.
The following slide show is a portrait of the “life” of one brownfield, which in 2004 was included in the New York State’s Brownfield Cleanup Program. The property, now called “Gowanus Village,” is a 2.4 acre site along Brooklyn’s notorious Gowanus Canal. The towering brick building on the property was once a power plant owned by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Over the past two decades, it became a favorite spot for graffiti writers and squatters, who called it “the Bat Cave.” This is the story of industry, development and growth through one building, on one brownfield, in New York City.
The 40th Anniversary of Earth Day brought many people to Times Square to learn what’s new in sustainable merchandise and living. Amongst the line of vendors was Spica Wobbe from the New Victory Theater in Manhattan, who had a constant stream of kids at her table.
How was she contributing to Earth Day?
She uses newspaper amongst other materials to make puppets for different performances. I caught up with her while she showed me how to make an elephant out of a periodical in this slideshow.
Thursday, April 22 marked the third anniversary of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s PlaNYC 2030 initiative to make New York City greener. On the anniversary, which coincides with Earth Day, the mayor announced a new approach to solid waste. In a recent article by NBC New York, the plan came under criticism for some of its not-so-green initiatives.
PlaNYC is required, by law, to be updated every four years. The first update will be implemented on Earth Day 2011. According to Edward Skyler, Deputy Mayor for Operations, the city asked New Yorkers to take part in a city-wide conversation about what should be implemented in the initial PlaNYC. He said he hopes the conversations will continue as the plan is prepared to be updated.
Explaintheplan.com was live on the scene at the Earth Day celebration. We engaged New Yorkers in a conversation about what they want the city to focus on in the future. Here is what they said:
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!
Steven Shooman (right), a homeowner in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn got some information about energy efficiency from a ConEd representative. Photo by Alana Casanova-Burgess
Whew, I’ve got quite a huge backup here at the Brooklyn Chamber of Commerce’s Real Estate & Development (RED) Committee’s “Meet The Experts on Energy” event at Brooklyn’s Borough Hall. There’s a lot of info forthcoming about how to get energy efficiency grants for your businesses and homes… as well as video clips from event organizers and on the presentation from Brooklyn Bowl, a LEED-certified business in Williamsburg.
Now Up: (1:59 p.m.) : Andrew Giancola and Dan Orr talking about The Silhouette, a residential building in Brooklyn. Andrew is talking about his family’s history of residential buildings in Brooklyn. (It feels great to have connectivity in here, I’ll try to get the rest of the material from the last few hours up here as soon as possible).
2:02 p.m.: “The condensation is going to form on the outside of the building, instead of on the inside of the wall.” Andrew details how the insulation system at The Silhouette doesn’t allow mold to grow inside the wall. Architects on the project: Caleb Frawford – Annie Coggan. The condo is the first LEED Platinum and Energy Star certified low-rise building in New York, and is located in South Park Slope.
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….”
We will be live-blogging from the Green from the Inside Out presentation in Harlem today. It is hosted by GreenHomeNYC. Follow us on Twitter @ExplainThePlan or join us here at 6 p.m. to learn about recycling, reducing energy costs and rooftop solar applications.
Be sure to tweet your questions with the hashtag #GreenHomeNYC
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.
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.”
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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:
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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:
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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.
