a reblog covering NYC’s sustainability scene
Posted in Health on Feb 13th, 2008
Last year, VBS.TV (that’s Vice Broadcasting System) put out the startling, and remarkably well-produced video series called Toxic Brooklyn. It delves into the big old oil spill underneath Greenpoint. And it’s well worth watching. Especially for any folks looking to move to our fine borough.If the embedded video above doesn’t work, check […]
Greenpoint residents met last week with the New York City Department of Environmental Protection (”DEP”) to beg for a full-scale overhaul of Newtown Creek, an offshoot of the East River that divides Brooklyn and Queens. New York’s largest wastewater treatment plant is located on the grimy creek’s bank, and in the summer, the stench from the plant wafts for miles. The Queens Ledger reported that DEP Commissioner Emily Lloyd hopes to make a series of environmental upgrades in order to bring the plant into compliance with the federal Clean Water Act, including covering all areas where sewage is exposed to the air and building new chlorination tanks.
Posted in Climate Change, Health, Livable Streets on Feb 5th, 2008
A map produced by the Pratt Center [pdf] shows neighborhoods with a high concentration of low-income commuters with long commutes.
With congestion pricing now before the City Council, the coalition pushing it forward shows signs of strengthening at exactly the right time. One group we’ll be hearing more from is Commuters
United for Transportation Equity (COMM.U.T.E!), a recently-formed partnership between the Pratt Center for Community Development and community organizations in low-income neighborhoods around the city. At a press event this morning, COMM.U.T.E! representatives spoke about their strategy to lobby for
congestion pricing and greater funding for BRT in the MTA capital plan.
Their campaign will call attention to stark inequities in New York City commute times. The Pratt Center has crunched 2000 Census numbers showing that two-thirds of city residents with commutes longer than one hour earn under $35,000 per year [pdf]; and that black New Yorkers face a 30 percent longer commute, on average, than white New Yorkers [pdf]. Disparities were present, if less pronounced, across other racial groups as well. Considered alongside the transit improvements that congestion pricing will make possible, the findings again pierce the argument that pricing is a regressive tax.
The problems revealed by the report are fundamentally about "human rights and dignity, rather than dry economic measures," said Joan Byron, Director of Sustainability and Environmental Justice Initiative at the Pratt Center.
Time lost to long commutes is "corrosive to community life and family life," said Silvett Garcia, Senior Planner at Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice in the Soundview section of the Bronx. "That is time people cannot spend with their families, cannot meet with their children’s teachers, cannot go to community events." She noted that bus commuters in the Bronx have to transfer twice to make a trip across the borough, which takes an hour. The same trip only takes drivers ten minutes.
Byron applauded DOT’s commitment to a BRT pilot program, but noted that the scale of a BRT system would have to exceed current plans to seriously address inequities in transit access. The only way to dramatically improve
transit access in neighborhoods that are currently underserved, she
said, is to implement congestion pricing and significantly boost MTA funding for BRT.
Posted in Climate Change, Health, Livable Streets on Feb 2nd, 2008
Good article in Revkin’s Dot Earth blog for the Times. Along with a great video, which I can’t embed here, but is definitely worth checking out, as it features a few of our prominent local authorities on sensible transportation planning.
Source control strategies that decrease the amount of stormwater entering the wastewater treatment system are valuable tools to reduce the occurrence and volume of CSOs and other stormwater discharges. Effective source control strategies also provide other benefits, such as decreased energy consumption and economic benefits associated with supporting local markets for source control strategies. The Council finds that the development and implementation of a sustainable stormwater management plan is vital to improve water quality in the City and thereby better protect the public health through the restoration and protection of the ecological health of the City’s waterbodies and to the enhanced use and enjoyment of the City’s waterbodies for recreational activities.
Among the strategies to be considered in drawing up the plans are green roofs, permeable pavement, cisterns and rain barrels, and tree/vegetative cover. This is all great news for the city and its waterways, which currently absorb up to 27 billion gallons of untreated waste water each year via CSOs. It’s also great news for beaches and other water-based recreational opportunities as part of the plan will include a more comprehensive system of warnings to protect public health when CSOs do happen.
Of course, legislation like this doesn’t happen without the hard work of a lot of dedicated people, in this case the folks at the S.W.I.M. coalition. Congratulations to them for everything they did to get this legislation passed.
For more information on water resources, check out our East River resource page. And if you haven’t already, take a look at our plans for Solar 2, which will include many water-saving and recycling techniques.
Posted in Climate Change, Health, Livable Streets on Feb 1st, 2008
After five months of work and something like 14 public hearings, the Congestion Mitigation Commission has finally made its recommendation. Here’s how the voting went down at this afternoon’s meeting:
13 yes votes.
2 no votes: Richard Brodsky and Denny Farrell
1 abstention: Richard Bivone
1 absent: Vivan Cook
Next stop on the timeline, March 28:
The City Council must vote to
approve the "Implementation Plan," send a home rule message to the
state legislature. A home rule message is a request from a city or town
council to the state legislature asking them to vote on legislation
affecting only that town or city.
Now that the policy making is done, let the politics begin.
Posted in Climate Change, Health, Livable Streets on Jan 31st, 2008
Streetsblog has gotten hold of the Traffic Congestion Mitigation Commission recommendation, which should be voted on this hour. According to the version we have (pdf), the commission’s alternative to Mayor Bloomberg’s plan is expected to exceed the 6.3% VMT reduction required by the federal government, and raise an estimated $491 million per year for mass transit. Other details include:
This story has not received a lot of attention, but at the request of the Mayor, City Council is considering a bill that will require police permits for possession and use of environmental air monitoring devices by public health groups, labor unions, environmentalists, community organizations, and university programs. Given the scandal surround the EPA lies of air quality at Ground Zero, the introduction is shocking. Those three muskateers of pointless safety laws: Bloomberg, the NYPD, and City Council, are collaborating on this doozy.
The rational for this stupid proposal? If a lot of independent alarms went off it could create a panic, so the police need to control the monitoring devices out there. That’s just so implausible I’m not going to waste my time writing about it. By this rational the Department of Homeland Security should have been shut down in 2004, after their too-many-to-count false security alert warnings. Code Red Code Red! Amusingly enough DHS proposed this law to NYC - can you say projection?
Intro 650, if enacted, will restrict, and could prevent altogether, independent environmental monitoring. So lets think of some of the implications. No air monitoring in neighborhoods with high asthma rates of auto/bus emissions. No air monitoring in the city period of auto emissions. No air monitoring from light or heavy manufacturing or energy plants. No air monitoring at or around construction sites. No air monitoring around disaster sights.
I guess the revelations that the EPA lied about the air quality at Ground Zero, and the liabilities the city faces for rescue workers who have become ill because of their work at Ground Zero has really gotten under the government’s skin.
Oh, but the police will give people a permit. Right. As if. The one thing the NYPD does NOT DO is cooperate.
Its really a joke when the Mayor rolls out his accountability speeches. So next time you file a complaint for hazardous air with 311 you’ll be able to track its rejection on your home computer - Great! Oh, but he’s enforcing parking space - whoop dee do. When it comes to big issues the last thing this Mayor wants is accountability: Real Estate subsidies, Construction and Public Safety, Police compliance with the law. All those have no proper accountability or transparency.
The same goes for Speaker Quinn who let this crap bill get into committee.
The only thing they forgot to include in this bill was a ban on BS meters.
Per the Intro 650 record
Thanks to the commenter who suggested looking into this more. I personally hope Tisch will oppose this bill. I’ve also put a call into her office to try to see if there is any clarity to gain on this, but its worth noting that Tisch is not particularly important to this story at this time and this is making a bit much of it all. I originally mentioned her because it simply struck my attention that she was on RubberRooms list because she is in general one of our better councilors. And she is certainly one we would expect to hear speak out against such legislation.