Mayor Michael Bloomberg announced today that David Bragdon will take the reins as the city’s new sustainability czar.
Bragdon, who was most recently the president of the Portland, Oregon Metro Council, replaces Rohit T. Aggarwala, who helped spearhead the administration’s PlaNYC 2030 sustainability agenda. Aggarwala had been hailed as a chief architect of the administration’s environmental policy, and his departure in April threw much of the 127 PlaNYC proposals up in the air.
Bragdon, however, appears to have a decade of experience in the sustainability area.
At the Metro Council, he coordinated the region’s land use and transportation planning. As part of his role there, Bragdon attempted to plan how the Portland area would handle a million more residents in the next 20 years.
S.W.I.M. Steering Committee member Shino Tanikawa sends along these photos from today’s public hearing regarding HPD/Parks’ proposed new rules that will govern many of our city’s community gardens. The hearing is well attended and gardeners from all over the city have come to voice their concerns that community garden protections are not weakened.
S.W.I.M. Coalition will submit comments that urge community gardens be afforded the same if not stronger protection in the new agreement. We know community gardens as places of experimentation and creativity, incubators of stewardship and civic engagement, and an important part of Green Infrastructure.
The Water Resources Group created the map below to show the distribution of rainwater harvesting systems such as rain barrels and cisterns in community gardens across the city. Water Resources Group began coordinating rainwater harvesting systems with gardens as a source for irrigation water back in the drought stricken summer of 2001. People like Lenny Labrizzi and Lars Chellberg have been working out the kinks in these types of systems since long before PlaNYC or even the term Green Infrastructure. I think we were calling them BMPs or something back then…this is a great reminder that community gardens are places where people with great ideas are free to try them out. Let’s keep it that way!
No Comments Posted on August 4th, 2010 by kate_zidar
We, the undersigned, are residents of (or visitors to) New York City who deserve local water quality that meets the federal Clean Water Act’s “fishable/swimmable” goal and would provide a full spectrum of recreational and economic opportunities in/on our marine environment. Although our harbor is much cleaner than it used to be, raw sewage and polluted urban runoff still frequently make it unsafe to touch the water in our rivers, bays, and creeks. In a typical year, 27 billion gallons of untreated human sewage mixed with polluted runoff are dumped into local waterways in all five boroughs through Combined Sewer Overflow.
We call on New York City, New York State, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to adopt enforceable plans that manage stormwater in NYC with Green Infrastructure. By creating a verdant, permeable city, we utilize stormwater as a resource, not a waste! Green Infrastructure will keep our waterways clean, cool and clean the air, and create a healthier place for people to live, work, recreate and visit.
We, the undersigned, demand “swimmable and fishable” waterways.
If you would like to carry a hard copy of this petition at your next event, you can download a pdf of it HERE. Contact swimmablenyc@gmail.com for instructions on returning petition pages. Thank you!
When it comes to meeting federal clean water standards, New York and other older cities like Boston and Albany are decades behind. One reason is all the human waste that’s discharged every time a storm overwhelms the capacity of 19th century combined sewer systems, which collect rain and sewage in the same pipes. Now New York is looking to another old East Coast city, Philadelphia, for new ideas….
