S.W.I.M. September Meeting
Wednesday, September 22
10am -12pm
Pratt Manhattan
144 W 14th St
New York, 10011

The presentation portion this month will be a “show and tell” of two stormwater technologies, Permapave and Deeproot’s Silva Cell.

YOU MUST RSVP TO PASS THE SECURITY DESK AT PRATT
RSVP to swimmablenyc@gmail.com

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.

Keep reading…

New York City Community Gardening Coalition offers a concise summary of the issue, and all related documents for your perusal. The online form for submitting comments is still active if you were not able to make the rally and hearing today.

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!

The petition reads:

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 missed us there, or wished you could pass the petition on to a few friends, today is your lucky day!  SIGN THE S.W.I.M. COALITION’S PETITION FOR SWIMMABLE/FISHABLE WATERS ONLINE HERE!

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!

On July 24, the S.W.I.M. Coalition, as well as several of our member organizations, participated in City of Water Day, convened annually by Metropolitan Waterfront Alliance.  We were there with our Sewer in a Suitcase tabletop model, courtesy of Center for Urban Pedagogy, and our Minds in the Gutter exhibit. What a great day with so many wonderful people!

S.W.I.M. Coordinator, Kate Zidar, with all our gear on Governor's Island

The following week, S.W.I.M. Steering Committee members were joined by El Puente’s Founder Luis Garden Acosta aboard Riverkeeper’s patrol boat with captain John Lipscomb for a tour of Newtown Creek’s wild interior. We saw no fewer than five different shorebird species, various aspects of the Greenpoint oil spill containment and cleanup, and more CSO outfalls than we could shake a stick at.

READ NY1 Coverage: Bronx teen David Luccioni died while trying to save Crystal Reyes, 15, from drowning in Bronx River

A WNYC report noted that although summer just began just a couple of weeks ago, already three young New Yorkers between the ages of 12 and 20 have drowned to death in area beaches and in the Harlem River.  Their reporting has explored how preventable drowning deaths can disproportionately impact communities of color in New York City.

READ WNYC Coverage: Survey Finds Blacks and Latinos Less Likely to Swim

It seems, however, that local swimming holes prove irresistible on hot summer days.  Even in the days since the drownings, locals continue to access the swimming hole as a cooling spot on these dog days of summer with temperatures topping 90F consistently for weeks.

READ Daily News Coverage: Bronx River swimming spot hard to resist, even after double drowning

As we continue to do our work to make sure that the water quality of local waterways is safe for contact, this incident brings broader issues of public safety front and center. We encourage everyone to learn to swim in a pool before taking to the open water anywhere, and to swim in locations where there is a lifeguard present. We have collected a few resources for safe swimming below.

Learn to Swim, a free instructional program that runs at New York City’s public outdoor pools is offered for young people through NYC Parks & Recreation, City Parks Foundation and the American Red Cross.

Speaking of the American Red Cross, they train lifeguards and help with job placement.

New York Harbor School is a local HS that provides a college-preparatory education built upon New York City’s maritime experience…students learn a wide array of on-water skills including swimming and sailing.

Swim Free is a new org, supported by open water swimming group NYC SWIM, that will be offering learn-to-swim programs, lifeguard training this Fall.

Rocking the Boat provides youth programming of boat building, on-water skills, ecology and terrain of the Bronx River and surrounding estuary.

Please add (in the comments section) any additional resources that we have not mentioned here that might help young people handle themselves safely on the water, and we will update the body of the post.  Have a safe summer everyone.

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….

Yesterday, S.W.I.M. members participated in Rocking the Boat’s Community Rowing Program.  We were treated to excursions out on the Bronx River led by the program’s young people in their handmade wooden boats.  The Bronx River was alive with swimming, fishing, other boaters and these skilled teens as our guides.

Afterward, RTB hosted our July public meeting in their brand new workshop and classroom building. THANK YOU ROCKING THE BOAT!

Respondent 2: The tax incentive is not practical for small-scale green roof installations. The tax abatement would have given us a $3,600 rebate. Most architects, engineers, and expediters quoted $2000-3,500 to go through the process, even though we had done drawings and already done most of the leg-work. In addition, we were told that a modular system might not qualify for the credit making that up front cost of hiring a filing professional quite a gamble…Every person you speak with has different information (or misinformation)… (credit pending)

Respondent 4: None of the roofs I have installed have applied for the credit. It appears that unless you want to pay a ton of extra cash (which adds up to more than the credit – architect fees, landscape arch fees, and the engineer fees) it makes no sense to apply. I think it only works out on very very large projects….10,000 sq.ft +.  I would however be curious to see how many people have actually used this credit…

Respondent 5: …a big part of the reason for doing it…was that we thought we could offset a decent amount of the increased costs via the tax credit. If we’re going to lose ½ or more of that credit because of filing fees/costs, then this benefit ceases to really be a benefit. In addition, from a psychological perspective, when the city and green roofers promote this as an incentive to do a green roof and then you learn the facts, it creates a very negative attitude towards green initiatives…

Respondent 6: On small buildings, the $4/sf barely covers the cost of the required filing with the DOB… It’s just not enough money to be worth it. For a 5,000 sf roof, a green roof would cost minimum $90,000, probably more when you add in structural issues, new roofing, and possible asbestos abatement. The tax abatement would be $20k but the required filing would cost at least $7,500 for an architect, structural engineer and expeditor and that $20k would be paid back over 4 years assuming the building paid that much in property taxes.­­­­­­­

More from Respondent 1: Other incentives out there – Washington D.C.: $7/sq. ft., Chicago: Expedited permitting for projects containing a green roof, Portland: Increases buildable space, tax credit, expedited permitting for project. No special green roof application, Philadelphia: Business Privilege Tax Credit that covers 25% of all costs $100,000 cap

This peaked our interest here at S.W.I.M. headquarters for two main reasons:

1. The vocal purpose of the plan is to attain swimmable, fishable water in an urban center.  You mean the Clean Water Act can be met in a city? This document goes to the public with this existing regulatory goal to create a popular incentive for broad collaboration on water quality improvements in the watershed – the expanded use of inner harbor waters for swimming and fishing.

2. The nature of the group releasing this plan seems to be a broad coalition of interest. The Healthy Harbor Initiative partners include: The Waterfront Partnership (something between a standard non-profit and a business improvement district), the Mayor’s Office, agency folks from Public Works and City Planning, technical guidance from BioHabitats, and a long list of business and development partners on the harbor.  For a downtown commercial district, this seems to represent the area…any Baltimorians reading who can chime in?

So what can S.W.I.M.ers learn from this report? Of late, water quality planning has been taken on by the Mayor’s Office (PlaNYC and the Sustainable Stormwater Management Plan) and by NYC DEP (The Long Term Control Plans)…see our Resources section for links to both. We have heard “recreation” as a planning goal, but recreation can mean anything from visual contact to swimming, and that’s an important range of options in terms of water quality. Also, if you look for an acknowledgment page in these plans (and find one), you won’t find the kind of public/private/technical alliance behind it as page 2 of the  Baltimore Waterfront Healthy Harbor Initiative. Is that partnership element what enables the swimmable/fishable statement? More importantly, will it make the swimmable/fishable goal ACHIEVABLE?

Discuss!